Re: [wg-review] Proposal for ICANN Board electors and funding.

[Michael Sondow <msondow@iciiu.org>]

Bret A. Fausett wrote:
> 
> Though users and registrants pay twice. The registries and registrars pass
> their costs on to their customers, and then we ask those same customers to
> pay up again if they want direct representation.

Quite true. The argument that users are represented in ICANN by
their service providers, an argument I have heard expressed
repeatedly to justify the exclusion of users from the DNSO, is
without weight because the interests of users, who pay but aren't
paid, are not the same as those who both pay and are paid, for the
simple reason that users have no one to pass their costs to
downstream, except, if they are commercial users, their customers,
and even such cost-deferral is not part of computable Internet
economics. And of course non-commercial users, who remain 50% of
traffic, have no one at all to pass their costs along to.

What ICANN has done by excluding end-users is set up an artificial
opposition - users versus providers - whereas until now users and
providers have for the most part been in a cooperative relationship.
The antinomy users vs. providers is a harbinger of no progress for
the Internet and the world it is meant to serve.

M.S.