| At Large Membership and Civil Society Participation in ICANN |
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Bret Fausett's Modest Proposal: Bring Back Elected Directors
posted by michael on Wednesday November 24 2004, @05:34AM
Bret Fausett is the kind of guy who is considered reasonable by ICANN insiders, if not exactly necessarily 'one of us'. He's generally supportive of ICANN, but not uncritical at times. So it's interesting to see him making the following modest proposal in light of ICANN's budget metastasis:
Is it time to bring back the election of
At-Large Directors? I think so. I've been reading the ICANN Strategic
Plan. It's a nice document. These are all fine goals. But when you step
back from it and think about the totality of what ICANN is trying to
do, you realize that ICANN hasn't made any hard choices about
priorities. The new budget allows it to fund everything. So let's get
back to the At Large. Remember, one of the reasons we abandoned the
concept of global, online elections was because it wasn't "affordable" (see 'Whereas' Clause #14). The new ICANN, however, can afford it. So when can we start?
There are of course many very difficult problems with online elections other than cost, notably the issues as to who votes and how one authenticates the voters. But Bret knows all this. His deeper point, I suspect, is that a fat ICANN is a fat target, and it would have been smarter to be thin and lean.
But how often, despite the frequent lip service, has ICANN shown any signs of understanding this?
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Bret Fausett's Modest Proposal: Bring Back Elected Directors
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Corporations with millions of shareholders manage to have elections, and it is neither a huge expense nor hassle.
It is unfortunate that the discussion of elections and ICANN is always co-opted into various folks' pet notions of "internet users" and "global democracy" and other nonsense, while the people who ACTUALLY have something at stake - domain name registrants - continue to be denied a voice in the organization that determines the rules which govern the assets which make them, uh, domain name registrants.
It's simple. One domain name, one vote. If ICANN can't figure out how to authenticate such a vote then it is high time for them to get out of the business of formulating policy for things like domain name transfers.
Bret is a domain name registrant, which is a good thing. It would be a great thing to clear the decks of the Dudley Do-Rights of the ICANN policy world that have never registered nor managed a domain name.
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...is a complete failure. ICANN spends over $150,000 a year on the ALAC, which seems to be stillborn, yet which is still cited in its Strategic Plan as the answer to public accountability.
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None of those people are elected. They work in the executive branch. They are either appointed by the President, by one of his subordinates, or via he civil service system.
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Hermione Granger is a fictional character (from the Harry Potter series). Is there some point to this list of (not all real) names?
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