[ICANN-EU] A Proposal for an Open and Bottom-Up Self-Organization of theMembership

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@vitaminic.net>]

Here is the document I've just submitted as answer to the CPSR call
for proposals. I am very interested in getting comments from as many
people as possible (sorry about the length...)
Regards,

-----
A Proposal for an Open and Bottom-Up Self-Organization of the
Membership
by Vittorio Bertola - vb (at) vitaminic.net

General principles

The following proposal is being made starting from a very generic
point of view, so that it can be applied to ICANN At Large, but can
also serve as a model for a more generic type of political and social
Internet self-governance structure. ICANN's role has often been
overestimated if compared to the actual technical functions it has to
perform, but it cannot be neglected that ICANN is the first experiment
of democratic self-governance of the Internet open to the general
public. The attention and the visibility that ICANN and its model,
especially in some countries, has gained, is a highly valuable asset
for those who believe in an open and fair management of the Internet.
So the ideas exposed herein, even if applied to specific ICANN
concepts, try to establish a system for the Internet self-governance
as a whole, independently from the specific issues that must be dealt
with.

On one hand, it is clear that a couple of Directors cannot, in any
way, be able to represent democratically a whole continent with
thousands (and possibly, in future, millions) of members without a
structure behind them. Moreover, most Regions are constituted by a
high number of countries with very different languages, laws, Internet
penetration, and political attitudes. It is quite hard to believe that
a single person can speak all the languages spoken in his continent
and know the needs and ideas of all the Internet communities in his
continent. All countries and communities that cannot get a Director
(that is, all but one or two per Region) will possibly not feel enough
represented in ICANN, and this could easily lower the credibility and
acceptance of ICANN in many parts of the world.

While it is true that a Director should have the freedom of deciding
by himself his positions and then to be held responsible for them by
the membership at the following elections, it is also true that he
must have a way to obtain a clear input from his basis. Many of the
issues that Directors will have to solve are controversial and tied to
specific and contrasting interests of many parties. This is why, while
reaching general "rough consensus" should be the best way to go, it is
utopian to think that there will never be the need to cast votes to
define which is the prevailing opinion in the membership, and to take
deliberations with which significant parts of the membership do not
agree. This is a fundamental part of democracy: when no voting is
involved, no democracy exists.

All democracies in the world have a President or Prime Minister with
great operational powers, but also have an elective and formally
structured Parliament in which policies are defined by voting.
Decision-making processes who cannot count on formal structures and
quantitative checks are much more open to distortions and impositions
from the top, especially if, as in this case, big economical and
political interests are involved. Without such formal intermediate
structure, a malicious party could easily settle a "claque" in any At
Large forum or mailing list and then claim that its opinion is widely
supported by the membership even if this is not true.

On the other hand, each individual should be allowed to express his
opinion in an environment small enough to give it at least some chance
to be heard and considered. Direct democracy is fine and must be kept
for fundamental decisions - i.e. the election of the Directors, or the
approval of membership by-laws - but it cannot be applied to day by
day decisions on complex questions that require in depth analysis
before being solved. Moreover, discussing in a forum with 1000 persons
- let alone millions - is like not discussing at all; if the only way
to consider issues and take decisions is to discuss them in a similar
environment, the only possible result is either that no decision is
taken, or that decisions are taken somewhere else and then imposed
loudly over the noise. Generic At Large forums would also raise
language issues, and would possibly cut off from active participation
all members who do not speak English well - and in most countries of
the world they are the majority of the members. This is why some
intermediate levels of aggregation in the membership are necessary to
maintain its democracy - and they would also be an incentive for local
questions related to Internet self-governance to be treated at local
level in a democratic way.

So, resuming:
1. An intermediate At Large Council, with elected members representing
all different Internet communities, must be created to support
Directors and host high level discussions inside the membership; it
could be worldwide, regional, or both.
2. Reasonably small communities should exist inside the membership, to
give everyone a place in which, be it at a very local or very global
level, he can express his opinion and be active; these communities
should express members of the At Large Council.

So, the Membership should be constituted by a set of different
"communities", and so on, with a level of depth that may vary over
time and space to keep the system manageable, and that can be decided
from the bottom, rather than from the top.

I am quite sure that many will come up with the proposal to divide the
At Large community into smaller communities according to a given
principle; there will be people proposing to create communities and
choose representatives by country, others that would do it by
occupation or business affiliation, or by delegating it to existing
intermediate organizations. Each possible criterion has its advantages
and disadvantages, and we could discuss for months about which one is
the best. 

An answer, in my opinion, comes from the Internet itself. The Internet
has grown from the bottom as a network of independent networks. This
approach has proven in the last years to be a winning one, and to be
able to maintain a high level of freedom, flexibility, and suitability
to very different needs while making the overall system work.

