Re: Proposed Replacement Re: Johnson, Farber, Maher and Cochetti

[Salvador Vidal <salva@jumpersoft.com>]

At 00:27 26/05/98 -0700, you wrote:
>My reading of the Johnson, Farber, Maher and Cochett text is that they
>are grasping at straws trying to find some way to establish legitimate
>constituency definitions and boundaries so they can mount a voting
>system that is guaranteed to be fair to all, and which draws some of
>its structure from the US Constitutional Voting Scheme.
>
>However, when you look at domain names as being surrogate citizens,
>you discover that they do not represent much of anything that needs to
>be allocated 50% of the votes on an unwieldy 18 member Names Council.
>
>In my view, this is simply no way to assure that all the voices that
>need to be given a fair hearing will get one, because the
>constituencies are not well defined, as they are with the concept of
>"One Person, One Vote" scheme of the US Constitution, or of any other
>parliamentary voting system.
>
>In this mailing list discussion, we have clearly seen how "One SLD,
>One Vote" is subject to distorting manipulations of many kinds, and
>immediately shows signs of unbalanced favor given to various SLD
>registrants.
>
>Further, the primary concept of the whole scheme is to go directly to
>the end users, and then find a way to represent them at the top of a
>new authority structure, which will then dispense authority downward,
>along with policy to regulate and manage the operations of the DNS
>ROOT, the TLD Registrars, the newly budding Registrar Industry, and
>even the SLD registrants, through requirements for standard contracts
>that must be used in all SLD registration contracts.
>
>I respectfully suggest that there is a much better paradigm for
>aggregating power from the edges of the Internet for the purposes of
>coordinating the operations of the DNS ROOT, the TLD Registries, the
>TLD Registrar Industry, the TLD owners and operators, and the SLD
>registrants/users.
>
>This paradigm is called a "Producers' Cooperative", wherein, the
>collective producers of DNS Services become the electors of the
>members of the Names Council, and thus the Names Council will be
>answerable to the producers of the desired services, and to the their
>customers.
>
>Also, no single sector of the DNS Industry should be allowed to
>control more than 25% of the vote on the Names Council.  25% of the
>vote is already 50% of control.  33% of the vote is already 75% of
>control.  And 50% of the vote is 100% of control.
>
>As noted in the mailing list discussion, with non-profit corporations,
>where the "stockholders" have little or nothing personally at stake,
>most people do not bother to vote, so that a mere 10% or so can
>control elections.  It is my view that the people who are going to be
>most sensitive to User interests will be the TLD or SLD registrars who
>will offer direct services to registrants, so it seems very reasonable
>to be to enable the Registrars, TLD Registry Owner/Operators, and ROOT
>Service Operators to each have a significant voice in the operation of
>their cooperative collection of enterprises.  
>
>Then, if you want to add some more user input, why not form an
>Association of DNS Server Administrators, with membership eligibility
>given to anyone that actually administers a DNS zone server at any
>level of the DNS tree.  This association should charge a nominal
>annual membership fee, and should then in turn represent its members
>to the Names Council.  This last association of name server
>administrators sorts out the difficulties with some SLDs being used to
>as the top of corporate name trees, while others go for putting all
>there 3LD names at the SLD level.  The correct representation identity
>is DNS Zone Administrators at All Levels, not just the SLD level.
>
>Indeed, all the confederated associations mentioned here (of Zone
>Admins, Registrars, Registries and Root Servers) should have
>membership fees, and should contribute funding to support the Names
>Council.  In an important sense then, all this boils down to the
>formation of a confederation of trade or other associations for the
>purpose of providing the administration of the required coordination
>of the Internet DNS Name Service.
>
>Now we have 4 well defined constituencies, and straight forward
>methods of giving them significant representation, at 25% each, all
>the way down to the lowest level of DNS service, right next to the
>users who buy services from competing service providers, and to the
>DNS zone admins that enter host names into the DNS system.  It is my
>opinion that the market can take care of sorting things out below this
>bottom level.
>
>Now then, does anyone see a way for anyone to juggle this game to rig
>the voting and take over sole control?  Is there any easy way to
>thwart the interests of any party with an interest in the use and
>operation of the Internet?  It there any way to divert the incentives
>to defeat coordination of running things in the best interests of all
>concerned?  After all, the Internet thrives on cooperation and dies
>from fighting.
>
>Now, with four well defined constituencies, lets also take care of the
>little problem of having too many members (18) on the Names Council.
>In my opinion, and the opinion of many other people, it is not
>possible to get anything done with more then 10 members, or less than
>100 members.  So, since an odd number is better than an even number,
>lets choose nine, with two members from each of our four
>constituencies, plus a chairman selected from outside all
>constituencies.  The Chair only needs to vote in case of ties.  It
>will of course be wise to select a Chair that has a lot of high level
>Internet Savvy and high level governing board experience in
>environments (Ala Internet) that do not have an inherent central core.
>
>Now, lets look at the problems of Trademark Industry Fair Hearing and
>some other left over fair hearing problems from the last two years of
>the DNS Wars.  We need to release some prisoners and right a few
>wrongs before we can all relax and claim we did a good job here.
>
>First there is the backlog of candidates for ROOT registration of new
>TLD Names.  How should they be treated?
>
