Re: FW: Re: [ALSC-Forum] Misstatements concerning IFWP

[Sandy Harris]

Ben Edelman wrote:
> 
> Professor Zittrain isn't on the forum@atlargestudy.org list, so he asked me
> to forward this on his behalf.

> >I do think that Joe/Jon, as a concession to Ira Magaziner and therefore
> >the Commerce Dept, agreed that ICANN's bylaws would feature a membership
> >-- thus the "TBD" section for membership in the sept/oct '98 draft that
> >was accepted.

Esther Dyson, in her covering letter for the bylaws as sent to NTIA:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/ICANN111098.htm
 
| ... the Board has an unconditional mandate to create a membership structure
| that will elect the At Large Directors of the Board

That was Nov 1998. I'd say the board has failed badly in a crtical part
of its mission. Some resignations would be in order.

> >I suppose the Commerce Dept could still decide, under the
> >MOU it now has with ICANN, whether an abandonment of membership (if that's
> >really in the cards) is enough of a hot button for it to pull out the
> >rug.

We should all hope for that. 

Or someone might go to court to try and force compliance with the California
corporations act requirements for membership structure, as expounded here
by Auerbach. I've no idea if that stands a chance of success. People far
better qualified than me have made strong claims in both directions.
 
> >(If the Commerce Dept cared, I suppose they'd already have signaled
> >to ICANN this view.)

Yes. Openness and bottom-up-ness are required by documents like the MOU,
but it isn't clear that Commerce are inclined to push these issues.

> >At the time I agreed wholeheartedly with Lessig that without a membership,
> >ICANN was subject to capture by those who were organized -- and interested
> >-- but (and?) not necessarily bearing the public interest in mind.  I
> >don't know that I still agree with that, but I'd be pretty dismayed to see
> >the membership seats eliminated or arbitrarily diluted.  The very symmetry
> >of a 9/9 split is a decent argument for its retention.

Yes. 

Moreover, changing the number of seats does not solve the problem it 
claims to address. It is not noticably cheaper or easier to run an
election for six seats than for nine, or for that matter for the whole
board.

> >But from my somewhat distant current vantage point, it seems that a lot of
> >the process mechanisms thrown into the ICANN bylaws have proven
> >stillborn.  There are roughly 500-1,000 people really eager to immerse
> >themselves in ICANN, and the panoply of organizations -- general assembly,
> >names council, at-large membership, constituencies, supporting
> >organizations, review boards -- look like an anemic mishmash of "process"
> >unable to support its own weight.

Yes! We clearly need a Board, some Working Groups (open Working Groups,
NOT appointed Task Forces), at least one general mailing list, and a
small staff. 

Everything else could be scrapped. Consituencies, SOs, GA, NC, ...

> >Not to say that we should throw things
> >to a technocratic elite to just parcel out the goodies, but I think we'd
> >do well to find out how to simplify the octopus's tentacles at this point.

The problem is not and never has been the techies. 

The problem is that what should be primarily a public service function
has become a business (so far so good, as long as priorities are kept
straight) and the business interests have been allowed to dominate its
administration.