[governance] process

[Danny Butt]

Hi

Very troubled by recent discussions about process.

At the moment I feel that if a group of ten ("most active"?) people  
draft a text - without any clear way of establishing mandate for them  
- then this will not represent "civil society interests" at a global  
level adequately, and you get into the ICANN/IETF issues about self- 
selection by the people with shared interests and cultural capital  
and ability to make themselves heard on mailing lists. If this group  
is too big for direct democratic principles, then there needs to be a  
process for "representation" that people are broadly happy with. (And  
eventually, it ends up looking something like a government :7).

I feel the most alignment with Carlos' post on oversight.

I won't bother with the recent discussion on governments, except to  
say that if anyone thinks a bunch of people with bright ideas, some  
history in creating the net and good intentions will be considered  
(in the WSIS scheme of things) can start determining the parameters  
for the decisions made by governments that have a well-defined  
mandate in international law (regardless of what we might feel about  
them), clear governance principles, and effective control of billions  
of dollars in resources, that seems like wilful blindness to reality.

The list is having discussions about representation and governance  
for itself. Governments already have "rough consensus and running  
code" for governance, and the resistance to their role is  
ideologically driven. I would say that there is probably as much  
understanding exhibited here about the basis of governmental  
authority over all of us, as there is by the governments about how  
the DNS systems works (i.e. not much and unevenly distributed). I  
don't like governments, and when I prefer a Brazilian Govt text to an  
international CS one I feel something is wrong.

Over the long term, until there is a clear articulation of civil  
society principles and an organisational structure is aligned with  
them I fail to see how effective interventions can be made into  
current processes, because proposed text will keep foundering on  
radical gaps in understanding about what we're here to do and how we  
should do it.

Sorry to be negative. Feel free to ignore this outburst and adopt  
business as usual, I might cheer up in a few days.

Regards

Danny



On 27/10/2005, at 4:45 PM, Carlos Afonso wrote:
> As established in formal statements in the US Congress (a joint
> resolution on Oct.18) and the federal government, the discussion on  
> the
> USG position regarding governance of the logical infrastructure has
> became academic. The position is to keep ICANN under the US  
> government -
> forget about the end of the MOU and so on. So any "common ground"
> between the USA and the rest of the world could happen only on issues
> *beyond* governance of names, numbers and protocols. As the joint
> resolution by the Senate and the House states:
>
> "Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring),  
> That
> it is the sense of Congress that--
>
>             (1) it is incumbent upon the United States and other
> responsible governments to send clear signals to the marketplace that
> the current structure of oversight and management of the Internet's
> domain name and addressing service works, and will continue to deliver
> tangible benefits to Internet users worldwide in the future; and
>             (2) therefore the authoritative root zone server should
> remain physically located in the United States and the Secretary of
> Commerce should maintain oversight of ICANN so that ICANN can continue
> to manage the day-to-day operation of the Internet's domain name and
> addressing system well, remain responsive to all Internet stakeholders
> worldwide, and otherwise fulfill its core technical mission."
>
> This is not law, but several other resolutions (like Senator  
> Coleman's)
> are pushing in the same direction, and this has become formal  
> enough to
> determine the course of things.
>
> In plain English, the view is that the USA government has outsourced
> Internet logical infrastructure management services to a US  
> corporation
> called ICANN and will continue to do so for the sake of ensuring
> continuing control over the network, in the name of "stability and
> security". Period.




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