Re: [ALSC-Forum] The Road System

[Jeff Williams]

Bret and all stakeholders,

  I am as are our members [INEGroup] in agreement with you
Bret.  ANd of course this has been pointed out to Vint on several
occasions in the past as well as to Esther Dyson.  Many of the
reasons you state that Vint's comments or possible position is flawed
are on the mark.  However I would say that you cannot make the
comparison of the internet with roads or the power industry.  The
analogy fits is some ways but not in others, if you will..

  I believe that Vint is trying to politically deflect the idea of
stakeholders having the ability to control or even influence
in any meaningful manner the policies that ICANN may consider.
This I believe is in contrast to the White Paper and the MoU.

Bret Fausett wrote:

> In watching the video of the various meetings over the last weekend, one
> exchange stuck with me, and I went back to capture it in more detail. There
> was a conversation during the General Assembly meeting among Vint Cerf,
> Esther Dyson, and David Johnson in which Vint made the following
> observation:
>
>   The one question that I had for Esther is, looking
>   at the growth rate of use of the net, the projections
>   that I have are that by 2010, three and a half billion
>   people will have access to the Internet by some means
>   or other. It may be laptops, personal digital assistants,
>   Internet-enabled cell phones, Internet appliances of all
>   kinds. The idea that a particular infrastructure service,
>   kind of like the power system or the road system, needs
>   to have a kind of global election to manage the
>   underlying infrastructure is hard to fully appreciate.
>   We don't do that for the power system and we don't do it
>   for the road system. But it's still really important for
>   the people who are affected by policies to have something
>   to say about it. So, I'm wondering whether the committee
>   has thought about the fact that the scaling might become
>   just impossible to manage in a literally democratic kind
>   of environment and instead you have to look at other ways
>   of getting public comment on policies, which we do by
>   other than just straight democratic elections.
>
> The analogy Vint makes to infrastructure services is, I believe, flawed, and
> the flaw actually underscores an important point.
>
> In the United States, at least, the power system is a regulated industry,
> typically overseen by political appointees who, ultimately, are responsible
> to elected government officials. In some states, members of the public
> utility commission are directly elected. The "road system" is also overseen
> by national, state, and local elected government officials. Bond issues
> submitted directly to the voters often approve or disapprove financing for
> infrastructure projects.
>
> Except in California (where power deregulation has been famously
> unsuccessful), we don't allow the suppliers and distributors of power, and
> the power utilities who sell to the consumer, to operate without oversight,
> or even without price controls. We also don't allow road contractors to set
> their own budgets, set their own quality standards for roads on which public
> traffic will be carried, and build on-ramps and off-ramps wherever they'd
> like. These are all regulated by elected government officials.
>
> In making the analogy to two highly regulated industries, Vint really
> highlights one of the flaws in this ICANN experiment in "industry
> self-regulation" -- it might not be able to scale to allow representation by
> those affected by its policies.
>
> So what does scale? Our existing governments already have in place effective
> means of representation. If ICANN can't scale to allow effective, elected
> representation from the user community, then perhaps it ought to abandon the
> idea of "self-regulation" altogether and return the decision-making to the
> governments of the world, where there is already an established
> infrastructure for elected representation.
>
> Make no mistake, I would prefer to see the ICANN ideal of self-regulation
> and self-representation succeed, but in a study where "no question is
> off-limits," you ought to consider the ramifications of failing to find an
> appropriate representation structure for the user community. If ICANN is
> incapable of scaling to meet that challenge, one very good option for the
> ALSC to consider is that the technical coordination functions assumed by
> ICANN be transferred back to the government.
>
>        -- Bret Fausett

Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
Contact Number:  972-447-1800 x1894 or 214-244-4827
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208