This is why the winning approach, IMHO, is to apply this "bottom-up
network of networks" model also when structuring the Internet
socially, and leave the choice of his affiliation to every single
member. Any number of At Large members should be able to start an "At
Large Community" (ALC) according to any principle they want: so you
could have the German ALC, but also the Linux Users ALC, or the Rock
Music Lovers ALC, or the People Who'd Like To Marry Esther Dyson ALC.
You could have very small ALCs, i.e. just a handful of friends in the
same town, but also very big ALCs, with thousands of members all over
the world and an elaborate internal organization, maybe with further
subdivisions and groups; some ALCs could try to act as parties,
aggregating members around some principles and proposals, while some
others could try to represent all parties in a specific country or
environment and mediate their different opinions. Everyone would be
able to choose the community whose principles he likes more, or even
to start a new one, if he is not satisfied with any existing ALC. Each
ALC should be free to self-organize itself, and to decide in turn how
to manage itself and gather consensus among its members, and its
internal rules in general.

This would create some sort of competition at a very distributed level
between ALCs to gather the highest number of members, which could
hugely raise the ability of the At Large Membership in its totality to
grow, and would be a warranty for a level of democracy and personal
freedom in the system that forced affiliation choices (i.e. national
At Large chapters through which At Large Council is elected) would not
grant. On the other hand, members could get a very near and practical
way to be involved in ICANN's matters, without getting lost in a
generic forum with thousands of other members.

Then, each ALC should have a weight in the process of reaching
consensus and gathering input for the Directors, related to its number
of subscribers. In other words, each ALC would elect a number of
representatives in the At Large Council, proportional to the number of
its members, and with any system it likes. Also ICANN's organizational
burden would be very small: it would just need to keep a registry of
all existing ALCs, with no special requirements for any member to
create a new entry inside it, and to let each member choose and change
its community of affiliation via a Web form. And affiliations should
not necessarily be public, to preserve one's privacy - something that
could be more difficult if the only instrument a member had to express
a position was to post a message in a forum, rather than to choose and
support a community that shares his views.

The beauty of this model to me is that an exact, democratic and
"glocal" way of discussing, measuring consensus and taking decisions
is established, but no specific rules are imposed to the membership as
a whole, leaving every member free to self-organize himself and to
defend his ideas simply by aggregating with others who share it and
thus gaining a weight in the Council.

Moreover, issues like how to create effective forums and discussions
among the membership are on one hand simplified by subdividing the
members in smaller groups, and on the other delegated to local
distributed decisions, so that each community can find the instruments
most suitable for itself to discuss, including the choice of the
language(s) and media. Trying to define and adopt centrally a single
approach to Web and e-mail communication with and among members is not
only incredibly hard, but is certainly less democratic and effective
than letting every group choose the way it likes.

To conclude, a word must be spent about the issue of membership fees.
At Large membership must be free: otherwise only persons and entities
with a direct economical interest will be keen to pay-per-vote. If we
agree that everyone should cast a vote to elect ICANN's Board, then
this possibility should not be subordinated to one's economical
wealth. So it should be funded via a percentage on domain
registrations, or by private and public efforts. The same should
happen to support activities of Directors and ALC representatives in
the Council: again, if no source of funding is given to those who want
to be engaged in such activities and can show adequate support by the
membership, the only active persons in ICANN At Large will be those
who have partial economical interests behind them. It is also
important that membership applications are reopened in year 2001 to
allow for new people to get in, including those who tried to do it in
year 2000 but were stopped by various technical problems on ICANN's
site.

Operational steps

I don't really mind, right now, if you like or don't like my proposal.
The important step is to move forward and establish a legitimate and
effective process through which my proposal and the others can be
reviewed, discussed, and eventually adopted.

There is clearly an egg-and-chicken problem: it is impossible to
establish a truly legitimate At Large Council without a set of rules
to define its structure and composition, and it is impossible to write
such rules in a democratic and open way without a Council to do it.
The only possible way to overcome this problem in my opinion is to
establish a temporary At Large Organizing Committee with a membership
wide enough to be representative (20-40 members plus the At Large
Directors) and composed by people who:
- have already shown some level of support among the membership in
this year's election process;
- have already proven their willingness to devote time and energy to
this process;
- can contribute to the Committee geographical, social and political
diversification.
My practical proposal to move forward is to have a public call for
participation; responses to this call will be reviewed by the
Directors, who are at the moment the only formally legitimate
representatives of the membership, and who should try to respect a
plurality of opinions and to form a Committee reflecting the
geographical and social proportions existing in the At Large
membership.

Being a self-nominated council, the ALOC should have a mandate very
limited in time and purpose: to choose a principle for membership
self-organization, write a set of rules to apply it in practice, and
have them approved by the membership with a direct and general vote,
to be held no later than March 31, 2000. For this to happen, either
the vote will have to be managed directly by ICANN, or a list of the
member should be provided to the ALOC under a non-disclosure
agreement. A very limited number of alternative proposals, rather than
a single one, could be submitted to the members' vote.

As one may notice, there is no direct ICANN involvement in this
process, except for technical issues such as validating the members'
list. While it would be great to have ICANN Board's support to this
process, I want once again stress the point that this must be a
bottom-up process, so that internal rules of the At Large membership
are defined and approved by the membership itself.


-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology