[governance] Are Internet users powerless or empowered, and how?

[Alejandro Pisanty]

Karl,

the continued ad-hominem diatribes contained in your postings motivate me 
to go once into a very different mode of discussion than we all prefer.

You will have to reconsider your language.

First of all, the non-native English speakers in this list deserve at 
least that you do some serious spell-checking, as a minimal courtesy. I 
know manners are beyond your preferred character of the unbounded, 
unfettered spoiled three-year old brat, and begin to believe that it is 
not only a rhetorical or theatrical persona which you like to assume.

Second, you will have to moderate your characterizations of people you are 
talking about, and to, in negative terms. You may decide to call  uncivil 
the responses you get when they finally decide to call your bluff face-on.

It will be helpful for all that you pay a more attentive ear to what 
others are saying. I take your responses about the ALAC, even after 
reading Jacqueline's clear rendering of the reasons why others think a 
direct, one-person, etc. vote does not work to bring a voice of the users, 
to mean that, as our celebrated Guillermo de Tovar y de Teresa once said, 
"you don't understand that you don't understand."

I do not think that people in this group can do useful work based on 
flawed assumptions and premises. The ones you profer about the ICANN Board 
during the time of your presence in it belong in that category.

You went into the ICANN Board in a wild hunt against a lawyer you 
disliked, and while others were hard at work looking at hard figures, 
asking hard questions, designing complex systems, fighting monopolies' 
attacks and trickery, and so on (admittedly with shortcomings) you chose 
to ignore and belittle the people and their work. That you continue 
offending them unchallenged has become inadmissible. That you continue to 
try to make people accept your ideas on flawed premises, presumptions of 
third parties' intentions, and blatant lies has exceeded the limits of 
tolerance. The asymmetry of your making ad-hominem attacks without 
response has, too.

I am very sorry to have to use more list bandwidth in this appeal for you 
to consider others, their ideas, and their expressions of them with 
moderation and temperance, and to repeat my appeal to look at something 
different that can be made to work.

Ian Peter has joined that view too, it seems to me, and I couldn't be more 
glad. On to the cybercrime issue he proposes. Let those experienced, 
knowledgeable, and in good will tread those grounds.

Alejandro Pisanty


.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  .
      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
Director General de Servicios de Computo Academico
UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
Tel. (+52-55) 5622-8541, 5622-8542 Fax 5622-8540
http://www.dgsca.unam.mx
*
---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, www.isoc.org
  Participa en ICANN, www.icann.org
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .


