[governance] Debunking eight myths about multi-stakeholderism

[Karl Auerbach]

On 4/29/15 10:23 AM, Barry Shein wrote:
> Ok, let's try this then:
>
> Is EFF a stakeholder?
No.   No thing that exists merely as an abstraction of law or accounting 
ought to be given power in the making of decisions.

EFF employs many human people who would all be proper holders of a 
franchise to participate in the making of whatever decision is to be 
made.  Each of whom would be free to follow the EFF position or not.

EFF as an organization would, of course, be able to provide its 
expertise - as would any other organization from the NRA to the ITU to 
Boeing to Joe's Bar and Grill - but it would merely be proffered advice 
and would have no weight in the making of decisions beyond its power to 
persuade those (individual humans) or a human who has been designated by 
those people to act on their behalf, in other words a designated 
representative.

I am amused by how easy it is to corrupt stakeholder systems.  Under 
ICANN's rubric I have many hats in which I am a "stakeholder" and get to 
put my replicated thumb multiple times onto the scale of decision.  I 
am, of course, a user of the internet, I own and control several 
for-profit corporate entities, I participate in several non-profit 
organizations, I hold domain names and IP addresses from before the era 
of ICANN and the RIRs, I've authored full internet standards, I own 
several trademarks and many copyrights and even some patents, I'm a 
citizen of more than one country, and I am also an attorney (both 
California and US Federal).

So under a system of stakeholders I get more places to stand and try to 
project my influence than the average internet user.   That, of course, 
doesn't mean that I get my way - I tend to espouse rather liberal 
human-over-corporation values - which clearly face huge mountains of 
opposition.  But there are others who are far more capable and 
manipulative than I am, and have far more resources, money, and time.  
Consider the trademark protection lobby - they are quite well funded, 
well focused, and under the ICANN system they get, and use, multiple 
"stakeholder" seats (as intellectual property interests, as business 
interests, via their exaggerated influence in governments, and via the 
"at large").

When one recognizes mental abstractions - such as the collection known 
as EFF or the collection known as Verizon - to have the piece of the 
power to make decisions then that reduces the power of humans.  It's a 
zero-sum game - the more we give to legal fictions, such as corporations 
or trade groups, then the less there is for individual people.

I am reminded of some of the mud that was thrown at the ICANN elections 
in year 2000: that some countries and large corporations were trying to 
influence their employees to vote in certain ways, and that as a 
consequence it was asserted that those elections were tainted.  Yet 
under the stakeholder system those same countries and corporations would 
get actual power, actual votes - why care about the opinions of mere 
people when the CEO can decide what is good for them?

             --karl--



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