Re: [atlarge-discuss] at-large representativeness

[espresso@e-scape.net]

At 09:39 -0500 2002/09/26, Stephen Waters wrote:
>The point of the At Large is not to force or invent representativeness,
>but to create the opportunity for quality representation. While you
>cannot coerce people into voting, writing their MPs, etc., you can set
>up the system to allow for and respond to that input.

Precisely. But representativeness is very much in the eye of the beholder. 

There are in excess of 500,000,000 Internet users in the world now but it can be argued they're not representative of the general population since they're partly self-selected, since they may have somewhat more education than the average, since not everyone has access to computers, etc., etc.

On the other hand, marketing organizations, political pollsters and other statisticians find that a random sample of 3000 drawn from a population of 30,000,000 is 90-95% representative of that population 19 times out of 20.

Voting in elections in most countries is not mandatory and the elections are not invalidated if even 70% of the population stays home on polling day: it's tacitly assumed that those who do turn up to vote are representative of the opinions of those who stayed home.

Organizations like governments and television networks make similar assumptions: if 1000 people write letters to their MPs or protest the cancellation of a television programme, they are each taken to represent at least a hundred more who didn't bother to write but feel the same way.

Under the circumstances, I don't think it would be too difficult to make a scientifically-valid case that an At Large *is* representative if (and only if)
a) its membership is open and free to all, and the option well-publicized to the whole world, not just the "western" countries;
b) it can attain a membership of 1% of the general population in each of its constituent parts (whether by country, language group, or continent) as measured by some reliable authority (national censuses, the UN, whatever);
c) a majority of its membership do vote in its elections, which are conducted in such a way that election fraud is no more likely than in elections held by democratic governments.


>I'm not a domain owner, but I want to be. I believe that ICANN's
>non-democratic and non-free-market structure is to blame for overpriced
>domains, SSL certs, and other vertical monopoly structures that prevent
>working class folk like myself from participating.
>
>. I have the cheap Linux box
>. I have the static IP
>
>Is there any reason other than ICANN's horribly lame qualification
>process as to why I cannot afford a domain? Is there any chance for
>change without individuals having an *effective* voice in the process?
>
>No, compliments of entrenched interests.

Though I deplore ICANN's methods in general, I am not sure why anyone in the developed world could not afford a domain name. My own costs me about $15 Canadian which is equal to something less than $10 U.S. these days. (It's from http://www.bluegenesis.com and they don't only deal with ".ca" domains  if that helps; I forget what they charge to redirect but it wasn't exhorbitant even for a worker at the poverty-line here, assuming one was willing to skip a few meals.) 

There are quite a number of Web hosting companies which will throw in your domain name free if you host with them; in many cases you can get a "business card" site cheaply and use it to provide links to an external site located on a free server. There are also a number of community networks which offer individuals very inexpensive hosting; some also accept small businesses and almost all are open to hosting a non-profit organization's site for free or at minimal cost.

What actually does cost a fortune is becoming a registrar for other people's domain names. ICANN artificially limits TLDs and sets the price of becoming a registrar for a TLD. Registrars then charge the rest of the world what they think the market will bear. The good news is that ISPs can choose a registrar who will give them a cheap rate for registrations, then choose not to try to make big profits on the domain registrations they handle. 

This summer when my domain was coming up for renewal, I was bombarded with e-mail and postal mail from various sub-registrars (some of them pretending I was registered with them already) offering my renewal at reduced rates, roughly equivalent to what I was paying since (being something of a nationalist) I had registered with the Canadian firm which offered the best rate in the first place. I haven't explored this but I'm sure if you could live with a country's TLD extension, some countries charge even less.

If you need hosting, take a look at http://www.portland.co.uk -- free,  ad-free sites for individuals, and quite inexpensive options for a non-profit that wants to run its own virtual ISP offering free sub-domain sites to its members. (Much cheaper, in fact, than the so-called non-profit ISP an organization I belong to uses.)

>p.s., Honestly, I can't imagine any technical reason why domains cost
>more than $5/year -- especially after reading the results of Karl
>Auerbach's tests for millions of TLDs under BIND. DNS is just fucked.

I don't think there is one -- just a commercial reason why ICANN set things up so that registrars have high costs to recoup as well as big profits to make, so the stock of "available" domains is artificially limited to keep the price up.

HTH,

Judyth

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Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
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"A word to the wise is sufficient. For others, use more."
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