[governance] FW: TP: city government exercising policy on Google Applications / consumer rights / Consumer Protection Act / trial period

[michael gurstein]

Paul,

I'm not an expert on CIRA although at this point I should declare that I
have been nominated (by a civil society organization) as a candidate for the
CIRA Board!

That being said I think your comments are based on mistaken assumptions and
are overall somewhat unfortunate.

As I understand the situation CIRA has an election among its members (those
holding .ca registrations) for its governance body--its Board. There are 3
ex officio members on a fifteen person Board--a representative of the
overall regulator/policy maker (government); the Executive Director: and the
founder/registrar (Canada's equivalent of John Postel)--quite normal I would
have thought for this kind of agency.

I'm not sure what standards of democracy you are using but in my limited
observation this would seem to me by most conventional standards to be at
least reasonably "democratic". Always remembering of course, that CIRA is
only concerned with the 1.5 million or so .ca registrants--there are
approximately 25 million Internet users in Canada whose overall Internet
interests presumably are covered through the ordinary give and take of the
(democratic) political system and for specialized purposes participation in
forums such as ICANN, the IGF and so on.

I would very much like to see Canada and Canadians more involved in ensuring
a "democratic" Internet (however that might be defined), but at this point I
wouldn't see CIRA as being the appropriate vehicle for that participation
since its interests/mandate and constituency is far too narrow.

Mike 

-----Original Message-----
From: governance at lists.cpsr.org [mailto:governance at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf
Of Paul Lehto
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 10:36 AM
To: Kerry Brown
Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] FW: TP: city government exercising policy on
Google Applications / consumer rights / Consumer Protection Act / trial
period


On 7/14/11, Kerry Brown <kerry at kdbsystems.com> wrote:
> CIRA's board of directors is democratically elected by CIRA members. 
> Membership is free to anyone that registers a dot-ca domain. All 
> members get one vote regardless of how many domains they have 
> registered. There are three ex-officio non-voting appointed directors. 
> All voting directors are elected by the members. One of the ex-officio 
> directors is a representative of Industry Canada. The Canadian 
> government through Industry Canada plays an advisory role to the 
> board. The other non-voting directors are the CEO and John Demco the 
> founder of the dot-ca registry when it was operated by volunteers 
> working at UBC.

Unless  you are claiming that CIRA does nothing that affects or impacts
users of the internet (as opposed to .ca registrants) the above membership
structure is still quite undemocratic by completely disfranchising users.
On top of that, the structure  you identify heavily weights the right to be
heard (via ex officio membership) to industry and the corporation and its
founder.  Anything more restrictive than one person one vote for ALL
GOVERNED or affected is a system that disfranchises and creates an
aristocracy (rule by a few or a subset of all) rather than a democracy (rule
by all the people).  It would seem that everyone would realize that despite
the fact that a few .ca registrants are "ordinary folks", a system where
only .ca registrants can be members and thus vote is a system that (1) gives
votes to non-humans that are also non-voters in a real democracy (corporate
registrants), and (2) is an aristocracy weighted in favor of those with
above-average money and property (domain name
registrants) and completely disfranchising users as a whole.

I do realize that CIRA is touting that in the last year (i.e. in CIRA's 10th
or 11th year of operation) CIRA was begun a general listening program and
accepts, for the first time in its history, some types of feedback from mere
non-voting users and others.  Anything less than real democracy (like CIRA)
is an animal which one may call anything they want, but that can't call it
democracy.  Certain aspects are "democratic" but it ain't democracy.  I
won't throw out a name myself because there's a risk it could be perceived
as name-calling. But it is what it is, and what it is ain't democracy.  It's
delegation of governmental power to a basically unaccountable corporate
aristocracy of some sort.

I'd be happy to indulge you with the truly formalistic step of starting a
new thread with a new name involving CIRA so as to not be "off topic" but I
don't think (right now) that you should have to defend an entire thread
based in significant part on your job or status with CIRA, even though that
job is so coincidentally topical to how the conversation has evolved here in
this thread.  Please accept my assurances that I intend nothing in the way
of a personal attack here in any way -- I'm firmly convinced  you are a nice
guy and intelligently got involved in CIRA in all good faith to be in the
game of internet policy and rulemaking.  My one and only basic objection is
that, however, is just that the structure in which you got involved and are
committed to remaining involved in is fundamentally undemocratic in very
significant ways, and you defend those shortfalls based on values like
efficiency that are classically associated with non-democratic practices of
government.

In a democracy, efficiency is OK as  a value provided one very fundamental
(and usually satisfied) precondition is met:  That the end or goal of the
project is consistent with the objectives and principles of democracy and
self-government as opposed to aristocracy or plutocracy.  That basic
precondition is defeated the moment any level of government gives away its
power and responsibility to a private person or corporation without
retaining 100% of its oversight power AND providing all the standards and
rules of operation such that it can be fairly said that even though "power"
be delegated, it is really being exercised at the direction and control of
the government, via those standards and rules.  But as to the procedure of
arbitration for example, the CIRA rule that no domestic or foreign law or
legislation may be used in a CIRA arbitration even if all the parties and
the arbitrator agree means (beyond any serious doubt) that CIRA arbitration
procedure has broken completely free of democracy's control, and therefore
lost the legitimacy that only democracy can provide.

CIRA not being democratic, it's not appropriate to wish CIRA to be
"efficient" in accomplishing its goals for governance, since those goals are
not fully democratic.  Here again, Harry Truman put it very well when he
said of his corporate-supported opponent:

"Hitler learned that efficiency without justice is a vain thing. Democracy
does not work that way. Democracy is a matter of faith--a faith in the soul
of man--a **faith in human rights.** That is the
kind of faith that moves mountains--"   Human rights is key because
they are possessed without precondition by all humans, and equally so.
Picking and choosing who gets a say (registrants, but not users) inevitably
leads to either social discord or even violence, because it disrespects the
humanity and interests of those whose voice is not recognized or heard.

Paul Lehto, J.D.
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