From: phil osborn (philosborn@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Nov 02 1999 - 23:24:56 MST
Posted to ICANN 11.02.99
Phil Osborn, netizen
philosborn@hotmail.com
I attended the Sunday Workshop sponsored by the Berkman Center. At Sunday's
end, I pointed out the inadequacies of the proposed voting model. First, it
excludes the majority constituency by default. Most people are not on line,
yet are impacted by ICANN’s policies re future access. On the other hand,
the stake in the internet
varies, so why should everyone get an equal vote?
I prefaced this with - "who owns the internet?" The tragedy of the commons
looms, with all the possible related disasters discussed earlier on Sunday:
intractable conflicts of interest, covert subversion/capture of ICANN by
special interests, simple Board incompetence, etc.
I pointed out that perhaps a better solution is to create natural incentives
as exist when those with a stake also have control. Why not make ICANN a
shareholding trust, with domain name holders getting one voting share each?
Why not make it a profit-making trust, owned by the world? Where then the
conflict of interest? With Martians?
There are many possibilities for structuring such an organization to avoid
problems: capture by special-interest coalitions, monopoly-pricing concerns.
There is, however, a false premise implicit here.
ICANN does not have a true monopoly. There is nothing preventing
competitors from setting up their own systems of naming, and they have, are,
and will be doing so, from AOL to company intranets. A country wishing to
keep its citizens isolated and controlled could set up an incompatible
naming system, even incorporating
high-level state-enforced encryption to keep all communications segregated
to that jurisdiction.
Should ICANN’s pricing or regulation of domain name assignment become too
onerous, anyone could start another internet, offering their own unique
naming system, with all kinds of built-in features - e.g., backlinks as in
Xanadu, or credibility-based filtering matrices, as I have suggested for
decades, or a real social contract, as I have pushed since the ‘70’s - and
surely with transparent links to
ICANN’s version.
The bugaboos of ICANN taking over the world for the Borg or becoming so
dispute-mired that it can no longer function are perhaps less important
considerations than the potential benefits of doing things right. If the
current proposed structures are implemented, then perhaps they will work
well enough. There are many very good
people involved who are dedicated to that goal, and often good people of
common will can surmount structural problems and stand fast against evil.
I would hope, however, that participants might think of themselves as
sorcerers, as in “Another Roadside Attraction,” i.e., as those who deal with
sources. We all can recall numerous cases - any major computer hardware/OS
design - verifying that an organization's founding forever determines its
potential, its strengths, its weaknesses.
Let us not merely accept what might work. Muddling through may make it for
now, but it sets a poor standard. As sorcerers we should aim higher - add
some real magic.
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