Re: [wg-review] Proposal to Restructure the DNSO

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

Babybows wrote:

> In keeping with the sentiment expressed by many that the Constituency model needs to
> be abandoned in favor of a structure that guards against the possibility of
> disenfranchising any group of interested parties,

Dubious wording.

"disenfranchising" implies a franchise, hence voting, and it is not at all clear that
voting has or should have any function here, beyond non-binding polls that serve to
test whether consensus or something like it exists. 

> and in keeping with the terms of reference of the Review Working Group “to vindicate
> that DNSO would be a structure that will include all of those who will be affected by
> the DNS of the future as well as the current Netizens,”

A much more reasonable goal, since inclusion does not imply "enfranchisement".

> I am offering the following “Proposal to Restructure the DNSO” as an outline/ starting
> point for discussions (in the context of this current assessment of the GA by the
> members of the Review Working Group).
>
> 1.      The Assembly shall elect its own Chair

Yes.

> 2.      The Assembly shall convene a Council consisting of 19 members

We have a Names Council. I'm not certain if re-organizing it is any more useful than
re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

> 3.      Each current Constituency (as a legacy consideration) shall appoint one
>          member to this Council

What about new constituencies?

> 4.      Remaining seats to be filled by election

Which implies, if my count of constituencies is accurate, that the elected reps
would be a clear majority.

It also raises some complex questions about who votes and how the whole process is
organised. The question of who is enfranchised or disenfranchised comes up here,
for sure.

First off, this raises the language issue to top priority. It is arguably reasonable
(see my previous posts for some of the arguments) for ICANN to say English is its
only working language as long as it works as a co-ordinating body, with representation
from other language groups. Certainly problematic, but arguably reasonable.

However, if you want it (even partially) ruled by a one-man-one-vote system,
whether of end users or of domain holders, then there's no argument. The only way
to enfranchise people fairly is to provide everything in their languages. This
includes translating things like a candidate's position paper from his native
Persian to dozens of voter languages. 

Who gets a vote?

Anyone who wants to?

Can sandy@storm.ca, sandy@freeswan.org and pashley@storm.ca all vote? Great! I
get three votes. If not, how do you exclude two of them? Do you exclude an account
I might have on an anonymous server? On Yahoo? Hotmail?

As an end user, sitting at home here with an ISP handling my connection, and no
domain of my own, I currently have five email addresses and could easily make it
a dozen. If I controlled a domain, I could trivially create 128 accounts, as an
earlier message in this discussion suggested.

Any domain owner?

How do you make the process genuinely representative, given that anyone with some
resources and an agenda can create bogus domains and/or users at will?

I could ask my ISP to give me example.storm.ca, for example. They can do that, charging
any fee I'll pay, without reference to any outsiders since they control DNS for their
storm.ca. Once I had example.storm.ca, I could create as many 4th-level domains as I
liked. Do they all get a vote?

If I had a 2nd-level domain, I could create as many 3rd-level as I liked. If I were
a registry, I could create 2nd-level.

You can't just exclude 3rd-level domains. oxford.ac.uk should get the same chance
as mit.edu. Also, do oxford.ac.uk and mit.edu get one vote each, or does each
dep't get a vote. Is lcs.mit.edu a voter? How about sales.example.com?

> 5.      No one Constituency shall at any time have more than three members represented
>           on the Council

So we have an election and four people from businesses, or four domain owners, win
seats. What do we do then?

Or do we do something during the election? My vote is for Alice, unless she's number four
from that constituency, in which case switch my vote to Bob.

I consider this restriction silly.

> 6.      The Assembly will consider policy initiatives
>
> 7.      Upon decision of the Assembly Chair,

Does this give him/her too much power? Do we need to add some mechanism for a call
from the assembly that a group be formed? Or requests from the Board, other SOs, ...?

>          working groups, committees or other such bodies shall be created to
>          thoroughly prepare a policy recommendation

Just policy? Or also procedures?

> 8.      Such final recommendations are to be forwarded to the Council subsequent
>           to a majority Assembly vote

Why does this need a vote? 

If issues come up during WG deliberations that need to be discuused by the whole
assembly, anyone can raise them on the assembly list either for discussion there
or to alert people with an interest that they might want to join the WG discussion.

WG recommendations should go straight to the Board, or at worst to NC.

> 9.      The Council will review each such policy recommendation to determine
>          whether such document meets the criteria of a “consensus policy”.

Why should the Council determine this? The WG itself should report whether the
recommendations meet those criteria. If there's a problem with their reporting,
deal with it in the GA, not in a closed room.

Also, the above is meaningless without a definition of
           the criteria of a “consensus policy”

> 10. The Council will make such refinements as necessary

Will the WG have an opportunity to discuss these "refinements"? Will the "refined"
version clearly indicate what came from the WG and what was added?

> 11. If adopted by the Council with a 2/3 vote, the policy will be forwarded to
>      the Board; if not, it will be remanded to the Assembly for further work

Why does this require 2/3?

Can the assembly override the Council here, refuse the further work and force the
WG report to go to the board?
--
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