[ga] Some remarks on the ICANN mission

["Dominik Filipp" <dominik.filipp@xxxxxxxx>]

Danny and all,

I have gone over many posts on several ALAC mailing lists posted during
last 6 months. I have also read your contributions as well as those of
liasons' and other stuffers.

Several contributions are illuminating and explanatory in giving an
insight of what is going on at the ALAC and ICANN behind the scenes, of
course, if we are able to read between the lines. Nothing what we did
not know before, but some details about the technology of how craftily
the public effort can be conducted and manipulated.

In fact, the common argument being always presented is how the staffers
are all keen on supporting all types od public interests. But only up to
a moment when those interests start colliding with leading interests of
the financial sharks. When realizing what is at stake they immediately
back off. Then the second sort of arguments appear, such as a given
proposal is too strong, fundamental and which 'will not fly' as the
registrars and the registries will not support it anyway. At this moment
an ordinary user (naive user, volunteer) is being persuaded that a
weaker solution is also acceptable, not that effective though but still
better than nothing. Along with ongoing verbal assurance that the
staffer also shares similar sympathy towards public interests just
trying doing his best to achieve the most feasible solution, the user
might easily get into a false but optimistic assumption as to have
achieved something, not achieving anything real though.

What is even worse is that those staffers are not even willing to
present prevailing views of the community they represent once the views
clash with the leading interests. This is indeed an interesting moment.
For example, the ALAC's updated statement swiftly adopted the draft
domain tasting motion logic without discussing it first with its public
audience. The question is why it acted this way. After all, it could
have presented and insisted on the stronger position. Nothing dramatic
would have happened. The ALAC has no voting power and even if it had it
is the BoD who makes final decisions. But this decadent logic makes
sense when we realize that the overall responsibility must be spread and
crumbled among all involved parties so that nobody could be accused of
anything. As a consequence, those people are doing nearly nothing
productive for their communities. Yes, there are cases when some
progress is remarkable and even reasonable motions are being approved
but only if they do not clash with the leading interests or they are so
apparent that simply cannot be ignored. A good example again is domain
tasting. The phenomenon was recognized yonks ago and has been known and
heavily reported for years as an abuse being committed on wide
community. So it had to be opened. But there is also the clash here as
it is a profitable business of nearly highest importance for all
interested parties. The first shot was the $0.20-for-all-deletes motion.
The same one I wrote a joke about more than a year ago. That really made
me laugh. The final motion is confused enough to allow for continuing
the game under the hood. And when the public outreach fades out the
practice can be guardedly reinstated.

This sort of society behavior has its parallel in various symbiotic
systems where donor (sharks) and parasite (flunkeys) need each other.
Sharks need flunkeys to hide the privileges the sharks enjoy and that
are unimaginable in the standard business environment. Flunkeys are
making cover-up to the public and are getting leftovers. Leftovers, but
still attractive enough, especially when compared with the amount of
real work produced. A real work, not being buried under tons of paper or
doing all that bureaucratic BS. And, as we know, the symbiotic systems
are stable systems unless the balance gets impaired from outside.

So you and also we here are struggling for collecting some sort of
evidence in false assumption of getting heard by someone. But they know
very well what we are talking about and I would bet they agree silently.
They just cannot express it loudly, let alone do something for it,
otherwise the balance and the 30 silver tollars pay would be endangered.


Dominik