[governance] ICANN stumbling on a hornet nest

Tue Sep 4 01:40:45 EDT 2012

Chaitanya, all,

1. the At-Large election procedure was deprecated because of its serious flaws, which Karl unfortunately fails to mention. They break the most basic principles of democratic election theory.

Elections are meant to split a given electorate among options (propositions, parties, or individual candidates.) The At Large election fails to do that. Instead, a candidate like Karl can bring in more voters than, say, the former President of the University of Maryland - not more votes: more voters - and the election result therefore is prescribed.

This is like when in older Mexico or in India a party can ferry voters in trucks.

Similarly, in the At-Large election Karl so unfairly romanticizes, arguments like "it is time Germany gets its deserved place in governing the Internet" were used by German-speaking media (not only in Germany but also in Austria) and there you are, the European space is taken.

The same thing happened in Latin America. In every country there were 100-300 people interested in ICANN who took part in the election. "It is time Brazil gets its deserved place in governing the Internet" was argued by some entities in Brazil, including the ccTLD manager CGI Brazil (Internet Steering Committee), and action was directed even to non-Brazilians. There you get 2000 votes from Brazil.

In most cases not a word was heard again from any of the voters so we can be sure that the results were at best a flare-up.

We substituted this supposedly ideal mechanism by a more complicated one but which ensures at least some level of trust in who is participating and some accountability and transparency. It hurts when you ask for accountability and transparency from individuals or organizations which are used to asking for it but not for providing it.

We continue to struggle to build the At-Large organizational space but are light-years better than with the old "bring your electorate" (not win over your fraction of the electorate) method. Add to that the NomCom, which usually can look much further out, and the At-Large influence in the NomCom. Count also the enormous contributions to deliver the At-Large views made by Roberto Gaetano and Vittorio Bertola.

2. Karl's lawsuit's victory in court had no more result for Karl than a victory in court. He never found enough skeletons in the closets to avenge the fact that the ICANN proponents defeated the Boston Working Group in the bid for "Newco" as the concept-ICANN was known till the organization was formed. I have a long-standing (albeit at times contentious) friendship with Karl, I like a lot of what he does,have learned a lot from him, appreciate his many interests beyond technology and politics (we had a delightful run over the National Gallery in DC once, for example, and ask him about rebuilding old locomotives), and have always been sad that he wasted the opportunity to teach more and contribute more as a good engineer for trying to outlawyer the lawyers. I still expect to see that Karl Auerbach's contributions make a difference.

3. There is something called esprit de corps and/or duty of loyalty to the organization. It is not in conflict with the duty of independence. There is a slight generralization that some non-USians tend to decide for a balance in favor of performing on both instead of privileging individual independence. Your mileage may vary.

Maybe it was time for some in this group to find out that some histories are not as one-sided and clear cut as they may seem. Apologies if I bored you (Sala, Fahd, Riaz, Chaitanya, especially.)

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty

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________________________________
Desde: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] en nombre de Chaitanya Dhareshwar [chaitanyabd at gmail.com]
Enviado el: lunes, 03 de septiembre de 2012 21:19
Hasta: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Karl Auerbach
CC: Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro
Asunto: Re: [governance] ICANN stumbling on a hornet nest

O_O

No more public seats!? Gone the voice of reason is..?

There's QUITE some detail in your diary Karl. I understand how this gives the public information - but how does this become insurance? Could you elaborate please?

-C

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:09 AM, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com<mailto:karl at cavebear.com>> wrote:
On 09/03/2012 03:02 PM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:

>     I am that board member.
>
> Karl, which seat number was it that you occupied at the time?

I don't remember having a number.

I was the first (and only) publicly elected board member for the
so-called "North American" area.  (I use quote marks because I thought
it odd that ICANN's "North America" included Greenland but not Mexico.)

There were five of these publicly elected seats, one for each of ICANN's
geographic regions.  ICANN erased all of these seats so that there would
never again be a public election.

For the most part I thought that the five publicly elected directors
were quite good - and in the North American election I felt that every
candidate, except perhaps one, was extremely well qualified.  Because we
all had to endure at least some degree of public selection the election
process brought to the fore people who tended to be more opinionated
than people who came to their board seats by a "nominating committee"
process in which the criteria is sometimes that of choosing the least
objectionable, most mainstream, rather than those who might give
discomfort or ask too many questions.  There were complaints about the
election process in that in some areas there was a lot of nationalistic
and corporate activity; but that is to be expected when there are
democratic processes - the winner often tends to be he/she who is the
best organized.  (For online elections in these days of social media the
value of corporate money and organization does not seem as strong an
advantage as it is in more political governmental elections; I hope that
this isn't just a transitory or illusory situation.)

Here in the US there were seven of us running for the seat.  Some you
may have heard of - such as Larry Lessig.  All were very good and we had
a very vibrant election process including face-to-face debates (at
Harvard and Stanford universities and several open online debates.)  My
campaign platform is still online at:

http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm

Many aspects of that platform remain important, but I'd like to draw
your attention to one that is close to my heart:

http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm#full-members

I regret one aspect of that platform - I misjudged Louis Touton and did
not give him the credit he deserved.

I also felt that it was important to give to the public the reasons for
what I did when I was on the board, so I kept an on-line diary of my
decisions.  (In order not to step on the toes of others I tried to
record my points of view and not to reflect too much about what other
board members were thinking - I figured that that was their obligation
to perform, or not.)  I received a whole lot of subtle flak from ICANN
for publishing that diary, although it now seems that what I did back
then that was found so objectionable has been adopted to a degree in
ICANN's inclusion of a rationale section in its board meeting minutes.

That diary is still online at:

http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/diary/index.htm

One of the reasons that I maintained that public diary was that I was
(and am) quite aware of the tremendous risks of personal liability that
hang over every director of a non-profit corporation.  Some of these
liabilities seem to be such that they can not be protected against by
any kind of insurance policy.  So, in addition to it simply being "the
right thing to do" I created and maintained that diary so that I, should
the occasion arise, have means to demonstrate that my acts were
legitimately within the "business judgment rule" that protects corporate
directors.

        --karl--

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