[At-Large] ICANN Board Nomination

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 30 August 2010 16:54, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> On 08/30/2010 01:01 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> > On 30 August 2010 09:29, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond<ocl at gih.com>  wrote:
>
> > - Outreach is ultimately a shared responsibility that requires ICANN's
> > active support.
>
> I very much disagree.
>
> If ICANN allowed the public a role that had merit and strength then
> there would be an overflow of interest and participation - we saw that
> happen in year 2000.
>


Well, judging from the stats I can
find,<http://members.icann.org/activestats.html>the assertion that the
2000 elections were free of insiders and
self-interested is simply good-old-days nostalgia of dubious accuracy.

Except in Asia, the majority of voters were domain owners. Even including
Asia, the global percentage was 43%. In 2000!!
In the Real World, what percentage of the public at large are domain owners?
In 2000?

The largest single category of occupation listed by voters was "Internet
Business" and second-most was "Computer Software", third was "Business". Of
course, as we well know, business users (and especially "Internet Business"
users) are so badly under-represented and unheard within ICANN that they
were forced to dominate the At-Large elections.

You'd have a far better point to make if the 2000 voter base wasn't so
elitist and insiderish itself. Indeed, I look with concern at its domination
by people who make their living from the Internet and IT. I see no attempt
to involve consumer groups or large NGOs such as the Red Cross as is
happening now.

The 2000 version of ICANN made no effort to get me and my user group (that
was otherwise disinterested in Internet issues) involved; the post-2003
ICANN actively recruited us.

Is the status quo user-friendly? Hell no. But let's not get wrapped up in
romantic memories of bygone days when the proletariat (that was neither geek
nor suit) ran ICANN.

Put the promised 50%+ of ICANN's board seats up for public election from
> slates of candidates who need pass no insider nomination process and I
> guarantee you that the public participation in ICANN would go up by many
> orders of decimal magnitude.
>

I wouldn't trust such a guarantee to be anything more than Internet insiders
lining up power bases that would show zero interest in ICANN the day before
or the day after the requisite beauty contest. At least now there is a
reasonable policy-advancement regime and forced regional balance, while the
maturity still isn't there yet there is visible progress.



> ICANN's "reform" of year 2002 and 2003 was intentionally designed to
> debilitate the public in ICANN.  It has worked.
>

Your notion of "public" is foreign to me, and clearly vice versa. And one
person's "insider" is another person's "someone with a track record".

- Evan