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

[Karl Auerbach]

George Sadowsky wrote:

> I would disagree that low costs and more consumer choice, as reported by 
> Veni, support Karl's claim of powerlessness.

As I may have mentioned elsewhere my use of the word "powerless" is in 
the context of bodies of internet governance, whether existing or 
contemplated.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with consumer choice.  (Although one 
must admit that in terms of consumer choices, the TLD products that 
ICANN allows to be sold on the internet are rather few and the 
similarities are rather more striking than the differences.)

My concern here is political power - with the understanding, of course, 
that in matters of governance, we are talking about political choices 
involving the use of power to deny, tax, and coerce that exceed those 
powers available to mere people or even non-governmental aggregates of 
people.

In a prior note you asked about the UDRP.  One of the aspects that I 
mentioned is that the UDRP is designed by ICANN to be a weapon that is 
available only to trademark holders and is denied to mere users of the 
net.  Similarly, registries, one of the several internet technical 
bodies, intellectual property lawyers, and businesses get a red carpet 
invitation directly into the heart of ICANN's decision making processes. 
  While at the same time internet users have to go through layer upon 
layer upon layer of ALAC filtering.  It is the accumulation of these 
badges of second class citizenship that make internet users' power 
within ICANN paltry and nearly invisible when compared to the authority 
that ICANN grants to those few who receive the vaunted label of 
"stakeholders".



		--karl--




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