[governance] RE: who does "public policy" then?

[Dan Krimm]

At 9:11 AM +0300 4/16/07, McTim wrote:
>On 4/15/07, Dan Krimm <dan at musicunbound.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> So, to answer McTim:  I don't know exactly how "it" will work.  How does it
>> work today?
>
>In many cases, it couldn't.
>
>It's called filtering, and can only be done by coercion or by
>draconian legislation.  In a few cases, there is one ASN per country,
>in which case it is easy to set up filters to drop packets from .xyz.

And so, if this filtering is not done, why exactly does that not "work" in
a policy sense?  Isn't allowing unfiltered traffic one possible "working"
solution?



>If China wants to deny a TLD from visibility inside its
>> national networks, does it not have a way to do that?
>
>It does, few others do though.

That's probably a good thing (that few others do), isn't it?



>> And if there is no easy solution to the problem today, why should anyone
>> think that ICANN can by itself hack together something that has all the
>> checks and balances of democratic national constitutions, etc.?
>
>A) It's only a problem if you live in one of the countries that filter
>(Iran, China, Saudi, etc)
>
>B) It's not ICANN's "problem" to solve.

Well, I would totally agree with that.  So why is ICANN trying to solve
this "problem" in the first place?  Wouldn't it be better if ICANN did not
try to solve this "problem"?



>> It would be bad public policy to set up ICANN as a global monarchy with
>> feudal relationships governing its constituencies.  But as far as I can
>> see, this is essentially what ICANN is, at the moment, in terms of
>> structure, within the domain of Internet Assigned Names and Numbers.
>
>If you had experience in the numbering/port assignment world, you
>would not have this opinion.  It's all the naming biz which gives
>ICANN it's black eye, and names aren't critical resources IMO.

Why exactly do you think I would not have this opinion if I "had experience
in the numbering/port assignment world"?  I'm curious to learn something
here, because clearly I've been missing something.



>> Perhaps an extreme description, but it seems closer to the authoritarian
>> model than the democratic model, to me.  Remember that authoritarian
>> governments can include many of the "trappings" of democratic governments,
>> such as "elections" and so forth.  But if such trappings are constrained in
>> ways that make "choice" an illusion, then that is no more than a big
>> finesse to hoodwink the public so that the power players can run things
>> without interference from mere citizens.
>
>Well that's how it currently works in the banana republic where I
>live, but that's not how ICANN processes work in my experience.  I, as
>a clueful individual end-user CAN and DO have a significant effect on
>policy development.  In fact, I did just that a few minutes ago on
>another list!

That's very nice, good for you.  Did you affect policy development at ICANN
or somewhere else?  If somewhere else, do you think that anyone else has
the same capability of affecting policy development in that somewhere else?
If not, do you think that your having an elite voice in the governance
process where you have affected policy development is good for a broad
range of people, or more narrowly good for your own individual interests?
That is do you formally represent the interests of a broad range of
citizens?

Just asking.

Thanks,
Dan
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance