Re: [Membership] The People's Republic of ICANN?

[Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com>]

> >>My own suggestion: no classes.  Only people as members.  Anyone coming up
> >>with the initiation fee and the necessary identification can be a member.
> 
> There are 3 suggestions there, which should be analyzed separately:
> 
... 
> - Only people as members. I disagree. Most end-users of domain names and IP
> address (at least for now) are corporations, associations, public-service
> agencies, etc.

And all of these things are formed of people, living breathing people.

If this things want to join, they can send down their president or
corporate secretary or mailroom clerk.

If we allow organzations to be members they are going to say, and they
have said, "we are bigger members than those little individual people, so
we deserve a bigger vote."

And that means:

1) Somebody will have to pull a "bigger" number out of hat and say "this
is your vote size".

2) That bigger vote will often be cast by a very small close group known
as a board of directors or management or chief officer or something like
that.

3) Those people in that corporation/organization can then go out and be
regular members as well, hence multiplying their vote even further.

Each of these means "bias in favor of the entity".

The answer is: One person, one vote; one organization, zero vote.

Of course, people can join into clusters, organizations, or whatever.  
But the power of that cluster ought to be manifested via the votes of the
individuals who chose to adhere to its statement of direction and cast
their individual votes accordingly.

This works very well in practice -- political parties, the NRA (the
National Rifle Association), the AARP (the American Assocation of Retired
People), etc.

And in most political systems we don't allow corporations or organizations
the vote.

So voting on the basis of individuals is quite consistent with day-to-day
practices.  And it does not pour concrete around some arbitrary allocation
of power to organizations and their management.

> And I add: be especially proactive towards the 1st-level end-users of
> ICANN, ie, domain names and IP address holders. Create a way though which
> they can join ICANN at the same time as they register.

I don't know whether you saw the huge fight here in the US over
"motor-voter", -- i.e. allowing people to register to vote when they come
into the Dep't of Motor Vehicles -- it turns out that doing so tends to
"bias" or "correct" the electorate because such a mechanism tends to bring
in voters who would not otherwise have registered.  Whether one likes it
or not depends on whose ox would be gored by those additional voters.

Overall, my own personal opinion is that IP addresses, not DNS, is by far
the biggest issue facing ICANN.  (This isn't to say that DNS isn't
troublesome, but, rather that IP address policies are going to have a
longer and deeper long term impact.)

As such, and outreach program should reach to IP address users even more
than it does to DNS registrants.

		--karl--