>1.  Ignore them as fools who do not deserve any kind of fair hearing?
>    Maybe we can just tell them to go away?  Who are they anyway?
>    Does the list include the MoUvement?  And who else?
>
>2.  Find a way to buy them off to compensate them for their efforts,
>    and for any Intellectual Property that may be confiscated.  It
>    will be rather difficult to just take away what is perceived to be
>    owned property without a hearing of some kind, perhaps in court if
>    no where else?
>
>3.  Give them a fair hearing before a Special Fair Hearing Panel
>    appointed by the Names Council, which after hearing all their
>    cases, will evaluate their findings and make recommendations to
>    the Names Council for actions to be taken to afford them fair
>    treatment.  Is there any reason not to allow them a fair hearing
>    and fair treatment.  The resulting recommendations of these fair
>    hearings should also supply the Names Council with an ordered list
>    of candidates for TLD insertion into the "authoritative" ROOT in
>    support of an orderly process of new TLD insertions.
>
>    Please note: If any of these "candidates really are (as has been
>    widely claimed by various people over the last two years) rogues,
>    pirates, thieves, or other unsavory undeserving fellows, then
>    these things should show up in their fair hearing, should they
>    not?  A fair hearing seems only fair, so that is what I propose.
>
>Next, Lets talk about Trademarks.  Here too a Special Fair Hearing
>panel should be set up by the Names Council to take testimony from
>interested parties of all kinds on the issue of the relationships
>between Trademarks of all kinds, and DNS Names of all kinds.  
>
>And, as for other such Names Council Fair Hearing Panels, after
>collecting information from hearings, the panel should evaluate and
>deliberate and propose actions and policies to the Names Council for
>their consideration and adoption, perhaps with modifications.
>
>Now, there may be other areas of interest where the Names Council
>should give a fair hearing to interested parties, and for each such
>area of interest, a Fair Hearing Panel should be set up by the Names
>Council to assure a fair hearing for all interested parties.
>
>Some of these Fair Hearing Panels might turn out to be appropriately
>long standing, while others might be one time kinds of things.
>Dealing with the TLD candidate backlog will clearly be a one time
>thing.  Trademarks might continue for a long time, since the friction
>between Trademarks and DNS names will surely go on until the Trademark
>Industry finds ways to deal with global Trademarks, and further
>refines its long standing traditions of allowing more than one
>trademark owner as long as they operate in different "categories".
>So, it is clear that there is no way to deal with the Fair Hearing
>Panel setup with one size fits all rules.  Each should fit its need.
>
>And one last item -- All Fair Hearing Panels and the Names Council
>itself should operate as Open Deliberation Bodies, and all hearings
>must be open to the public, with a public record to be published on
>the Internet for all proceedings.
>
>SUMMARY:
>
>It is my intention to offer what I have written here as a replacement
>plan that does not suffer from the fascinating problems resulting from
>attempts to map the US Constitution onto the Internet, where there is
>no equivalence for "citizens" who can be identified and can be
>allocated one vote each.  Without a very clear and simply precise
>definition and identification of specific individual voting rights,
>there is no way to map the US Constitution, or any National State
>Voting Scheme (parliamentary or not) onto the Internet.
>
>Instead, the Internet needs to use some other method to find or
>develop consensus for coordinated group actions.  Individual actions
>should of course remain freely choosable by individuals, so we are
>only concerned with coordination of group actions, such as provision
>of a Comprehensive Coherent Conflict-free Open TLD ROOT Zone and
>Service, on behalf of all who are dependent on such a thing existing
>in a robust globally operational form.  In short, DNS should enable
>everyone to on the Internet to resolve the publically advertised DNS
>name of everyone else who wants to be seen, though there can be no
>guarantee of any ability to resolve any private DNS name that is not
>advertised to the public.  INTRAnets can and must be allowed to
>operate with such private, unpublished, DNS names, as a matter of free
>speech and privacy rights.
>
>This leads me to ask a very simple question: 
>
>	What is wrong with the concept of a confederation of
>	interested parties forming up a self governing structure along
>	the lines that I have outlined above.
>
>
>PROPOSAL:
>
>Assuming that the US Govt White Paper will not resolve all these
>issues for us, or if it does make such an attempt, I propose that we
>substitute the kind of solution that I have outlined here.
>
>In short, the so-called New-IANA Board of Directors should be charged
>with fostering establishment of a Names Council (by whatever name)
>along the lines of my outline above, and it should establish an
>appropriate set of Fair Hearing Panels to assure that all voices with
>an interest in the workings and deliverables of the DNS Service will
>be fairly heard, as input to the Open Deliberations of the Names
>Council or its Fair Hearing Panels.
>
>Further, I strongly suggest that the New-IANA Board should also be
>structured along the same lines, with 9 members including its Chair,
>and with its members selected by the Names Council, the IP registry
>Community, and the IETF Nomination Committee.  This leaves room for 2
>more members to be drawn from some other communities of interest, plus
>a Chair.
>
>Best Regards;-)...\Stef
Are you calling?

Rene Descartes wrote:
>It is just to doubt from who deceive one time

Why dont give a voice, and vote, to organizations with prestigious
defending civil rights to develop the way to ciberdemocracy?

Best Regards,
	Salvador Vidal

P.S. Censorship: Nobody, neither me!, is able to say more than 100 stupid
things together, so impulse people to say whatever they want and be sure
that you will find many good ideas.