RE: [ALSC-Forum] Calhoun's "Concurrent Majority" [3] -- Should an ICANN Constituency Be Able to Veto ICANN Policy?

[Bruce Young]

Alphageek wrote:

]> Or at least how do we slow down the inertia of a purportedly
]> "technical standards" organization that is out of control,
]> venturing repeatedly into (and playing favorites with) numerous
]> policy issues before we even have an appropriate and balanced
]> decision-making structure up and running -- e.g.: (1) the
]> "perfect" UDRP (ha!), (2) the "perfect" sweetheart deal with
]> Verisign for continued registry status for certain TLDs, (3) the
]> political position of advocating one "authoritative" root, (4)
]> deliberately creating new TLDs that are calcualted to conflict
]> with alternate roots.  The list can go on and on.  Lets be
]> candid about this . . . ICANN was set up wrong from the get-go,
]> and the mumber of serious mistakes outnumbers the number of
]> successes by several multiples.

This is the greatest argument against ICANN: that significant decisions were
made without first establishing a true representative body.

]> Yes, it is probably impossible to get the governments of the
]> world to agree about Internet issues (even the addressing system).

Nore need we to.  If ICANN, by fully empowering the At-Large community, is
seen to act with the concensus of all Internet users (of which any
government is only one of many voices!), then it won't need any government
or corporate endorsement.

]> Frankly, it is my fervent hope that ICANN, twenty years from
]> now, will be viewed by the constituencies of the Internet much
]> as the American electorate in 1801 viewed the Articles of
]> Confederation.  In thinking about the institutional composition
]> of ICANN, I think that revisiting The Federalist, and subsequent
]> works on American political theory (say, both Mr. Calhoun's
]> Disquisition on Government (1848) and his Discourse on the
]> Constitution and Government of the United States (1850)).

This is a good model.  ICANN should continue to evolve with the network it
oversees.