Adam copied Karl Auerbach on his message. As a non-member he cannot reply directly to the list so I am forwarding.... >>> Karl Auerbach <[log in to unmask]> 8/20/2004 10:09:44 PM >>> I don't expect everyone to agree with me. Many of my positions are very nuanced. For example, I agree with the concept of commercial enterprise and do not consider those who push for commercial gain or advantage (within the limits of law) to be acting improperly. Nor do I find anything wrong or undesirable about the general concept of "government" - government can be the kind of good thing described in the Preamble to the US Constitution. My own approach is to try to define and refine bodies of principle and process that shape and limit the ways in which governance powers are applied to concrete situations. It is my belief that through long term expericence applying and refining such principles that we will eventually come to a regime of internet governance that is acceptable to most of us. I have been very disappointed by ICANN's failure to raise, much less address, questions regarding the principles that should govern (or release from governance) the internet. I ran in an open election against 6 well qualified candidates. My platform was published to the public (it is still online). I won that election. One might argue that I was elected by a small number of the potential voters. However, I was elected by those who actually bothered to take part. And should such an argument be used to try to detract from my legitimacy I would hasten to point out that that argument, were it valid, would apply with rather more force to others who occupy much higher offices. It is a moot question whether I would have won re-election: ICANN dismembered (pun intended) its public election system and intentionally deprived the community of internet users of even a token voice. It is an extremely difficult job trying to speak on behalf of more than 300,000,000 people. During that time I was the only board member who maintained a written public journal of what I decided and why. Anyone who wished to discuss my decisions with me was free to do so. And many did. Several of those discussions altered my views and votes. I, nearly alone among the ICANN board members, did honor the ICANN structure that designated the then-DNSO as the primary source of authority on DNS related matters that should be overridden by the board only on the basis of clearly articulated and compelling arguments. I do not believe that any other member of ICANN's board, past or present, or any member of ICANN's "staff" can show a record of disclosure, open minded discussion and evaluation, or adherence to articulated objective principles that amounts to even a thin shadow of what I did. There are those who like to try to describe me as acting to oppose ICANN in all things. The truth is that I voted with the majority on ICANN's board on something like 86% of the questions that came before us. It was interesting that all of this played out against the backdrop of commercial boards of directors that, like ICANN's directors, failed, and unfortunately continue to fail, to honor their obligations to make independent informed decisions. Consider how things could have played out differently had the directors of Enron pursued their duties of inquiry and independent judgement. Those who are affected by what ICANN does, the community of internet users, the majority of whom engage in non-commercial activities, is almost entirely nullified by ICANN's processes. The community of internet users even though they bear, usually indirectly, huge costs from ICANN's bloated bureaucracy and from ICANN's system of propping up prices for domain names. Unfortunately there are certain industrial actors who find this situation to be to their liking, who have benefited greatly from it, who have apparenly no regard for the costs imposed onto the public at large, and who have obtained effective control over ICANN's decision making processes. I have come to the belief that ICANN has run off the rails and that the remedy requires a return to fundamentals and a willingness to make deep changes to the status quo. Why do we have ICANN in the first place? We certainly don't need yet another legislature enacting laws of trademark policy. But that's what we have in ICANN. And we certainly don't need another regulatory agency, particularly a regulatory agency run by commercial incumbents, that dictates who can and who can not enter the domain name business and under what terms. But that's what we have in ICANN. But we *do* need some body to make sure that the upper tier of the internet's DNS system runs reliably, efficiently, and accurately 24x7x365. And that we do *not* have from ICANN. Despite it being ICANN's reason for existance, ICANN has entirely disengaged from matters that actually concern the reliable and accurate operation of the top layers of the internet's domain name systems. ICANN has abandoned oversight of root server operations and IP address allocation. We, the community of internet users expected ICANN to be a fire-department to protect DNS and IP address systems from danger. This we did not get. This abrogation of responsibility by ICANN has left the internet badly exposed to accidental or intential disruption. ICANN has instead usurped the powers of national legislatures by acting as a supranational legislature enacting economic policies that amount to de facto laws of domain-name based trademarks and imposing arbitrary and anti-competitive business regulations on those who wish to engage in the business of buying, selling, and using domain names. I have proposed remedial measures. These are visible on my website. These measures require explicit definitions of powers and authorities and the creation of governance bodies that precisely encapsulate those powers. The absence of this kind of clarity has led to much of the difficulty we have had with matters of internet governance. The methods and structures that I have proposed are quite consistent with the majority of discussions on these topics that are occuring in fora outside of ICANN. > Regarding communication, Karl appeared in as many if > not more NCUC meetings than any other Board member - I'm not sure about that. I was stretched so thin (being on the board took well in excess of 40 hours/week) that I had to focus more on some matters than on others. Andy M-M may have attended more than I did. > .... It is true that he showed more interest in At Large than NCDNHC > most of the time. I am very much of the belief that the atomic unit of legitimacy is the individual person. It is my strong belief that an organization, commercial or not, only has derivative legitimacy. The force of that derivative legitimacy ought to be in proportion to the degree to which the organization reflects the positions of its members. By-the-way, I do not use the term "at large" in the crippled way that it is used in ICANN's current vocabulary and manifested by the ALAC and its myrid of tributory structures. Rather, I consider "at large" to encompass all people who are affected by the internet (with the phrase "affected by the internet" read very broadly to encompass not merely those who use the net but also those who's life and actions are changed by the existance of the net - in a word, everyone.) --karl--