[governance] Response to personal attacks Re: PIR Case/or the .org sell

Suresh Ramasubramanian suresh at hserus.net
Sat Nov 30 17:55:59 EST 2019


There is nothing that attacks Norbert personally and these are all criticisms of his actions and viewpoints.  I did say “engaging cocos as a first resort instead of reasoned argument” and here is yet another example of the same.
--srs



On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 1:53 AM +0530, "parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:











  
    
  
  
    



    
    On 30/11/19 6:07 AM, Suresh
      Ramasubramanian wrote:

    
    
      
      
        
          Thanks Sheetal, That would be
            ideal. 
          

          
          Members should also ideally
            refrain from -
          

          
          Calls to exclude specific
            organisations from civil society or this caucus 
          

          
          Attempt to fall back on appeals
            to mailing list co-cos in case a wrong argument is called
            out
          

          
          The arguments made that had to be
            rebutted were ill informed and made with no particular
            technical or business knowledge of the situation, 
        
      
    
    

Sheetal/ Bruno
    

This is a repeat ad hominem attack even after Sheetal's note,
      after the same person having expressed strong agreement with
      another person making ad hominem remarks against Norbert.
    

Are the co-coordinators taking notice?
    

parminder 

    
    



    
    
      
        
          and calls in response to exclude
            either ISOC, PCH or Bill Woodcock from this list are frankly
            an abuse of mailing list procedure.
          

          
          Thanks 
          —srs
        
        

        
        
          —srs 
        
      
      

      

      

      On Sat, Nov 30, 2019 at 2:57 AM +0530,
        "Sheetal Kumar" <sheetal at gp-digital.org>
        wrote:

        

        
          
            
              Dear all, 
              

              
              I'm not going to comment on the substance of the
                discussion here as a co-ordinator I feel obliged to step
                in and address an issue which has so far excluded people
                from entering into discussions, or continuing them. The
                issue is one where people feel attacked, whether all
                parties included feel the accusation is justified or
                not. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to work
                together. And as a result, it makes it very challenging
                to forge consensus and find areas of agreement. One of
                the stated objectives of the IGC is " to develop common
                positions on issues relating to Internet governance
                policies, and make outreach efforts both for informing
                and for creating broad-based support among other CS
                groups and individuals for such positions." Instead,
                what ends up happening is the conversation goes quiet,
                everyone gets on with what they're doing in their own
                corners and we achieve little, or nothing, together. I'm
                not saying that we need to find consensus on this
                particular issue, but if every discussion about a
                contentious issue goes this way then that would be very
                unfortunate. It even risks putting people off sharing
                information.

              
              

              
              In the future, I would ask if people want information
                in order to be able to make an informed decision or
                contribute to a discussion, they are clear about that.
                And if you have that information, please consider
                offering it in a spirit of humility with the objective
                of moving a conversation forward together. You can
                always get in touch with Bruna and I if you feel you are
                being unfairly treated. I happen to think that this
                discussion on this topic has been very rich so far,
                clearly full of informed opinions, and could be very
                constructive. If you think it would be useful for a
                facilitated discussion to happen, we can always organise
                a call or find another way to have the discussion. I'm
                actually going to share a suggestion on a way forward on
                this topic which Bruna and I have discussed on the other
                thread.

              
              
                

                
                And in my own personal opinion, we should all care
                  about who each other is. Humility and compassion are
                  important in achieving 'good results' in any rational
                  debate. What these situations prove is that we're not
                  just having discussions about technical issues in the
                  spirit of an intellectual exercise. We are all
                  emotional beings, with our own faults and strengths.
                  It might help us all in the long-run to think that
                  way.

                
                

                
                Best
                Sheetal
              
            
            

            
              On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at
                19:24, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:

              
              

                

                > On Nov 29, 2019, at 4:45 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

                > I felt personally attacked and hurt by that
                posting.

                

                Why?  Do you, in retrospect, feel that you _were_ trying
                to have a conversation in good faith?

                

                > ...which is supposed to be a "civil society"
                community, which

                > certainly implies in particular that it should not
                be an environment

                > where "business” people...

                

                Just so we get this straight, you’re saying that
                public-benefit, not-for-profit NGOs should be barred
                from participation in “civil society” because…  what? 
                Who exactly is legitimately civil society by your
                lights?  Only people who agree with you?  Anyway, this
                is a no-true-Scotsman.

                

                Does appealing to third parties to exclude someone who
                disagrees with you from conversation, without addressing
                their thoughts, strike you as conversation in good
                faith?

                

                > ...allowed to dominate the discourse and its
                informal rules...

                

                I’m one of an exceedingly small handful of people
                representing the unfortunately minority view that there
                are multiple sides to this issue.  How does that
                constitute “domination of the discourse?”  Might I not
                need to be of the predominant view to dominate the
                discourse?

                

                > The Charter of this community explicitly forbids
                personal attacks

                > (like e.g. "You’re going overboard in your effort
                to create FUD." and "You don’t appear to be

                > trying to have a conversation in good faith.")

                

                Both are commentary on _what you said_, not _who you
                are_.  Personal attacks, ad-hominem attacks, are attacks
                against a person, not commentary about ideas.  I don’t
                know or care who you are, I’m only interested in what
                you think, and whether it can be used to inform and
                refine what I think.  I’m trying to draw you into
                reasoned discourse about ideas. You’re trying to exclude
                me from conversation.

