[governance] ICANN ads ... - this thread is getting too long

[Karl Auerbach]

A far as places to find good people go, the Economist isn't a bad choice.

That is, it is not a bad choice if one is looking for people to do 
economic and social regulation.

Is ICANN supposed to be doing economic and social engineering?

As Dan pointed, out, our endevours in internet governance have been 
accompanied by several myths.

(For some prior comments on internet mythology see my note at 
http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000114.html )

One of these myths is that ICANN does technical regulation and not 
economic/social regulation.

The reality of things is that ICANN, and much of what is discussed under 
the banner of internet governance is economic and social regulation.

I don't like that reality, but I seem to be in the minority.

There are matters of technical import that really do need governance - 
there are internet resources that really and sincerely are critical - 
such as IP addresses, routing prefixes, and end-to-end quality to 
support user applications, i.e. CIR, a topic that some want to exclude 
entirely.  [BTW - I exclude domain names from my list of these essential 
technical matters; I do not consider domain names to be in need of 
centralized oversight at all, but that is another topic for another day.]

These matters, with the limited exception of certain aspects of IP 
addresses, not being squarely faced; we are leaving most of the matters 
of technical governance - the jobs of keeping the wheels and gears of 
the net turning - to chance and the good will of a relative few, but 
mortal, people.

Now, in the great scheme of things economic and social regulation are 
things that need to be done - someday, somewhere, somehow.  They are 
difficult.

Unfortunately, as poorly as we are coming to grips with the technical 
matters, we are even more poorly prepared to face, much less address, 
these soft, squishy issues that tend to have a stronger impact on the 
lives of real people.

Solving those things will require the input from people who read The 
Economist.

And it will also require input from people who read Harpers.

And from people who read every RFC and IEEE document, people who live on 
the internet and - and this is an important "and" - people who can not 
afford more than intermittent access, people who have physical 
impairments, and people who are neither wealthy nor speak English.

Any institution of internet governance that is not tightly and strictly 
tied, in reality, to technical governance needs a couple of key ingredients:

   - An honest representation, to itself and of itself, regarding what 
it is doing, why it is doing it, what principles guide it, who's ox it 
is protecting, who are the intended beneficiaries, and what are its 
limitations.

  - A foundation of legitimacy in the eyes of those who are its intended 
beneficiaries and the targets of its regulatory constraints.  Legitimacy 
does not grow well in a soil fertilized by fiat and exclusion.

		--karl--
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