[ALSC-Forum] Benefits and goals of At-Large involvement

[Steve Magruder]

Here goes my take on the questions:

1) At-large member definition: Any human being with an Internet connection,
email address and postal address.  There should be verification of
uniqueness of every member signed up.  Confirmations to both postal address
and email address should be sent (with passcodes) to verify validity of both
and their connection together.

2) Membership requirements/fees: Should be very nominal, if any.  Something
like $10/yr.  Find ways to seek external funding (from orgs w/o conflict of
interest) and keep costs as low as possible, so that member fees can be kept
as low as possible (if not $0).  You want the largest degree of
participation possible.

3) Positive repercussions with open membership: True democracy usually
yields the best policy results.  Having the capability of gathering the
greatest ideas/ideals from all of humanity, while avoiding the brain-dead
scheming of polticians merely acting "on their behalf" as elected dictators
is a Good Thing (TM).

4) Negative repercussions: The technical/development challenges of enacting
a true democracy.  Also, keeping the membership involved continuously
involves quite an effort with news, education and outreach.

5) Member responsibilities: Direct involvement in decision-making.  Period.
The members should directly make all decisions, instead of an elitist Board
(IMHO, members who don't have the time to actively participate can choose
proxies who vote on their behalf).  I can't say off-hand what the best model
for this "direct democracy" should be, but I strongly believe that if such a
body of active members were assembled, it would serve as a great model of
democracy for the twenty-first century and beyond.  There have been several
books written on how to go about establishing a "Constitutional Direct
Democracy."  ICANN is the IDEAL "guinea-pig" for these ideas.

6) Funding: Look into orgs like Soros' Open Society Institute
(http://www.soros.org/osi.html) for fund sourcing.

7) Would a fee prevent participation from developing countries:  In a word,
yes.  That's why there must be a strong attempt to keep the member fee as
low as possible, if not $0.  You also have to consider that citizens in
developing countries will already find it very difficult to attain Internet
access in the first place.  Let's not make it even harder for them to
participate in this world forum.

8) Would fees only encourage the committed and informed to participate?  I'm
sure it's widely agreed that "cover charges" and the like keep out the
"riff-raff".  However, there's other, more democratic ways to separate the
wheat from the chaff in a global forum.  I would suggest that ICANN and the
membership take a look at how Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org) handles
moderation of its discussions.  Everyone can participate, but members of the
community get occasional rights of "modding posts up or down" so that the
best contributions rise up and the clunkers fall below view of most people
(while still being kept around if people really want to read them).  I would
also suggest that everyone look at online document management software,
which can be used for group-based markup of documents, rules and bills.
Take a gander at D3E (Digital Document Discourse Environment;
http://d3e.open.ac.uk/).

9) Should membership fees be scaled?  Absolutely not, unless you want a
repeat of the Kyoto treaty breakdown.  :)  It's only fair if everyone has to
contribute the exact same degree of resources.  If it's free for some, it
must be free for all.  However, I'm sure that some clever scheme could be
developed for obtaining additional funds from the more affluent members as
well as governments and non-profit orgs.  Or maybe a fee can be built into
domain registration costs... kind of like the concept of bridge/highway
tolls.  Or how about a lottery? (halfway joking)

Thank you for your time and attention.

Steve Magruder
Software Developer and Director of Democracy 2.0 (http://www.democracy2.org)