[governance] Response to personal attacks Re: PIR Case/or the .org sell
Suresh Ramasubramanian
suresh at hserus.net
Sat Nov 30 17:55:59 EST 2019
There is nothing that attacks Norbert personally and these are all criticisms of his actions and viewpoints. I did say “engaging cocos as a first resort instead of reasoned argument” and here is yet another example of the same.
--srs
On Sun, Dec 1, 2019 at 1:53 AM +0530, "parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
On 30/11/19 6:07 AM, Suresh
Ramasubramanian wrote:
Thanks Sheetal, That would be
ideal.
Members should also ideally
refrain from -
Calls to exclude specific
organisations from civil society or this caucus
Attempt to fall back on appeals
to mailing list co-cos in case a wrong argument is called
out
The arguments made that had to be
rebutted were ill informed and made with no particular
technical or business knowledge of the situation,
Sheetal/ Bruno
This is a repeat ad hominem attack even after Sheetal's note,
after the same person having expressed strong agreement with
another person making ad hominem remarks against Norbert.
Are the co-coordinators taking notice?
parminder
and calls in response to exclude
either ISOC, PCH or Bill Woodcock from this list are frankly
an abuse of mailing list procedure.
Thanks
—srs
—srs
On Sat, Nov 30, 2019 at 2:57 AM +0530,
"Sheetal Kumar" <sheetal at gp-digital.org>
wrote:
Dear all,
I'm not going to comment on the substance of the
discussion here as a co-ordinator I feel obliged to step
in and address an issue which has so far excluded people
from entering into discussions, or continuing them. The
issue is one where people feel attacked, whether all
parties included feel the accusation is justified or
not. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to work
together. And as a result, it makes it very challenging
to forge consensus and find areas of agreement. One of
the stated objectives of the IGC is " to develop common
positions on issues relating to Internet governance
policies, and make outreach efforts both for informing
and for creating broad-based support among other CS
groups and individuals for such positions." Instead,
what ends up happening is the conversation goes quiet,
everyone gets on with what they're doing in their own
corners and we achieve little, or nothing, together. I'm
not saying that we need to find consensus on this
particular issue, but if every discussion about a
contentious issue goes this way then that would be very
unfortunate. It even risks putting people off sharing
information.
In the future, I would ask if people want information
in order to be able to make an informed decision or
contribute to a discussion, they are clear about that.
And if you have that information, please consider
offering it in a spirit of humility with the objective
of moving a conversation forward together. You can
always get in touch with Bruna and I if you feel you are
being unfairly treated. I happen to think that this
discussion on this topic has been very rich so far,
clearly full of informed opinions, and could be very
constructive. If you think it would be useful for a
facilitated discussion to happen, we can always organise
a call or find another way to have the discussion. I'm
actually going to share a suggestion on a way forward on
this topic which Bruna and I have discussed on the other
thread.
And in my own personal opinion, we should all care
about who each other is. Humility and compassion are
important in achieving 'good results' in any rational
debate. What these situations prove is that we're not
just having discussions about technical issues in the
spirit of an intellectual exercise. We are all
emotional beings, with our own faults and strengths.
It might help us all in the long-run to think that
way.
Best
Sheetal
On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 at
19:24, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:
> On Nov 29, 2019, at 4:45 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> I felt personally attacked and hurt by that
posting.
Why? Do you, in retrospect, feel that you _were_ trying
to have a conversation in good faith?
> ...which is supposed to be a "civil society"
community, which
> certainly implies in particular that it should not
be an environment
> where "business” people...
Just so we get this straight, you’re saying that
public-benefit, not-for-profit NGOs should be barred
from participation in “civil society” because… what?
Who exactly is legitimately civil society by your
lights? Only people who agree with you? Anyway, this
is a no-true-Scotsman.
Does appealing to third parties to exclude someone who
disagrees with you from conversation, without addressing
their thoughts, strike you as conversation in good
faith?
> ...allowed to dominate the discourse and its
informal rules...
I’m one of an exceedingly small handful of people
representing the unfortunately minority view that there
are multiple sides to this issue. How does that
constitute “domination of the discourse?” Might I not
need to be of the predominant view to dominate the
discourse?
> The Charter of this community explicitly forbids
personal attacks
> (like e.g. "You’re going overboard in your effort
to create FUD." and "You don’t appear to be
> trying to have a conversation in good faith.")
Both are commentary on _what you said_, not _who you
are_. Personal attacks, ad-hominem attacks, are attacks
against a person, not commentary about ideas. I don’t
know or care who you are, I’m only interested in what
you think, and whether it can be used to inform and
refine what I think. I’m trying to draw you into
reasoned discourse about ideas. You’re trying to exclude
me from conversation.
