[ALSC-Forum] Membership rights/responsibilities

[Cecily & Ralph Wood]

Esteemed and concerned at-largers:

If most of us felt the way the previous elections were held was a flawed
process, even though the elected at-large directors turned out to have
many similarities and probably reflected the views of most of us, why
not elect the remaining directors in a free-for-all contest reflecting
the best anarchic, distributed, diverse, individualistic characteristics
of the web?  If members self-proclaimed themselves candidates, and "ran"
for office using this or another listserv, developing a group of
supporters, couldn't this be done without great expense?  And as for
actual voting, there was some mechanism in place - cannot it be
re-used?  Let's just present the existing board with the missing
directors.  In other words - we accept and act on our responsibilities
to ICANN.

Then, once we have all 9 on the board, let's see if we can't engender
some accountability of the board - to us and the internet community
worldwide.  Use of the California laws (since it apparently IS under the
California jurisdiction) is a good starting place.  And a top priority
might be opening the financial books for inspection.

Actually, I'm afraid all this is too little and too late.  The cat is
out of the bag - others are already making new domain names and doing so
in a practical manner that just may work.  ICANNs job is not and cannot
be controlling everything, but rather facilitating some structure to be
used in managing chaos.  About like herding cats.  Those of us who work
in information management know only too well that the users are
infinitely inventive - you don't control them - you can only hope to
persuade them to follow you.  ICANN is in the same position, and
frankly, spending a full year and coming up with only a few somewhat
quirky domain types isn't enough.  In the next 5 minutes I can think of
20 or thirty that would be helpful.

As for protecting trademarks, company names, etc. - you probably cannot
prevent all domain squatters.  But once a company has acquired a
suitable domain  (say www.sears.com) they should not be allowed to
muscle others out.  After all, the real Sears doesn't expect to to buy
up all the phone numbers spelling "sears" at the end, so why should they
expect to hog all the domain names?  Limiting this avarice would
significantly reduce the squatters' avarice as well.

Also, the companies that make the equipment that make all this possible
do need to be heeded.  The businesses who get domains need to be able to
operate on the net worldwide. But neither governments nor business nor
military nor religion should be allowed to control it.  This is too big,
and too splendid a chance to validate the worth of each individual on
the planet, to create a shared history of human knowledge and human
creativity to allow it to be taken as a tool which constrains and limits
the individual.  I'm hoping that the heavy presence of universities,
colleges, and schools will counteract those forces, and that the
intellectual freedom prized by those faculties, and the presence of the
at-large community can mitigate the natural tendency of politics and
commerce to ride roughshod over the populace they claim to value.