Re: [ALSC-Forum] Monday outreach meeting

[Oscar A. Robles Garay]

Thanks Karl,

Your thoughts sound really interesting, although they seem a little unrealistic for some groups, let me explain why.

You ask for "only" individual representation, which has been proved in the first AL election is not an easy work. The number of votes required to win a seat, in Africa was 66, in LatinAmerica was 702 and 1725 for NorthAmerica. Those numbers are really easy to get, for comercial companies or people with a lot of money willing to put somebody on the ICANN board. Non-commercial and legitimate individual interests may not be represented in this escenario.

Having millions of members may be a solution for the risk capture, I'm not sure if ICANN could have millions of people interested on, and furthermore control and election of millions never will be easy nor unexpensive. Anyway, (in Mexico) have learned that having a big roaster doesn mean anything but a lot of risks if you don't have the following two things: First you have to have a well informated/educated population, the potential electorate (outreach and awareness issues in ICANN, which by the way is another expensive task), then you must work in the most clean, efficient and accurate electorate (roster?) to assure a clean election, other wise, the word "democracy" will be downgraded. (btw, Having tens of well identified companies is easy to control elections, not saying anything more)

I know every risk has a solution (money, time, people, procedures, rules, etc). Your ideas sounds good, but rather as a Vision, not as a short-medium term strategy.

So, my reaction to your thoughts is that Non-commercial interests (aka. Regional IP Registries, IETF, w3c, ITU-T, ETSI, ccTLD registries (most of them)) should have a vote. I may add that every TLD registry should be a non for profit one but it is very aguable.

That's why I guess the ASO and PSO should remain. DNSO should evolve in a more efficient SO. I would also say that there should be a place for individual interests (and specific ones) But what about ALM risks of capture?

Oscar

On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, Oscar A. Robles Garay wrote:
>
> > Karl,
> > 	Let me try to understand your first point.
>
> > 	- Are you suggesting that Commercial Interests (is it a correct
> > translation of "business" for you?) should have less preferences than
> > now?
>
> Yes.  They should have no preference whatsoever.  Businesses are free to
> advocate positions but why should they have *both* the ability to vote for
> those positions (particularly to vote in privileged forums such as DNSO's
> names council) and at the same time have the ability to vote via their
> human members/officers/employees on the same question?
>
> Here in the United States, companies, even ones directly affected by
> legislation, do not have the right to vote for members of our national
> legislature.  Yet there is no one here who seriously contends that
> business concerns are underrepresented.
>
> > 	- The beneficiary group of this preference should be the
> > Non-commercial and individual interests ?
>
> Not non-commercial - Rather: People.
>
> A human being is the atomic unit of democracy.
>
> If people want to congregate into collections and constituencies or
> parties, then they may.  But the unit of the vote should be the individual
> person, whether that person be the chairman of IBM or a grandmother who
> uses e-mail to send photos of her grandchildren.
>
> > 	- What should be the proportion you envisage (50/50, 70/30, other) ?
>
> 100% vote by people.
>
> > 	- How do you materialize this level of preference (BoD, SO's, other) ?
>
> I'd disolve the SO's and let there be a fluid structure in which the
> electors - people - cast their votes based on how they may, or may not be,
> persuaded by those who wish to advocate positions.
>
> 		--karl--
>
>
>
>