Re: [IFWP] RE: [Membership] A Model for Community & Global -

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

At 05:31 22/02/99 -0500, Tom Lowenhaupt  wrote:

>I created the model because ICANN is looking for a mechanism to
>facilitate electing At-Large members to the Board of Governors. The
>model provides bona fide voters.
>
>An ICANN link with local governments that certify Internet users is one
>way to organize a global voting list. I suspect that a year 2000
>election following the model I outlined would offer hundreds of thousand
>bona fide Internet users.
>
>It might not be the final solution but a good second step.
>
Hello Tom,

Good thing that you braced yourself.  You have obviously given good thought
about your model for a cyber-neighbourhood, but the idea of local
governments certifying internet users or ICANN voters is probably an
afterthought.  A bad one, IMHO.

With all due respect, Tom, have you experienced much of the world outside
NY City?
Not everywhere you find the enlightened attitude that you and perhaps under
your guidance, your local community Board, display towards the Net. In many
places, on-line gatherings of locals are seen as a threat to the local
powers-that-be.

Local Governments in many places are the worst talent-pools of puffed-up
bureaucratic self-importance that you can find. Especially in countries
where Central Government leaves very little of importance for local
government to decide.
To give such people the power to certify or to withhold certification to
internet users will be abhorrent to all that are familiar with such local
councils or their employees.
Just think of a municipality somewhere in the Third world, where the son of
the mayor runs the only ISP/cybercafe...

Why empower unnecessary layers of  incompetent (or corrupt, at worst)
bureaucracy, when millions of internet users have already certified
themselves by registering a Domain Name?   





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