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

[Daniel Kalchev]

On 15.07.11 03:57, Paul Lehto wrote:
>
> Now Mike, when you point to a subset of the people affected by CIRA
> (domain registrants) and note that they can be voting members if they
> wish, but ignore the mere user who is also governed to some extent by
> CIRA, and then call that exclusion "reasonably democratic", you're
> really saying that a largish aristocracy is "reasonably democratic."

This is all true, except you miss the whole point. Internet resources 
are private, not public.

Let me try one more time. Please note we may have language differences 
and I claim no proper terminology knowledge of 'democracy theory'.

What you call democracy is a system, where the public gives up certain 
of their rights to elected third party (or parties) but reserves the 
right to replace them by voting, if they misbehave.

In the case of a ccTLD manager and their procedures, or 'law' (the case 
you make with CIRA, being 'non-democratic'), there is no 'right' to 
possess a .ca domain name. For anyone. There does not exist a right for 
anyone, to use Internet, both because Internet as such is a collection 
of private resources and because those who use it did not gave up any 
'rights' to it's governors.

An real-life example. Imagine you walk in an area full of gardens. Some 
gardens are better, some are worse. But none of them is yours. None of 
them is 'public'. All are private gardens. For the most part, you don't 
even have an idea who the owner is. You go forward and pick an apple 
form one garden. Nothing happens... You then go fill few baskets, cut 
few trees. Eventually out of a sudden guards come along and demand you 
obey certain rules.

You did not elect who those guards are. You cannot vote to replace them 
because you didn't like how they handled you. Eventually, people who 
planted that garden (think, the .ca domain) and the people who regularly 
take care of it and visit it (think, .ca domain registrants, registrars 
etc.) elected them - they pay for the guards etc. If you wish to have 
your say, you must join that 'club'.

Is this democratic? :)

I see no way how Internet can switch from being private to being public. 
If it was say, AOL, the US Government might nationalize it, but it is 
spread all over the world with all kinds of stakeholders possessing 
small pieces of it.

About the only way I see this happening, is a third world war and the 
winner (the rats, they say) making the Internet democratic. (or parts of 
it, really)

Daniel
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