On Fri, 30 Nov 2007, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:37:37 -0800
> From: Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
> Reply-To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
> To: George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at attglobal.net>
> Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] Are Internet users powerless or empowered, and how?
> 
> George Sadowsky wrote:
>
>> However, I do think that the way you phrase it, i.e. "the body that 
>> extracts over half a billion dollars (US$ out of the pockets of domain name 
>> buyers every year," goes in the wrong direction.  It's correct that ICANN 
>> is involved in price setting, but per domain name the cost is closer to $6.
>
> My estimate is based on a computed registry cost (which I'll get to in a few 
> paragraphs), an ICANN granted registry fee of about $7 (not to mention the 
> ICANN piece of every registration), and about 75,000,000 names (largely in 
> .com).
>
> There is no doubt that domain name buyers are paying in excess of 
> $500,000,000 per year just in the ICANN granted registry fee.  The question 
> is how much does it actually cost to provide those registry services?
>
> A price-setting regulatory body ought to know how much it costs to provide 
> the regulated service being provided.  Unfortunately the body of internet 
> governance that sets domain name registry prices (and its own fee as well) 
> seems to never have bothered to inquire as to the actual cost.
>
> Perhaps it is obvious to that body, but it is certainly not obvious to me.
>
> The $6 appears to be nothing but a fiat amount - it appears to be based on no 
> evidence, no information, no audit - no nothing.  There is no evidence that 
> ICANN has never tried to establish a cost basis.  And now it is going up to 
> $7, not $6, with an additional bi-yearly 7% rise, again without any 
> supporting accounting, much less audited accounting.
>
> I've estimated the cost at about $0.03 per name per year.  Perhaps that is 
> too low, perhaps not.  But what evidence is there to contradict my 
> calculations?  I'd love to hear concrete, auditable, quantitative information 
> that leads me (and us) to a real answer that we can believe and use rather 
> than debate.
>
> The analysis of others also indicates that $6 much, much higher than the real 
> cost.
>
> Suppose that I'm off by a factor of 33x.  That still means that ICANN is 
> pumping/taxing the internet to the tune of about $400,000,000 (USD) on .com 
> alone every year and splitting the proceeds between itself and Verisign.
>
> Alternatively we can use Tucow's bid at running .com at $2 - on which basis 
> the money pump is a mere $330,000,000 every year (on .com alone) and rising 
> with ICANN's 7% solution.
>
> Even at these lesser amounts, the sums are still quite significant.
>
> Thus we see an ICANN, because it is not accountable to the community of 
> internet users, that has become excessively accommodating to the registry 
> industry - gifting it with huge revenue streams and profit margins that are 
> measured in the 1000% to 35,000% range.
>
> When the body of internet governance not only guarantees registries a profit, 
> but a profit margin measured in tens of thousands of percents, is it still 
> internet governance?  Or is it something else?
>
> When I was on the board at ICANN I found an across-the-board (pun intended) 
> reluctance to look at any sort of hard numbers of anything, even ICANN's own 
> expenses.  Indeed, when I went to look for myself I found my way barred and I 
> had to bring legal action simply so that I could do what board members around 
> the world are empowered to do - look at the financial records.
>
> In other words, I am suggesting that there may be an institutional aversion 
> to asking too many questions about where and how money flows.
>
> One of my concerns about ICANN's nominating committee process is that it 
> tends to produce people who are worthies but are of an accommodating nature, 
> not of the ilk will demand to see hard proof of an assertion.
>
> As such it is not surprising that ICANN has simply accepted a domain name 
> registry price policy that began with an arbitrary number - a number that was 
> simply created out of thin air a few years ago - and increments it by a 
> percentage that was also created out of thin air.
>
> Had ICANN had a working election process it may have found its board 
> populated by more people willing to require hard facts before granting rich 
> price terms, paid for not by ICANN but, instead, out of the pockets of the 
> users of the internet.
>
>
>> I agree with you that WHOIS continues to be a problem, complicated by 
>> competing interests but also by non-interoperable national legal codes, 
>> over which we have relatively no control (at least in the short run).  I'd 
>> like to see that sorted out also, but I don't see any voting scheme able to 
>> solve that problem without creating other problems of equal or greater 
>> magnitude.
>
> You are right that voting systems alone will not solve Whois.
>
> But allowing internet users light a fire under ICANN's board, a fire created 
> through the accountability provided by elections, then I submit that ICANN 
> would not have repeatedly waivered when the intellectual property industry 
> said "boo", as it did just a few weeks ago in Los Angeles.
>
>> I understand that you have a severe dislike of the current UDRP.  Is there 
>> a comprehensive alternative you would like to suggest that is significantly 
>> better?  If you have already suggested it, what has been its reception and 
>> why?
>
> The UDRP starts with a fundamental error: It acts as a sword to vindicate 
> rights in a name only if those rights are based on trademark.
>
> In other words, if I own a trademark "foo" then I can use the UDRP to 
> challenge others who use "foo".  I might win, I might loose, but at least I 
> have the UDRP as a tool.
>
> On the other hand, if I am named "foo" or my god is named "foo" or my 
> university is named "foo" - all of which are legal, valid, and legitimate 
> non-trademark uses of that name - and I feel that my rights are violated by 
> someone else's use of "foo", then I can not call upon the UDRP, the UDRP is 
> not a tool that I can invoke simply because my rights in the name are not 
> trademark based.
>
> In other words, the first thing to fix in the UDRP is to make require only 
> that the plantiff have rights in a name, not that those rights are trademark 
> rights.
>
> Secondly, the UDRP replaces the existing legal system.  The legal system is 
> complex and expensive because it bends over backwards to be fair. The UDRP is 
> attractive to intellectual property owners and lawyers (like me, on both 
> counts) because it is fast and cheap.  But that speed and low cost come at a 
> price - the loss of fairness.  Among the ways the UDRP is unfair is the way 
> that those who make choices are paid, it tends to make them friendly to the 
> plaintiff.
>
> Thirdly, because the UDRP is a private law that supersedes nations it tends 
> to squash cultural differences.  I'm certain that in the Sudan right now 
> nobody is wondering about the trademark names associated with a certain teddy 
> bear that has been in the news.  That situation demonstrates how different 
> are the cultural feelings about names that the UDRP covers with a single 
> worldwide, commercial trade name based system.
>
>
>> What do you think of my suggestion to concentrate on the great majority of 
>> Internet users, mostly those without domain names, and do two things. 
>> First, define their real needs to the best of our ability.  Second, and 
>> only after we've done the first, discuss what forms of structure, conduct 
>> and governance would best meet those needs, nows and in the future?
>
> Yes is useful to remember that the internet is much larger than those who 
> spend money on domain names.  And that is precisely why I find the 
> "stakeholder" conception so pernicious - it tends to identify the degree of 
> interest ("stake") and thus the degree of authority in bodies of internet 
> governance with the amount of money that the putative "stakeholder" spends or 
> makes.
>
> So yes, we ought to remember the vast masses who are unheard and who's money 
> in the net is not clearly identifiable and not, on an individual basis, very 
> large.
>
> On the other hand, when we have a fairly clear cut issue - such as domain 
> name registry fees unrelated to the actual cost of providing the domain name 
> registry service - and a well identifiable body of people being harmed (those 
> who buy domain names and also, as we should not forget, those who find them 
> too expensive and this forego buying a domain name), and an amount of money 
> that would be significant even by Rockefeller standards, then that is an 
> issue we ought to face.
>
> 		--karl--
> ____________________________________________________________
> 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
>
____________________________________________________________
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