Re: [Membership] Re: Individual Memberships

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

At 15:48 15/02/99 +0000, Dr Nii Quaynor wrote:

>
>Can we realistically have an ICANN without corporate sponsorship? Why is
>corporate sponsorship considered harmful in this case? How can the perceived
>dangers of corporate sponsorship be contained?
>
>Nii
> 
Dear Nii,

Your questions will probably generate a lot of replies. 
Corporate sponsorship to any large extent is always harmful for a policy
making body. Why?  Financial dependence. Conflicts of interest. You didn't
really mean to ask that question without knowing the answer, did you?

Could you think of an FCC, sponsored by the big telco's or the Broadcasting
industry?

The best way to contain the  dangers associated with having corporate
paymasters, is to create a very large individual membership base.
If this is not done pro-actively, ICANN will not find many individual
members beyond the 2000 or so, who populate these policy lists.
That's not enough to make ICANN financially independent.

If ICANN is going to survive from taxing the DN owners, even indirectly,
it *must* give them representation. 
All of them. As simple as that.





--Joop--
http://www.democracy.org.nz/model.html