                

                I don’t have any burning need to defend ISOC, and am not
                intending to do so; our lawyers have had to send their
                lawyers too many nastygrams over their misbehavior over
                the years for me to have any interest in representing
                them as _good_; however it disturbs me greatly to see
                people latching on to one tiny aspect of a large and
                complex situation and in doing so march toward
                preclusion of the best path to reform that ISOC has had
                in a long, long time, without bothering to discuss the
                complexities of the situation.

                

                A “personal attack” looks like posting a link to
                someone’s biography and demanding that they be silenced
                because of who they are.  A reasoned discourse looks
                like an exchange of views on the topic under discussion.

                

                > In regard to substance, I now think that what Bill
                wrote in his

                > postings in this thread is largely correct.

                

                Perhaps next time you could reflect on the substance
                before, or instead of, attacking.

                

                > For me, being both part of communities of people
                who

                > strongly believe in the importance of
                non-profit-oriented organizing,

                > who got betrayed, and being also a member of ISOC,
                which did the

                > betraying, the issue is quite personal and
                emotional for me in more

                > ways than one.

                

                I have, myself, been outraged by ISOC betrayals at
                various points in the past, but in the interest of my
                own sanity, I get over it and get back to work.  On the
                other hand, seeing an opportunity for ISOC to
                disencumber itself of some of the major causes of its
                problems gives me hope.  I’d rather not see that
                opportunity squandered on account of
                not-invented-hereism.

                

                > I will certainly accept as a possible source for an

                > assumption the intuition of someone who has a lot
                of experience dealing

                > with the particular topic area (such as in this
                case the intuition of

                > someone who credibly claims "thirty five years of
                experience dealing

                > with domain names"). That doesn't imply that I
                would necessarily agree

                > to also base my thinking on the same assumptions
                (in fact I see nothing

                > wrong in basing my assumptions on an intuition
                shaped by observing that

                > very many individuals and communities of people
                have been royally

                > screwed in unexpected ways, in very many different
                contexts, and

                > typically with no reasonably available effective
                recourse whatsoever,

                > by trust and promises getting carelessly broken on
                the basis of

                > profit-oriented business thinking

                

                Yes, and I agree with that. However, rapacious
                capitalism operates within the constraints of the
                context of the possible. Every rapacious capitalist does
                not simply price everything at a ridiculous price which
                precludes it from selling; doing so yields no sales, and
                no revenue. Instead, they try to guess (or ascertain
                through experimentation) the price which will yield the
                maximum net revenue. In the case of PIR and .org,
                minimizing expenses has been one path… Maximizing gross
                revenue is the other side of that coin. Maximum revenue
                is the maximum product of quantity and unit price. An
                absurd unit price will reduce the size of the potential
                market to just the intersection of those who can afford
                the price and those who desire the product.  And, in the
                case of domain names, those who desire, specifically, an
                available domain name. The market has pretty well
                established that the retail price that maximizes revenue
                is in the neighborhood of USD 10 / year.  At that price,
                essentially nobody is dissuaded from buying a domain
                name, and therefore the second-level namespace gets
                fairly thoroughly utilized. Hypothetically, a first-year
                10% increase (to USD 11) would have little impact on
                gross revenue (less than 10% decrease in number of
                sales). A second-year 10% increase (to USD 12) would
                have a bit more impact, perhaps lessening the gross
                revenue. By the time you get to USD 16, after five years
                of maximal increases, quite a few potential customers
                will be dissuaded, and will think “I may as well just
                register in .com instead, for $10, and pocket the $5
                difference,” and the product of price and quantity would
                be considerably lower than at $10, or $11, or maybe $12.

                

                The strategy that’s pursued by pharmaceutical
                speculators relies upon _inflexible demand_. That is,
                they’re “investing” in the rent-extraction rights of
                things for which the demand does _not_ change with
                price. In their case, because some people who go without
                will die. Therefore, everyone who’s capable of doing so
                pays whatever price is required of them, no matter how
                ridiculous. Nobody is going to die if they have to move
                off a .org domain name. And the people who have the most
                to lose, also have the most money to spend.

                

                That’s why the rule precluding differential pricing is
                so important. It allows all of the .org registrants to
                stand together as a class, rather than each being
                offered the maximum individual price that they can
                stand. If that were to be allowed, ICRC.org would be
                priced at millions of dollars per year, while domain
                speculators would pay only a few cents.  I’m very much
                against that, as a matter of equitability.

                

                > "anything that can go wrong will probably go wrong
                somewhere, somehow,

                > and possibly massively, unless effective measures
                are taken to prevent

                > the bad things from happening”

                

                Sure, but that has to be balanced against the
                possibility of good outcomes as well.  Otherwise, no
                risks are every taken, and nothing is ever achieved.  My
                ENTIRE POINT is that the possibility of reforming ISOC
                seems to me to be a worthwhile one, and, under Andrew’s
                leadership, to have a significant chance of success. 
                That seems to me to be a risk worth taking, if the cost
                is a few dollars a year for ten million .org
                registrants.  If there were ways of funding actual core
                infrastructure and operations that way, rather than
                depending upon grants and donations, I’d be all over it,
                for instance.

                

                > I did want to respond to that particular posting
                and in particular to its personal attacks against me.

                

                If you can identify a personal attack against you,
                you’ll have my full apology.

                

                                                -Bill

                

              
            
            

            

            -- 

            
              
                
                  
                    
                      
                        
                          
                            
                              
                                
                                  
                                    
                                      
                                        
                                          
                                            
                                              
                                                
                                                  
                                                    
                                                      
                                                        
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          
                                                          

                                                          

                                                          
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