Re: [IFWP] The ICANN Ruckus

["A Gehring" <alg@open.org>]

Jay.

You speak to the very heart of my concerns about the creation of our new
ICANN.

While I am not prepared to subscribe to any conspiracy theories
regarding media coverage or lack thereof:

Absent a need for revolution the process for creating new governance
fora is pretty boring stuff, and as such not a ratings booster for our
commercial media.

Suggest that you take this call to the small subset of our nations
retirees who have committed their leisure years to working in behalf of
their own progeny.

These may be the only folk who possess both the wisdom to understand the
importance of setting the ICANN up on a solid democratic foundation, and
the time to dedicate to  a task that bears no semblance of emergency or
avenue for producing family income.

Good luck finding them. Most are spending down the accumulated wealth of
their children's ancestors to buy motor homes, winter homes, summer
homes, and other vehicles for immediate self gratification and personal
palliative care.

The population of Limbaughdites will be the most difficult to reach. You
should not even waste your time on them at this juncture.  You must wait
until the ICANN delivers upon them significant degrees of pain.   New
Law for the Digital Conquest:  'This will not take long.'  If we fail
now, all is not lost, for this powerful polity will  likely be motivated
by the Year 2024.  You are still young.  They will be there for you if
and when it really gets ugly.

And, You will not have to ask CNN to come.  If it is war, They will
cover it.

My preference, like yours, is to just do it right at start up.  Then my
children and their peers can work, watch football, sing songs, pay
taxes, vote, and live happy; free of the Digital Tyranny that never
happened.

Arnold  Gehring
alg@open.org
I want the vote.

Tuesday, August 17, 1999 6:28 AM Jay Fenello wrote:
>
>Here's another story on ICANN that
>properly frames the debate.  And it
>is exactly this perspective that is
>being suppressed by the media.
>
>Excerpts from:
>
>
>http://intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue280/item6052.asp
>
>The ICANN Ruckus
>by James Love
>
>As presently constituted, ICANN could make policy on issues like spam,
>copyright enforcement, privacy, standards for digital contracts or
funding
>Internet access in sub-Saharan Africa. It could do this and much more,
or
>it could do very little other than attend to narrow technical issues.
In
>other words, ICANN, via its own discretion, might just become the
driving
>governing voice of the Net.
>
>ICANN will have governmental-type powers, but it will ultimately be a
>private corporate entity. It can (and has) changed its bylaws at will,
>needing just a two-thirds majority.
>
>ICANN critics share a deep unease about concentrating this much power
over
>the Internet in the hands of a private and largely unaccountable body.
>
>It is becoming clear that ICANN is an entirely new system of governance
for
>the Internet.
>
>Under the current proposals, ICANN can pursue its own governance
agendas,
>be captured by various special interests, and make policy decisions
that
>are of great importance.
>
>Froomkin notes that the Magaziner White Paper, and its offspring like
>ICANN, are not proposals for no rules, but rather for shifting
>responsibility for who will make rules, without any clear answers about
how
>the public's rights are protected.
>
>When we talk about "self governance," we need to begin to talk about
who is
>the "self" and what is the "governance." We are inventing a new world
>government for cyberspace, but we are not creating a new world
democracy in
>cyberspace, and this is the problem.
>
>Let's go back to the drawing board and rethink governance in
cyberspace,
>with the explicit goals of protecting individual rights and providing
>democratic accountability.
>
>+++
>
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Jay Fenello
>President, Iperdome, Inc.    404-943-0524
>-----------------------------------------------
>What's your .per(sm)?   http://www.iperdome.com
>
>"All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is
>ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third,
>it is accepted as self-evident." (Arthur Schopenhauer)
>
>
>