I don’t have any burning need to defend ISOC, and am not
intending to do so; our lawyers have had to send their
lawyers too many nastygrams over their misbehavior over
the years for me to have any interest in representing
them as _good_; however it disturbs me greatly to see
people latching on to one tiny aspect of a large and
complex situation and in doing so march toward
preclusion of the best path to reform that ISOC has had
in a long, long time, without bothering to discuss the
complexities of the situation.
A “personal attack” looks like posting a link to
someone’s biography and demanding that they be silenced
because of who they are. A reasoned discourse looks
like an exchange of views on the topic under discussion.
> In regard to substance, I now think that what Bill
wrote in his
> postings in this thread is largely correct.
Perhaps next time you could reflect on the substance
before, or instead of, attacking.
> For me, being both part of communities of people
who
> strongly believe in the importance of
non-profit-oriented organizing,
> who got betrayed, and being also a member of ISOC,
which did the
> betraying, the issue is quite personal and
emotional for me in more
> ways than one.
I have, myself, been outraged by ISOC betrayals at
various points in the past, but in the interest of my
own sanity, I get over it and get back to work. On the
other hand, seeing an opportunity for ISOC to
disencumber itself of some of the major causes of its
problems gives me hope. I’d rather not see that
opportunity squandered on account of
not-invented-hereism.
> I will certainly accept as a possible source for an
> assumption the intuition of someone who has a lot
of experience dealing
> with the particular topic area (such as in this
case the intuition of
> someone who credibly claims "thirty five years of
experience dealing
> with domain names"). That doesn't imply that I
would necessarily agree
> to also base my thinking on the same assumptions
(in fact I see nothing
> wrong in basing my assumptions on an intuition
shaped by observing that
> very many individuals and communities of people
have been royally
> screwed in unexpected ways, in very many different
contexts, and
> typically with no reasonably available effective
recourse whatsoever,
> by trust and promises getting carelessly broken on
the basis of
> profit-oriented business thinking
Yes, and I agree with that. However, rapacious
capitalism operates within the constraints of the
context of the possible. Every rapacious capitalist does
not simply price everything at a ridiculous price which
precludes it from selling; doing so yields no sales, and
no revenue. Instead, they try to guess (or ascertain
through experimentation) the price which will yield the
maximum net revenue. In the case of PIR and .org,
minimizing expenses has been one path… Maximizing gross
revenue is the other side of that coin. Maximum revenue
is the maximum product of quantity and unit price. An
absurd unit price will reduce the size of the potential
market to just the intersection of those who can afford
the price and those who desire the product. And, in the
case of domain names, those who desire, specifically, an
available domain name. The market has pretty well
established that the retail price that maximizes revenue
is in the neighborhood of USD 10 / year. At that price,
essentially nobody is dissuaded from buying a domain
name, and therefore the second-level namespace gets
fairly thoroughly utilized. Hypothetically, a first-year
10% increase (to USD 11) would have little impact on
gross revenue (less than 10% decrease in number of
sales). A second-year 10% increase (to USD 12) would
have a bit more impact, perhaps lessening the gross
revenue. By the time you get to USD 16, after five years
of maximal increases, quite a few potential customers
will be dissuaded, and will think “I may as well just
register in .com instead, for $10, and pocket the $5
difference,” and the product of price and quantity would
be considerably lower than at $10, or $11, or maybe $12.
The strategy that’s pursued by pharmaceutical
speculators relies upon _inflexible demand_. That is,
they’re “investing” in the rent-extraction rights of
things for which the demand does _not_ change with
price. In their case, because some people who go without
will die. Therefore, everyone who’s capable of doing so
pays whatever price is required of them, no matter how
ridiculous. Nobody is going to die if they have to move
off a .org domain name. And the people who have the most
to lose, also have the most money to spend.
That’s why the rule precluding differential pricing is
so important. It allows all of the .org registrants to
stand together as a class, rather than each being
offered the maximum individual price that they can
stand. If that were to be allowed, ICRC.org would be
priced at millions of dollars per year, while domain
speculators would pay only a few cents. I’m very much
against that, as a matter of equitability.
> "anything that can go wrong will probably go wrong
somewhere, somehow,
> and possibly massively, unless effective measures
are taken to prevent
> the bad things from happening”
Sure, but that has to be balanced against the
possibility of good outcomes as well. Otherwise, no
risks are every taken, and nothing is ever achieved. My
ENTIRE POINT is that the possibility of reforming ISOC
seems to me to be a worthwhile one, and, under Andrew’s
leadership, to have a significant chance of success.
That seems to me to be a risk worth taking, if the cost
is a few dollars a year for ten million .org
registrants. If there were ways of funding actual core
infrastructure and operations that way, rather than
depending upon grants and donations, I’d be all over it,
for instance.
> I did want to respond to that particular posting
and in particular to its personal attacks against me.
If you can identify a personal attack against you,
you’ll have my full apology.
-Bill
--
Sheetal
Kumar
Senior
Programme Lead
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