Re: [ga] Consumer/Registrant Protection Consitituency

["William S. Lovell" <wsl@cerebalaw.com>]

Kent Crispin wrote:

On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 08:43:45PM -0700, William S. Lovell wrote:
> Which puts you in the position of ratifying ICANN's claim to be
> a policy making rather than a technical coordinating body, does
> it not?

It is a sad irony that those who most vociferously complain about ICANN
exceeding its mandate as a technical coordinating body are precisely the
ones who exert the most pressure for it to become a global internet
governance organization, with large scale global elections and an
elaborate representational structure that some have compared to the UN.
It is a great pity that those individuals, some of whom are otherwise
quite intelligent, are simply oblivious to the intrinsic contradiction
in their position, and to the inevitable consequences of that
contradiction...

Not at all.  The first point to make is that my post above was intended
to
eliminate an ambiguity: the intent of the "purpose" statement was directed
towards internal ICANN procedures and policies, not ICANN's
pretense
to establish Internet policy as a whole, and I thought that ought to
be made
more clear.

Secondly, the fora of ICANN are used to speak out on large scale, global
Internet issues simply because they are the only ones available -- no other
place on the net has the membership and audience.  ICANN gives rise to
these issues simply because of its own posture, hence where better to put
the screws to that posture?  Even the At-Large will be an ICANN body,
and on it one can expect to see the same thing.  It is indeed contradictory,
in a sense, to address such global issues within the fora of a body that one
claims not to have policy making power on those issues, but one has to
use the tools one has.  I'm not sure what you mean by the "inevitable
consequences of that contradiction," but I see them to become eventually
the ultimate resolution of those issues, at which time the people that are
presently so using ICANN's fora will say, "Thanks for the bandwidth, guys.
You're now on your own, as are we."

The ultimate authority on all things always lies with the people, and the
Internet as presently constituted will ultimately fall to that power.

Bill Lovell
 

 

--
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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