[governance] Letter to Rod Beckstrom

[Karl Auerbach]

On 09/21/2009 12:40 AM, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:

> At the same time, private bodies such as ICANN seem to adopt over the
> years more and more of the normative criteria and mechanisms that are
> typical for the democratic nation state.

Unfortunately many ill acts may have been adopted and have ossified into 
near-irreversiblity by the time that those democratic criteria and 
mechanisms begin to take effect.

Using ICANN as the example - Over the decade of its life so far it has 
adopted many rules and procedures that greatly offend even the most 
dull-witted sense of democratic accountability.  These include its 
pro-trademark UDRP and privacy-intrusive whois rules.  Even if ICANN 
were this night to become a paragon of Periclean democracy those noxious 
rules would remain fixed in place.

It strikes me that if one adopts a gradualistic (and pragmatic) strategy 
towards the introduction of democratic ideas into bodies of internet 
governance that one ought also to incorporate into that strategy the 
idea that ill acts done by those bodies be revisited and should cease if 
they can not gain sufficient positive support for their continuance.

		--karl--
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