Re: [ga] RE: issues that are long closed?

[Hugh Dierker <hdierker2204@xxxxxxxxx>]

>From my perspective Karl's positions politically sound. In this sense I mean political theory wise. And he is politically correct, historically. However I would caution that a one and only is not necessarily safe for the insurance of political accountability. Of course I recognize in the world of Corps that a BoD is not political per se - but without exception is political in a social sense.
  We need vast stakeholder constituencies. IDNO, TLDs, individuals and the current groupings.
   
  On the matter of paying a stipend for the Directors, specifically for facilitation of communication with stakeholders of the common variety would be a great idea. Perhaps even more important than sending underpriviledged to ICANN retreats.
   
  Eric

Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
  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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