Re: [icann-eu] Draft comments on Study Committee

[Marc Schneiders <marc@schneiders.org>]

On Thu, 23 Nov 2000, at 09:29 [=GMT+0100], Harald Alvestrand wrote:

> At 00:45 23/11/2000 +0100, Marc Schneiders wrote:
> >Are the organizations you mention or at least some of them, "open to
> >*all*"? Would it be possible for a 100,000 people to join them?
> 
> Certainly several of the non-commercial organizations that are NCDNHC 
> members could use another 100.000 members (for example the Internet Society).

Though I do not think a membership fee should be excluded from
consideration, the Internet Society's way of using this to limit
membership to stakeholders, charging over 100 Euro here for a personal
membership, does not make me look favourable upon its 'democratic'
character. And they advertize the membership as being suitable for
'internet professionals' not for everyone interested. (I am only
familiar with the policies of the Dutch ISOC, others may be
different.)

In fact, I think ISOC is captured by other than users' interests. The
At Large could be captured also, I know. But it is not a false start,
as ISOC would have been.

> >Or are you telling me in a friendly manner, I did not understand what
> >the white paper is referring to? That is possible, naturally.
> 
> The argument was raised to me that the (relatively few) persons who cared 
> enough to get well informed would also find it easy to participate using 
> existing mechanisms, and therefore the At Large is not needed.

Like join the ga@dnso.org? The fact that everyone may participate in
bodies like the IETF, which you mentioned earlier, is, I think,
irrelevant here. These require a technical background. 

> I do not agree - I think a wider participation is good, and the number of 
> people who care enough to get informed is not small.

I sense some 'leave-it-to-the-engineers' here. I am too sensitive
probably. Ideas about political 'systems' are functioning below
surface all the time in these discussions. I find this confusing at
times, especially when practical aspects and principles of internet 
politics are mixed.

> But we still have 6 billion people who are not At Large members - any time 
> we ask other orgs if they scale to 100.000, we can get asked about whether 
> we could scale to 6 billion.

There are hundreds of millions, yes, who are users of the internet. If
they all join, there might be problems getting the PINs to them.

> Just making the point that while it seems to us that the At Large is 
> obvious given the white paper text, it is not the only possible implementation.

Point taken, with thanks.

-- 
Marc Schneiders (rest in header)