Re: [wg-review] 3.Constituencies - RTF Report

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 07:21:12AM -0800, Phil King wrote:
> 
> >  Here you express one of the most pernicious misconceptions about ICANN.  
> >  ICANN is NOT A GOVERNMENT.  If you persist in trying to think of it in 
> >  those terms you are doomed to disappointment, and your comments are 
> >  meaningless.
> 
> This has to go a step further, correct it is not a government.  However it
> is a governance body, with in it's mandate it provides regulation/oversight
> of specific technical and operational facets of the net's structure.  As
> such the type of evaluation presented is valid even though the terms are not
> correct and may be misleading as well as create problems of their own.

Not sure what you mean.  It simply doesn't make sense to me to say that
an evaluation may be valid even if the terms are not correct and are
misleading.  Indeed, from my perspective your statement drifts very
close to the realm of the oxymoron. 

In general the term "governance" is close to useless, because it is too
general -- I could say I'm involved in the governance of my household.  
Consequently, a debate about whether ICANN is involved in "governance" 
is largely a waste of everyone's time.  It is far more productive to 
focus on the reality.

Also, while one could *say* that ICANN is involved in
"regulation/oversight", that is really a big stretch as well.  If ICANN
is involved in "regulation/oversight", then every corporation,
organization, and person that tries to enforce contractual terms is
engaged in "regulation/oversight".

If you think of ICANN as "Internet Governance", then the observed and
apparently inevitable tendency is to overload it with layer upon layer
of "accountability".  The end result of this trend is an organization
with millions of members, an elaborate electoral process, a byzantine
structure where interest groups jockey for power -- the "UN of the
Internet".  This is, in my opinion, not where we want to go, and I
firmly believe that such a structure will simply collapse of its own
weight -- hell -- the *current* structure is on the verge of collapsing
of its own weight -- the lack of participation is clear evidence of 
that.  

Instead, ICANN should be what Jon Postel originally intended it to be,
before the Boston Working Group and other pressure groups distorted it
into a goverance golem: an organization that was mainly the corporate
embodiment of the role that he had been playing, of a facilitator and
coordinator.  ICANN should be a small, lightweight operation, not a 
behemoth. 

At the bottom the registry business is a trivial database operation with
a customer service component.  It is absolutely insane to be building
gigantic expensive international governance structures for such a 
trivial business.

[...]

> >  That, at least, we agree on.  That's why this WG is not in a position 
> >  of trust.
> 
> Ah, but we are in a position of trust.  Or we are if we remain true to our
> purpose.

And what might that purpose be?

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
--
This message was passed to you via the wg-review@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe wg-review" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html