[governance] ITU vs. ICANN

[Karl Auerbach]

On 10/13/2010 06:27 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:

> "authority derives from the consent of the governed"
>
> In your and my country, perhaps. On a planetary scale, that's a
> minority. Hence the big hubbub from some governments feeling they
> need to control this horrible thing called "Internet", which might
> actually get them to, oh sacrilege, have to be accountable to their
> citizens at some point in time. And that's unlikely to be happening
> anytime soon.
>
> What we are witnessing is a 19th century organization functioning in
> the 20th century, trying to control a 21st century Internet. It
> ain't gonna happen.

I tend to look at what is happening as a return to an era hundreds of
years before that - as a return to a kind of mixed feudal and guild
mentality.

ICANN is very much a medieval guild - respect for historical context
suggest that ICANN's headquarters ought to be in Troyes or Florence
rather than Marina del Rey.

The notion that forms ICANN's foundation, the notion that there some
people are more important than others because they are "stakeholders" is
a notion that ought to have died with established ruling nobility and
personal succession.

(Unfortunately, here in the US with the recent Citizens case before the
supreme court we humans have been Constitutionally diminished to second
rank vis-a-vis those artificial creations of legal legerdemain that we
call corporations. ICANN's "stakeholder" structure very much dovetails
into that philosophy.)

We are very much living Satyandra's adage that those who forget history
are doomed to repeat it. (To which I add Karl's Corollary - If you had a
great time then forget that it occurred and it is certain to happen
again. ;-)

I quite agree with Milton and others (including you) that it is a steep
uphill trail to move beyond the past. But I do not agree that the chance
that it may be a Sisyphean effort means that the task ought not to be 
attempted.

And I agree with Milton that ICANN's ALAC is not a creation that can be
considered as deserving of credit as representative of the community of
internet users. (I perceive the ALAC more as a Sally Rand feather fan
designed to hide ICANN's removal of even those small patches of
democratic clothing that it had a decade ago.)

(And I disagree with the argument that the ALAC is young and needs time.
ICANN's ALAC is more than 7 years old and has received so much ICANN
funding and support that ICANN is unable to generate accounting reports
of how much money it has spent on ALAC life support. Do we really need a
Daniel to translate the words that are clearly written on the ALAC's
wall by public's forsaking of the ALAC? The message, that the ALAC has
been weighed and found wanting, is rather clear.)

So what does all of this mean?

To my mind it means that we need to step back and ask what it is that we
want to accomplish. From that, I believe, we ought to revisit history's
lessons about how to structure and constrain bodies of authority.

ICANN is an experiment. And like many experiments the results that say
how not to do a thing are the results of greatest value.

It's almost as if we are in Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" - we seem to
disregard the obvious, which is that on the internet anybody can
establish a new DNS hierarchy and turn-off ICANN or ITU control.

		--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

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t