[governance] Innovation

Mon Nov 26 14:03:52 EST 2007

As ever, Wolfgang's post seems to be the best spot to get back into this
conversation.

So as an interesting historical review, the concern with the voting last
time was the fact that anyone could get an email address and so it was open
to manipulation. 

The idea was anyone who was a domain name holder could vote. But then people
felt this was power in the hand of landowners.

What's interesting of course is that now if you based votes on domain names,
you would get possibly an even worse bias because of the recent arrival of
the domainer market. With some companies owning tens of thousands of domains
- and possessing the technology to use each one individually, an election
could be entirely dominated by which way one or two individuals heading
these domainer companies decided to vote.

It strikes me that this inability to pin down an individual to a single vote
is not something that is going to go away. There has to be some kind of
real-world verification so that multiple votes require people to physically
do something. 

Wrt the World Internet User Summit in Paris - I am wholeheartedly behind
this idea and am happy to help in whatever way I can. I would urge people to
view both myself and ICANN as a useful resource in this process.

Re: the OECD. I don't agree with Wolfgang's summary of the OECD as "only a
limited number of states". There are a lot of governments who will be there
as observers if not necessarily formal members. From what I understand the
OECD's musings tend to have a significant impact on people's thinking about
an issue.

But to get back to the ALAC/RALO/ALS system. I'm surprised that Wolfgang is
so damning of it as a "stupid superstructure". I know the history is torrid,
but as I explained in another email, I see the structure itself as a pretty
good construct (Vittorio had some interesting real-world observations about
it).

I have a serious question about this. Is there anything in the structure
that actually prevents or restricts ideas from the wider community from
going through review and ending up as firm statements or policies?

If there is a bottleneck, or a procedural problem, or a structural issue? If
so, what is it? Let's get it out and discuss it. I'm happy to see if I can
deal with the issues people appear to be raising about creating an ALS - but
what else is out there?

[As an aside - is this the right list/forum for this sort of discussion? I
am more than happy to set up a forum on ICANN's public participation site if
people would prefer this conversation taken off this list.]

One of the problems I have found with ICANN's processes is that there isn't
enough pre-discussion. People tend to get riled up in their own groups
before a single meeting on a certain date (almost always at an ICANN
meeting). Then at the meeting itself all the different clashing viewpoints
pour out and at the end of the two hours / three hours the chair is left
with an impossible task of finding the middle ground.

The more informal pre-meetings and discussions - particularly between
different groups - that are held before a formal meeting the better I think
the system will work. So when it comes to a meeting, you already know what
everyone thinks, you have already begun to find compromises with different
stakeholders and then the meeting can be used to get the feel of the room on
particular aspects where it has become clear people do not agree.

Is this useful to people? Do people think that if such pre-meetings were a
good idea, they would have to also happen at ICANN meetings? Because I can
try to reform the way ICANN meetings are run if large groups of people think
this would be useful.

I also think there is an important and interesting discussion to be had
over: what is the role and what should be the role of the individual within
ICANN's processes?

Kieren

-----Original Message-----
From: Kleinwächter, Wolfgang
[mailto:wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de] 
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 2:18 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Guru at ITfC; governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: [governance] Innovation

Dear list

I was rather silent so far on this interesting debate but as a "veteran" I
wanted to listen to the many voices around. 

It is always good to go back to history and to learn from the mistakes and
to understand how contradictions - rooted in conflicting interests - have
driven development. I was involved in the MAC when we discussed this with
Charles Nession, Jonathan Zittrain (he was the Executive Secretary of the
MAC) and others in 1999 in Singapore, Cambridge and Berlin (which paved the
way for the elections), I was involved as  member of the MITF, and I workd
together with Carl Bildt in the ALSG in 2001. In the first meeting in
Stockhlom (2001) Carl Bildt, as former democratically elected prime minister
of a democratic country, was rather sceptical about elections (too low
voters turnour to be really democratic). But in the course of the debate he
changed his mind, saw this as an innovation and became a supporter of
elections, however just for domain name holders, which can be easier
indentified than e-mail address holders. 

The final ALSG report, which recommended this scheme - was critisied because
such an election would have excluded a lot of students from universities who
normally do not have an own domain name. The argument was that this is like
in the middle ages where just land oweners have right to vote. The report
was presented in Montevideo where they have a lot of experiences with
Latifundistas. However the report recommended elections. This was on
September, 8, 2001. And as we know, September 11, 2001 changed ICANN from a
playground on Cyberdemocracy into a project of Cybersecurity. Believe it or
not, we live (unfortunately) now in a different world.

We can not go back to history. If history comes back one to one, than this
is always a farce or a comedy. We have to move foreward. I fully support
Gurus call for "creativity" and "innovation". We all agree that the stupid
superstructure of ALS/RALO/ALAC was established to keep the individual users
on a distance from policy development and decision making to minimze
undefined "risks". And as long as the ALAC construction was as weak as it
was (and is) this has worked well for the inventors of the system. 

Is there a chance for an innovative new approach? Why not.
1. the proposed "World Internet User Summit"  in June 2008 in Paris - as
part of the ICANN meeting - is an unique opportunity. There is a need to
start now with the preparations, to establish a drafting committee for an
"Internet Users Declaration" and to do outreach beyond accredited ALS. Such
a declaration can be based on all the nice documents of the 1990s, the
elcetion experiences of 2000 plus the Civil Society Declaration from WSIS I.
It will also go beyond the planned user event during the OECD Ministerial
Meeting in Seoul just on the even of the Paris meeting. OECD includes only a
limited number of states. 

2. the forthcoming ALAC review process offers broad opportunities to analyze
the weakness and risks of the existing structures and to make constructive
proposals. Peter Dengath Tresh, ICANNs new CEO, has underlined during the
IGF in Rio, that the review process is part of ICANN democratization
process. So this is the place where all the critics can be channeled.  

Looking backwards is sometimes useful. Looking forward is the challenge of
the next couple of years. 

Regards

wolfgang

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