AW: [governance] .xxx. igc and igf

[Karl Auerbach]

Wolfgang Kleinwächter wrote:

> ICANN has made a step in the right
> direction by trying to be multistakeholder  ...

I have very severe reservations about that formulation.

"Multistakeholder" is a euphemism that means that many interests are 
excluded.  Most notably those people, groups, and countries that have 
fewer resources or a diffuse, but often cumulatively large interest.

Moreover, we have seen via ICANN how some groups can recast themselves 
at will to obtain multiple voices as multiple stakeholders - as for 
example how a business can be both a trademark stakeholder, a business 
stakeholder, a registry stakeholder, a registrar stakeholder, etc.

As I have urged elsewhere, I consider the "stakeholder" method of 
assigning weight and authority to be a kind of not-so-slow acting poison 
that will, sooner or later, transform and ossify a governance body into 
a body of industrial protection.

Aggregations and legal fictions that wish to express opinions are quite 
proper vehicles and they ought to have the right to speak and debate. 
But when it comes to measuring the weight of opinions, the measure 
should be of the opinions of the natural people that form such 
aggregations or legal fictions.

Yes, I know that this is contrary to the current vogue.  However, if we 
continue the method of giving weight and preference to organized 
industrial interests, under the euphemism of "stakeholder", we are going 
to end up with a system of collective industrial baronage not unlike 
that which obtained in the US during the period between 1870 and 1900, a 
system that had to be dismantled.

Do we really want to include a fatal gene into systems of interenet 
governance and create a genetic defect that will over time doom all of 
our efforts?

We can begin by abandoning the words "stakeholder" and 
"multistakeholder" and use a phrase that more properly encompasses what 
we want to achieve which is systems of internet governance that are 
considerate of and responsive to all concerns but that measure the value 
of their decisions on the basis of the effect on the entire internet 
community, present and future.

		--karl--






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