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

[Kent Crispin]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 12:41:33AM -0400, Sandy Harris wrote:
> desertbobp wrote:
> > I agree.  Instead of complaining that it's not *perfect*, let's move
> > on and at least broaden the number of atLarge board members to
> > what was originally proposed.
> 
> Absolutely. that should be the first recommendation the At Large Study
> makes.

Unfortunately, it would be an incoherent recommendation, since it begs
the question of what is meant by the term "at-large board member".  
Without defining the selection mechanism the term is essentially 
useless.  

The current proposed selection process is a global election.  Completely
independent of the quality of the new directors, the global election
experiment we went through was an abysmal failure:

    - It was in vastly over-budget;
    - it was in very heavily gamed by national and industrial 
    interests; 
    - security-wise it was a disaster waiting to happen -- we don't know
    if hackers broke in and manipulated the data, and worse, we have no way
    of knowing
    - while I know Nii, and think very highly of him, the fact that he
    won with 67 votes out of 130 for the entire African region is 
    at the very least compelling evidence of how far all this from the 
    everyday concerns of the average human on the planet.  It certainly 
    is evidence that the elected directors are not in any 
    meaningful sense elected representatives of their regions.  And, 
    while the African region is a rather stark example, examination of 
    each of the other regions voting results leads to similar 
    conclusions.
    - the huge piles of returned envelopes, mostly from China and other
    Asian countries, are compelling evidence of the difficulties that 
    come from language, infrastructure, cultural, and other barriers.

It is important to note that the above failures are based on intrinsic
problems.  The fact is that kind of global election proposed for the
"atlarge directors" cannot be supported by the the technical, social,
and cultural infrastructure that currently exists. 

To summarize: The question of the number of atlarge directors is
basically a red herring.  The fundamental problem is the selection
process.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain