Re: [ga] IPC on ALAC

["Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette@wz-berlin.de>]

On 18 Sep 2002, at 21:37, Marc Schneiders wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, at 19:50 [=GMT+0200], Jeanette Hofmann wrote:
> 
> > The IPC with its 66 members representing "tens of thousands of members"
> > is as unrepresentative as any other club on the Net.  The concept of
> > representativeness the IPC report is referring to does not and will
> > never work on the Internet. Only electorates with enumerable citizens
> > can generate representative bodies. Internet users are not countable.
> 
> Domain name holders are countable. In principle holders of email addresses
> are too. But since the latter can be had for free, unlike the former,
> fraud is too easy, unless there is a membership fee. But then we might as
> well throw in a domain with the membership, since they are so cheap these
> days.

Ok, here is a second reason why the (national) concept of representativeness is more or 
less useless on the Internet. Although ICANN's policies do indeed affect all users, only 
a minority of users will ever care enough to devote substantial time to naming and 
numbering matters. This is true not only for individual users but also for businesses, 
the IP community or non-commercial groups. International, sector-related policies don't 
attract the same amount of attention as domestic policies do. While it is true that 
domain name holders are countable, it would yet be ridiculous to expect  a majority of 
whatever type of domain name holders to vote on ICANN policies. 
There is no really good, well-tried solution for this problem apart from international 
treaty organizations. The only comforting fact is that it concerns _all_ constituencies 
in ICANN, not only individual users. Even though the IPC wants to make us believe 
otherwise. 

jeanette
> 
> 


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