Re: [wg-review] Education and Outreach (re: Kent's last post)

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 04:04:36AM -0800, Phil King wrote:
> Kent,
> 
> I didn't jump to reply to the source post, but it is a fact that, as pointed
> out by Eric in his post just prior to this one, in my mailbox, the vast
> majority don't have a clue about any of these issues.  No more than what
> goes on between caller and recipient of a phone call.  They shouldn't have
> to.  That's the entire purpose of having all this behind the scenes
> structure, working groups, and all that keeps the whole, hard to define
> thing, running.  They should be able to run their businesses, IM each other
> as individuals, or whatever else they do when their pc or wireless appliance
> is online with no thought.  It is for those that own and run the hardware,
> backbone, software, and those that may not be in that wider group than I
> stated, but have the interest and willingness to invest the time to learn
> more and battle out ways for it to become as common and dependable as their
> phones and traffic lights.  They are not being dominated, and they don't
> want to have to look into these issues.  There is enough cross section,
> potentially, in the few thousand becoming involved to ensure MOST interests
> will be considered, if not fully addressed all the time, enough of the time
> for things to continue to grow.
> 
> I may be stating the obvious, but sometimes twice from different sources
> helps.  The education and outreach we need to expand is not to the millions
> 'out there'.  Rather it is to the 'interested' public (for lack of a better
> term) and the Governments and appropriate persons in big business, with
> particular concentration on those in positions of potential uninformed, yet
> well meaning, damage, through improper legislation or wrong top level
> business decisions.

Yes, I agree with this.

> Pure democracy, no.  Oligarchy, not either.  

This is still thinking in governmental terms, though.  ICANN does not
have the powers of a governmental agency.  I'm sorry to keep harping on
this, but it is absolutely fundamental.  Superficially, there can be a
great deal of similarity between the effects of private contracts and
the effects governmental authority, but they are really different.  The
force that caused NSI to sign contracts with the USG and ICANN was
economic self-interest, not governmental authority.  NSI could have
chosen to fight it out in court -- it had made a claim (however bogus)
that it owned the registration database, and it could have fought for
that.

Economic forces can be very compelling -- we all recall stories of 
"company towns", and workers essentially enslaved by economics.  But 
economic forces are given a great deal of room for such abuses, because 
we presume that competition can and will correct many abuses (though 
not all).

What we in fact have is a corporation that is a monopoly.  The internal
representational structures of ICANN do not change this fact.  A
monopoly with a Board elected from a global plebiscite is still a
monopoly.  What makes a monopoly a monopoly is its position in the
market, not how it is run.  The board could be bribed or coerced; the
election could be corrupt, and change the corporation into something 
very different, all completely legal.

> Representative voices, yes.

We already have that, in spades -- far more than people give credit
here.  Consider the matter of the new TLDs.  Mike Roberts noted in his
testimony that there were over 5000 comments received; there was a long
and contentious WG composed entirely of people operating as individuals
that penned a report that was ultimately followed almost to the letter.  
Moreover, this was part of a process that had been going on for 
literally years, and that involved many many people.  The positions 
that were developed were the result of a *long* *public* process, and 
it involved many many individuals, whose voices were indeed 
incorporated into the result.

>  I
> even avoided that, apt to be mis-used, misunderstood, term "governance".

Thanks.  :-)

Kent

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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