Re: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN

[Vittorio Bertola]

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001 12:11:21 +0200 (MET DST), you wrote:

>Self-regulation - I'm all for it. However, the need for this global effort
>and the need to keep the Internet from governmental interests escapes me.
>If we indeed need such a global organization, why not use one already
>created, with participation from governments (or create something similar
>if the ICANN function can not be implemented in for example the UN). The
>governmental structure creates accountability and transparancy and
>international representation - fundamentals ICANN needs to deal with and
>solve.

You might perhaps have noticed that, whenever the heads of the governments
of the most powerful countries of the world try to meet and to take
decisions that will affect the world's future, such as this week in Genoa,
there are hundreds of thousands of people marching in the streets
questioning their legitimacy and asking for a more direct way to have a
voice. However, you are not required to share this extremistic view to
understand why the current worldwide organizations are so bureaucratic and
far from the average citizen that their accountability is questionable.
Moreover, most governments in Western countries (let alone the other ones)
do not seem to have the skills and speed of action necessary to rule the
Internet without breaking its functionality or destroying its freedom (at
least this is my experience with the Italian government).

I am sure that everyone of us has to commit, in his own country, to reach
his representatives and to act so that the government and the state agencies
build a correct set of skills and act in a positive way, and I agree on the
fact that some years from now the regulations will be settled and will
possibly work fine even inside the framework of the current government
systems. Anyway, I see all this ICANN adventure also as a huge experiment
about how a globalized world could be governed with globalized democratical
instruments - which does not mean at all that we have to extend ICANN's
mission outside of its scope or that we want to destroy the institutions of
the Western world, but that a technology that makes local regulations
powerless and useless needs a way to define global regulations that respect
the different cultures and needs of the whole world, preventing any specific
country or interest from gaining control of the Internet.
-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology
.it Naming Authority, Executive Committee Member
ICANN At Large Interim Coordinating Committee, Member