Re: [ICANN-EU] Independent support for Jeanette Hofmann

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@vitaminic.net>]

On Sun, 27 Aug 2000 21:04:16 +0200, you wrote:

>Indeed, the whole point is that, if they don't participate in voting now
>it is a sign of not caring (very much). I don't feel that "accepting"
>ICANN is of any concern: they just have to, or boycott it, which is very
>difficult.

It's not so difficult. What if the national registries for 3-4 (or more)
major European countries do not pay their ICANN fee? Do you think that their
ccTLDs will (or should) be removed from the root? (BTW, this is a good
question for all candidates.)

There's a clear principle in US politics called "no taxation without
representation", and we already saw that many, here in Europe, are ready to
use it. I agree that a higher care should have been taken in all nations to
get a reasonable number of members, but I'm not sure that if major media did
not run campaigns on this then their countries should be damaged on such an
important (but very specialized) matter. Who should apply to get a
representative number of members: the local community or ICANN? ICANN
itself, by the way, has deliberately privileged some countries over the
others, by making available its site in eight national languages and not in
others. I guess that this has a significant influence on the number of
members.

In the end, the current distribution of At Large members across Europe is
very different from the distribution of Internet users, registered domains
or whatever number you could think of as a reasonable way to measure
Internet usage. So if the method chosen to elect the representatives does
not reflect the actual distribution, it is the method to be wrong, not the
reality.
-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology