Karl,
The question is not "how much of a vote does each
domain name registrant get?" but rather, who within a
registrant's constituency should get a vote?
Allow me to clarify what I mean by pointing to some
text drawn from Susan Crawford's "The ICANN
Experiment":
"The idea that "who shows up" may be taken as a
representative sample of the rest of the world is part
of ICANN's history (and that of other more technical
groups such as the IETF). ICANN has established
constituencies within the DNSO for business, IP,
registries, non-commercial entities, and others.
Because it is impossible to get a cross- section of
(for example) every non-commercial
Internet user, the ICANN system treats the
Non-Commercial Domain Name Holders Constituency (that
is, the people who "show up") as the representative
constituency. This is a practical approach that can be
implemented with a simple contractual agreement
to participate, pay minor dues, and adhere to
consensus policies (to the extent applicable). With
this contractual framework in place, ICANN's ability
to operate with "congruence" - to be able to say that
those bound by its rules are mostly the same groups
whose welfare was considered when making them -
becomes possible."
http://www.scrawford.net/display/Crawford2.pdf
As a pragmatist, I tend to believe that those of us
that are both registrants and "show up" through
discussion on this list and/or on other relevant lists
(and are willing to both enroll in a constituency and
pay minor dues) warrant getting a single vote -- the
one-man one-vote principle.
I would think that this approach would be more
practical than the formulaic approach that you have
suggested.
My two cents.
Danny
--- Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I've had a couple of more thoughts on what I think
> is a sub-optimal idea, a
> constituency for domain name registrants. (The
> optimal solution is to allow
> individuals to have the direct vote for board
> members. These are not mutually
> exclusive ideas.)
>
> Anyway, the question is how much of a vote does each
> domain name registratrant get?
>
> Is it one vote per person/organization no matter how
> many names they have.
>
> Or is it scaled according to the number of names.
>
> Is that scale linear, i.e. twice as many names gives
> twice as many votes?
>
> Is there a factor for the time that the name has
> been registered? I feel that
> this is important because it is indicative of how
> much the registrant has
> invested into the name. Those who have had names
> for many years tend to have a
> much greater investment than those who hold
> portfolios for short term speculation.
>
> So I suggest this - that the number of votes a
> registrant gets for having a
> name is scaled according to a simple formula based
> on the number of years that
> have elapsed since initially registered. Of course,
> during the first year,
> that number would be zero.
>
> So the formula I suggest is this, where Y is the
> number of years that have
> elapsed since registration.
>
> Votes = 2**(Y-1)
> (i.e. the number of votes is 2 raised to the
> power Y less one)
>
> Thus the registrant would get votes according to the
> following table:
>
> YEARS VOTES
> 0 0
> 1 1
> 2 2
> 3 4
>
> etc.
>
> This means that one has to hold a name for at least
> a year in order to get a vote.
>
> By-way-of disclosure, I have several names that were
> initially registered
> during the 1980's, but whois doesn't go back that
> far and shows 'em as 1994.
>
> --karl--
>
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