[governance] ICANN stumbling on a hornet nest

Tue Sep 4 01:56:32 EDT 2012

It wasnt boring at all Alex - thanks - yes it is indeed surprising to see
there are many angles to the same issue.

-Chaitanya

PS: I was actually reading through Jovan Kurbalija's excellent
"Introduction to IG" - and I feel it's a reminder of how different people
perceive IG differently. More so the people that publicize it (but dont
know what it is - I'll say 'media' in general here).

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Baruch <
apisan at unam.mx> wrote:

>  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
>
> ! !! !!! !!!!
> NEW PHONE NUMBER - NUEVO NÚMERO DE TELÉFONO
>
>
>
> +52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD
>
> +525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO
>
> SMS +525541444475
>      Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
> UNAM, Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico
>
> Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty
> Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn,
> http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty
> ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org
> .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
>   ------------------------------
> *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> 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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>
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