[governance] Principles

Tue Oct 23 20:12:19 EDT 2012

+1

M

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Paul Lehto
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 12:24 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Vanda UOL
Cc: Karl Auerbach
Subject: Re: [governance] Principles

When aristocrats or oligarchs get together, certain procedural things within
the ruling junta can be quite "democratic", very much like
Multi-stakeholderism can have internal procedures amongst the ruling junta
that appear quite fair-minded.  These internal procedures, though they may
seem democratic, don't make aristocracy or oligarchy democratic at all.  It
just means these rulers act like equals and are civil to each other, perhaps
even willing to listen once in a while to the masses.

Whether something is democratic or aristocratic/oligarchic is measured not
WITHIN the organization, but by reference to those whose voice is not
recognized (via representatives) in the form of a vote in the matters at
hand.  

Multistakeholderism is not democracy, and it is misleading at best to use
the term "democratic" to describe procedures within Multistakeholderism.
Until every voter has the right to exercise their vote to "kick the bums
out" (their own representative) it's not democracy.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

> On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 2:49 AM, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> 

> I rather take a rather different position, which is that stakeholderism
> is oligarchy and not democratic at all.

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 5:53 PM, Vanda UOL <vanda at uol.com.br> wrote:

Very interesting Karl, we need take care with the private monopoly where
nothing that people can do to change things will be heard. Countries facing
loss of power are, deeper and deeper  trying to get something to at least
keep their own status quo, no new in this side. What needs to be new is the
way the governance in several aspects of Internet. I am not seeing good news
in this side.
Best,
-----Mensagem original-----
De: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] Em nome de Karl Auerbach
Enviada em: terça-feira, 2 de outubro de 2012 18:25
Para: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Assunto: Re: [governance] Principles

On 10/01/2012 03:10 PM, Koven Ronald wrote:

> ... posited on the notion that the Internet has revoked the 2,500
> previous years of political philosophy and history.

More like about 370 years - since the Treaty of Westphalia.

The truth is that that world of geograhic-bounded nation-states *is*
eroding; the edges of nation-states are getting fuzzy, especially since
1945 with the rise of nation-agile multinational corporations and since the
mid 1990's with the rise of the internet and world wide web.

The granules of power that are eroding from the edges of nation-states are
not disappearing, they are flowing into the hands of either private actors
or bodies of internet governance.

Those granules represent plenary, often non-reviewable, authority over
matters affecting the internet and its users.

When I was on the Board of Directors of ICANN I had fun tweeking the nose of
a US Senator when I informed him of the indisputable fact that I, in
conjunction with about 10 other Directors, could pass a rule over internet
use of trademarks and names that would supersede and trump anything that he,
as a mere United States Senator, could enact.

He got angry - much in the way we see the fear and anger of nation states
bubbling over in attempts to re-assert and re-insert national governments
into these new bodies of governance.

We are building internet governance on models that are more from the era of
flower-power and high-hopes rather than on the 18th century models that
recognize the aggregation of unchecked power and try to constrain that
aggregation, models that form the basis of many national constitutions of
today.

We have forgotten history.

Several of us have proposed various models of internet governance - and
these models have all emphasized small, extremely limited, and clearly
separated bodies, with extremely limited, if any, discretionary powers, each
wrapped around exactly one highly and clearly defined internet governance
issue.

That model of concise, tightly shrink-wrapped, and almost clerical bodies of
governance would help eliminate the opportunity for a body to dance among
the issues to leverage one issue against another to the tune played by
whatever group of stakeholders has captured that body.  We saw that happen
with ICANN when it staved off insolvency some years ago by making an
implicit pact with the address registries so that ICANN could have the cash
to to survive and assert its role over domain names.

        --karl--

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Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1 
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