Re: [ALSC-Forum] Misstatements concerning IFWP

[Stephen Waters]

On Thu, 2001-09-20 at 22:39, L Gallegos wrote:
>
> This is the key, Mike.  majority of the board and of the councils.  
> Who makes up the board and councils?  There is NO equality of 
> representation there, so there cannot be a consensus of the 
> internet community.  This is the crux of the issue.

. What is a stakeholder?
. Are there different levels of a stakeholdership?
. What does 'majority' consist in?
. What does 'consensus' consist in?

Mike, would you affirm any of the following?

View 1 "The NYSE View"
----------------------
1. An ICANN stakeholder is any person, legal or meat, with a legitimate
claim of resources bound up with the Internet. ("resources" and
"legitimate" are fuzzy, I know).

2. One stakeholder can have a greater claim on Internet resources than
another stakeholder. I.e., A stakeholder can own or control a greater
section of those resources.

3. The amount of influence on ICANN of any particular stakeholder ought
to be commensurate with the amount of that stakeholder's claim.

4. A majority consists in the greatest amount of influence pooled by
stakeholders.

5. A consensus is the process of pooling those influences.
---

View 2 "The Populist View"
--------------------------
1. An ICANN stakeholder is any person, legal or meat, with a legitimate
claim of resources bound up with the Internet. ("resources" and
"legitimate" are fuzzy, I know).

2. One stakeholder can have a greater claim on Internet resources than
another stakeholder. I.e., A stakeholder can own or control a greater
section of those resources.

3. No stakeholder ought to have more direct influence on ICANN than
another.

4. A majority consists in the greatest amount of influence pooled by
stakeholders. Since the individual influences are undifferentiated, this
amounts to "a greater number of stakeholders than any other position".

5. A consensus is the process of pooling those influences.
---

I cannot support the NYSE view because it doesn't balance the interests
of all stakeholders in a relatively fair manner. It is easy to see how,
say, a 51% majority influence of 3 major players could outweigh the
influence of millions of others. ICANN's position is qualitatively
different than publicly traded stock because ICANN seeks to artificially
monopolize a widely available resource. Its policies have affected and
will continue to affect every stakeholder in a very direct manner,
mainly in the marketplace. To deny that its policies have done so is to
put one's head in the sand.

Imagine California, New York, and Texas dictating policy for the entire
United States. Analogously, imagine VeriSign, AOL/TW, and MCI dictating
policy that affects the entire Internet. Is that consensus? Obviously
not. This is the sort of problem that led the U.S. Constitution writers
to adopt both a House of Representatives with representation by State
population and a Senate with representation equal per State.

Honestly, I wholeheartedly *wish* ICANN were a purely technical body
with RFCs, technical articles and commentary, open standards, etc.
However, its concentration of power is significant, its attempts to
hedge in that power continuous, and there are no signs that it is going
to rescind any of that power, even if such an act would reduce it to the
purely technical body you seem to want it to be.

The current path of ICANN legitimation appears to be making itself into
a single point of failure such that if it goes down, the Net goes down
as well, thus encouraging all parties to support ICANN so that doesn't
happen. I hope ICANN never has that sort of power, but in light of it,
I'm supporting the wider notion of consensus as a preventative measure.

Cheers,
-s

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