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

[George Conrades <gconrades@polarisventures.com>]

I'm in favor of where you're coming out on this.

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Kaplan [mailto:dkaplan@terra-nova.fr]
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 1999 3:23 PM
To: membership@icann.org
Subject: Re: [Membership] The People's Republic of ICANN?


A 17:17 11/02/99 -0000, Dr Nii Quaynor a écrit :
>>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:

- Everyone can join, provided they come up with, etc. As I said in an
earlier message, although I was more inclined to limiting membership to
domain names and IP address holders in the beginning, I now tend to agree.

- 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. I'm not talking about Internet professionals, but all others
who have no reason to join SOs, but want to have a say as users. Letting
their employees join (although it should and can not be prevented) is not
the same, because (i) Organizations are not just sums of individuals and
(ii) There is some hypocrisy in presenting one's position as personal while
it is in reality that of one's organization. Organizations have to be
allowed to join as members.

- No classes. As siegfired has repeatedly pointed out, there are advantages
and drawbacks to that. If there are no classes, those constituencies which
have less members will not be heard, but also, capture by an active
minority is easier. If there are, we face the problem of determining which
are those classes, how many votes they get... And we build in inter-class
conflict.

So my suggestion(s) is/are: No classes. Individuals and organizations can
be members and get one vote each. Anyone coming up with the initiation fee
and the necessary identification can be a member.

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. Include fees in
registration. Mail them an offer to become members as soon as registration
is taken into account.

Thus, replying to Antony Van Couvering: (please do not take that as a
support for the Paris draft. I don't know which DNSO draft has my support)
The idea in the Paris draft, that DNSO (why not all SOs?) members are at
first ICANN members, then can choose to join 0, 1, 2, 3 SOs, is a good one
to me.

Daniel
** Les eLectrophées  -  trophées du commerce électronique  -  19/3/99
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