Re: [ICANN-EU] The real challenge for all of us as candidates

[Alexander Svensson <svensson@icannchannel.de>]

Christoph,

>> It would help you evaluating the people we need at the ICANN BoD are
>> "consensus technicians" ie diplomats and peace makers.
>
> I'm not sure about that. I think consensus isn't hard to reach,
> provided you have the right folks in. Maybe we already have too
> much diplomats and peace makers in that organization.

...and you decide about "the right folks" or do
you leave that to Esther Dyson? ;)

> Admittedly hindsight is cheap, but wouldn't we be better of
> if Dyson had acquired a principled stand from start on instead
> trying to please everyone ?

ICANN is not an Esther Dyson enterprise. "Trying to 
please everyone" or, to use the legalese you seem to
hate, stakeholder representation was not only part of
the US Government decisions when setting up ICANN.
Remember that even Jon Postel tried to reform the DNS
*with* WIPO and INTA -- because he saw that it was
inevitable.

I don't think there is any benefit in pretending not to
see that there *are* different interests that can come
into conflict, including but not limited to
governmental, registrar, intellectual property, gTLD and
ccTLD registry, ISP, academic, civil society and 
individual users interests. Some are well organized, some
are hard to organize. It may very well be that a telecom
engineer, an ISP engineer and a engineer at a University
computing center share similar views and would reach a
consensus fast, yet just as I don't want lawyers to rule 
the world or the Net, I don't wan't engineers to rule it 
either. But I have the impression that most people 
concerned with ICANN see both sides of the story, so it
is more a question of emphasis than of either-or.

Best regards,
/// Alexander