Re: [ga] RE: issues that are long closed?
Roberto Gaetano wrote: The problem is that if we have electors who number in the millions, which is the target, there is no way that a Director could keep the contact with his electoral body, and that the electors could debate the issues and influence the position of the Director on the Board. I represented approximately 330,000,000 people. I maintained a website, published a diary (it now would be called a blog) of what I was doing, and I spent a lot of time doing email, both one-to-one, and also on lists such as this. It took a lot work, and not every email was answered, but it is quite feasible. Moreover, I have long advocated that ICANN start doing something that is common elsewhere - director stipends. If ICANN were to cover up to $50,000 each year of expenses for each director, it would be possible for each director to obtain, at least on a part time basis, some resources to help with the load. Now that would have an affect on the volunteer status of directors and thus upon their legal vulnerabilities, so each director would have to decide whether to accept it or not. In the 2000 elections this has left the Directors free to take any position, regardless the opinion of the electorate, who was in any way generally not consulted. A director has to always keep in mind that he/she is not the representative of the people who elected him/her to office - a director's position is not a political position. It does take a bit of chutzpah, not to mention some suspension of a sense of personal humility to say "I speak on behalf of 330,000,000 people." (Indeed, once before the US Senate I said "I represent more people than does the President of the United States." [The senator in question was clearly of the "wind bag" variety - his voters threw him out of office last year.] ;-) For this reason I think that that model is not workable. I cannot claim that the ALAC model is perfect, or even better, but it attempts to address the key issue, which in my vision of the world, is not "voting power" but "contributing power". While that may be a useful mental construct, it does contain more than a small grain of paternalism. Queen Victoria of England and King Leopold of Belgium tried to justify their denial of political power to the people of their African colonies on a basis that could be considered as similar, if perhaps extremely more concentrated, than your notion that the power to say what is in the public interest is limited to those who have some special status. In other words, the ability to debate and express positions is, in my opinion, more important to the ability to express a vote every three year, while nothing happens in between. The power, using a US colloquial phrase, "to throw the bums out" lies at the heart of accountability. There are many of us who are very glad that in early November of next year we will be able to cast our votes to throw out our current executive officers. What you express is an idea under which one might justify the removal of my (and my fellow citizens in my country) right to vote to change our President and members of Congress. Democracy does not require a direct path to vote directly on each issue - a layer of intermediate representation is acceptable. But that intermediate layer (i.e. the ICANN board of directors) must be subject to recall by the electors at the next scheduled election. Otherwise there is no accountability. And all the transparency in the world is worthless unless there is a mechanism of accountability through which the affected community - the community of internet users - can replace their representatives. The ALAC, because it is structured as layer upon layer and ultimately leads to a mere nominating/appointing committee, is more of a mechanism of insulation rather than a mechanism of accountability. Now that the RALOs are formed, we will see if this approach works. I would suggest that the ALAC be evaluated using no less stringent tests than were applied to the system of elections in year 2000. And by those metrics, which are those of the number of active participants and the broadness of discourse, the ALAC long ago failed as not even coming close to the vibrancy of discourse or the scope of participation that we had in year 2000. Simply put, I believe that the representative democracy model suits user better than the direct democracy model, when we are talking about large numbers. It seems to work OK in my state of 30,000,000 people and my country of 300,000,000 people. (I'm not going to go down the tangent that might suggest that we had a failure in the US in year 2000 - occasional failures ought to be expected.) I seriously doubt that the ICANN universe will ever attract even 1% of those numbers. I routinely vote in corporate elections where the number of shareholders are numbered in the hundreds of thousands if not in the millions. The ultimate question is this: How is ICANN to be made accountable? I see no answer except to give the community of internet users the ultimate authority to select who will be given the authority, for a clearly limited period of time, to speak and make decisions on their behalf. And I see the issue being one is in desperate need of an answer because of the huge damage that is being done to the collective pocketbook of internet users - as much as $400,000,000 (US) every year, due to ICANN's decisions to favor certain selected industrial interests (intellectual property collectors [as opposed to intellectual property creators], and domain name registrars) over the general body of internet users. --karl--
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