Re: [ALSC-Forum] Monday outreach meeting

[Karl Auerbach]

On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Esther Dyson wrote:

> re the end: No, it's a very broad question. For whom do people on lists
> speak? For whom do voters speak? How can one tell?  I think it's a pretty
> fundamental question (set of questions).   HOw should we interpret a bunch
> of postings on a list when we are looking for the existence of consensus?

One may ask: Why is this question about for whom one speaks raised in the
context of the At-Large but not in the context of the DNSO
"constituencies" or the so-called "Supporting Organizations"?

If we are going to ask "for whom do you speak" then we ought to ask that
same question across the entire spectrum of ICANN's multitude of
organizations, constituencies, committees, and working groups; not just of
the at-large.

Do we ask those who join DNSO constituencies to prove their identities or
to prove that there has been a proper delegation of authority by the
corporation(s) they purport to represent?  No, we do not.

Yet ICANN proceeds on the assumption that those DNSO "consituencies" and
those "Supporting Organizations" form an adequate basis upon which
"consensus" may be grounded.  Why?  I think it's a pretty fundamental
question.

This raises two points:

First is the duality of ICANN's history.  On one hand "business" (alias
"stakeholder")  interests on the Internet have been given preferences and
made the beneficiary of many presumptions (such as that of being
representative of more than oneself).  Yet on the other hand
non-commercial and personal/human interests have been excluded entirely or
placed under onerous limitations.

Personally, I'm rather tired of hearing people being told to ride at the
rear of the ICANN bus while arbitrary classes of "stakeholders" are
invited to ride up front.

Second: Why is this word "consensus" used so frequently?  It is a word
frought with danger.  In the absence of strong procedural protections,
"consensus" is often a shorthand for a situation in which the real
decisionmaking power is shifted into the hands of a chairman or a "board".

This need for strong procedural protections is why I am so strongly in
favor of procedural rules such as that proposed by Mark Langston:

	http://www.bitshift.org/archives/rror.shtml

		--karl--