[MemberPubPol] [chapter-delegates] FYI - in the coming discussion of the WGIG questionnaire

[Vittorio Bertola]

Hello,

I really don't want to take one side or the other of this discussion,
even if (and it's IMHO one of the main problems) most people that
participate in it seem to see things as a matter of "us and them".

First of all, I would like to intervene on the point of "access", since
it is really one of the key ones. I think that giving access to everyone
is not sufficient to make decisions legitimate; decisions are legitimate
only if all people who have a stake in them (not by chance "stakeholder"
is a key word in the entire discussion) are actively seeked for and
encouraged to supply an opinion, and their opinion is clearly taken into
account.

I hesitate to mention, again, a matter of different cultures, as I
understand that this is often taken by the US Internet community as a
sign of anti-Americanism. However, as far as I understand (and correct
me if I am wrong), in the American culture participation is tied to
proactivity. At schools, they teach you how to stand and make a
presentation. You have to go and register if you want to vote. If you
don't like something, you organize campaigns, lobby the government, try
to get the press on your side. If someone says something you don't like,
you have to stand and speak loudly, and if you don't, then it's a pity
for you.

Please realize that there are many parts of the world where the approach
to participation is totally different. In Europe, people see voting as
an intrinsic right and even as a civic duty; groups of interest expect
to be actively consulted when necessary, before decisions are taken. In
many parts of Asia, standing up and speaking loudly to counter the
opinion of someone else is usually seen as an act of extreme
unpoliteness. Actually, the kind of shouting matches that you usually
see at many I* meetings, and that are normal for people from the Western
world, make participation by entire peoples extremely difficult.

So you can't just say, "but doors were open, people could have come and
disagreed, if they wanted". 

Also, you can't pretend that a government officer or a small ISP from
some third world country can afford flying here and there to all these
I* venues just to keep an eye over what's happening, and be able to
express an opinion before things are discussed. The dream of a 5-year
Central Internet Plan is, fortunately, a dream; but at the same time
there is the need to understand that either you actively involve these
people, or they will necessarily complain that no one asked their
opinion before the decisions were taken.

Il giorno lun, 20-06-2005 alle 07:52 -0700, Fred Baker ha scritto:
> Patrick stated that he wanted more inclusiveness, especially to 
> non-insiders - something more multilateral, with better geographic 
> diversity. I'm trying to figure out who is not included that he wants 
> included, and what the definition of an insider is. It's not like the 
> registries or registrars (Verisign, Afilias, etc), for whom there is a 
> technical definition of "insider", run the ICANN board.

I have no special opinion on the members of the ICANN Board. I don't
think they are responsible for every bad decision that ICANN takes (if
not for the reason that, perhaps, they should be a bit more active to
prevent bad decisions from going through).

At the same time, just in the last few months, ICANN decided to:

- reaward the management of .net to Verisign, the company in a position
of sheer dominance in the registry market, notwithstanding an
overwhelming flow of contrary opinions and advices in the public, and
notwithstanding all the problems that Verisign caused with their lack of
compliance with contractual obligations in the management of such a
fundamental Internet resource, i.e. SiteFinder etc.;

- approve the creation of .xxx, something that has deep political and
social implications in the entire online space, and impacts issues such
as freedom of expression, content filtering, public moral, etc,
practically without asking anyone whether it was considered to be a good
idea;

- idem for .cat - and I know that there possibly were consultations with
some governments going on in private, but how come that no one at ICANN
realized how many deep political implications does the decision of
creating "nationalistic TLDs" have, without having designed a
comprehensive and generally agreed policy on that? What will happen if,
say, the Chechnyans will now ask for .che? Or the Kurds?

It is this attitude of addressing issues that are essentially social and
political as if they were just an ordinary matter of business
negotiation (or as if ICANN was legitimately entitled to take global
social and political decisions) that is frightening to so many people
outside the I* community, especially those who don't understand anything
about the technology, but understand social and political issues much
better than those who participate in ICANN.

And that's the kind of things that people use to measure the
inclusiveness of the current system - not the passports of Board
members.

> It's also not 
> like the ICANN board is limited to US and western Europeans; I believe 
> that there is at least one Bulgarian on the ISOC Board, and there are 
> certainly board members from Chile, Mexico, Senegal, Brazil, Japan, 
> China, and a number of other countries. 

Pardon me, that does not make a difference, if the Board, collectively,
is not able to take decisions that satisfy at least a reasonable
percentage of the broader community, or if it ends up taking decisions
(such as the one on .net) that really seem made to propagate the
predominant role of the Western business environment. Again, I do not
see this as a failure of the specific individuals, but rather as a
failure of the system.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...