On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Darrell Greenwood wrote:
> At 1:13 AM -0800 1/22/99, Jim Dixon wrote:
>
> >Many things are simple. Failure is one of them.
>
> But it does not follow that keeping things simple will cause failure.
No. But if you leave off the wheels in order to simplify a car,
it won't go.
> >Some people believe that ICANN's membership will be something like
> >2,000 people.
>
> But on the other hand would it not be better to have a membership of say,
> 20,000 people (1% participation rate of the 2,000,000 .com domains)?
>
> Would not ICANN be stronger and wiser with this number and less
> likely to capture by special interests in this case?
I don't know if ICANN would be wiser. It would certainly have more
credibility. But the problem of verifying the identity of members
becomes more complex with increasing membership.
> >If the right to vote is based only on registration of
> >a domain name, it would be trivial for me or anyone else able to program
> >and having a full time connection to the Internet to create ICANN voters
> >in any desired quantity by an automated process. So we could win any
> >ICANN election. If we were to use the InterNIC to register domain names,
> >it could be done at zero cost.
>
> You cannot create ICANN voters in any desired quantity by any
> automated process.
I was careful in phrasing what I wrote. Your previous email said that
the right to vote would be based only on the registration of a domain
name.
As I said, any competent programmer with access to the Net could create
any desired numer of identities under these rules. Step 1: create N
unique email accounts. I assure you that this is very simple on a
UNIX machine. It's a very short program, more complex if you want a
nice distribution of human names. Step 2: get a unique domain for each
of these at the InterNIC. This is moderately more difficult because
you need to invent more data. So now you have N candidate ICANN members.
Cost? Only your time.
> e.g., I have a number of domains, I identify myself as Darrell
> Greenwood, holder of these domains, go through the required hoops and
> get my membership and right to vote. I cannot and do not get another
> vote, automated or otherwise.
Unless you are willing to lie.
> >I won't do this. Other people will. These phantom voters will be joined
> >by our Jeff, Frank Rizzo, and a host of similarly imaginary or imaginative
> >netizens.
>
> Determination of membership of ICANN, regardless of who the members
> are, will require the registration, documentation, and verification
> of the member and his right to vote.
If you are just talking about the act of registering as a voter by
filling out a Web form and supplying the same false information used
to create the InterNIC domain, this too can be automated.
If you are talking about members having to supply additional documentation
which ICANN must then verify, this isn't simple at all. It's very
complicated and very expensive. You will have to set up a bureaucracy
which is capable of dealing with documentation from any nation on earth.
This includes the UK, where there is no form of national identification
card and relatively few people carry picture ID of any sort. For
decades people have created false identities here by getting the birth
certificate of someone who is dead and then getting a passport under
that false name. This particular loophole is supposedly closed, but
the information used to stop the creation of false passports is not
publicly available. So it's easy to open certain types of bank account
and then to go on to create a complete persona.
This isn't something rare or inordinately complex. Some years ago there
was a robbery at a bank in London. The thieves broke in and looted the
safe deposit boxes. When the police went to investigate, they found that
they could not locate MOST of the owners of the safe deposit boxes; they
were false names.
This is in Britain, an advanced Western democracy.
Even a rough verification of documentation from any nation on earth
will be very expensive. Moderately reliable verification will be
very expensive indeed.
> I am proposing to keep it simple and enfranchise domain name
> registrants automatically and have the dues collected implicitly via
> the domain registry fee. This will eliminate the cost and complexity
> of collecting separate dues.
If you are going to rely on the TLD registries for "the registration,
documentation, and verification" phase, then you must understand that
the registries simply don't do this. So you are demanding that all of
the world's registries modify their procedures and drive their costs
through the roof in order to satisfy ICANN. This is a non-starter.
> This will have the advantage of a broad base of possible members of
> ICANN. Simply identify yourself as a domain name registrant and you
> are a member and can vote. Analogous to city elections. I identify
> myself as a resident and I vote. It doesn't matter how many houses I
> own, I only get one vote.
And the same applies to my army of phantoms. Each has only one domain
name, and each has only one vote.
> If you were considering joining ICANN as a member would you not be
> deterred by having to write yet another cheque when you've already
> written one for your domain? I would. (Imagine going to vote in a
> city election and being told you have to write another cheque. :-)
Ah, but you don't have to write ANY cheques to the InterNIC. You
register by email.
> BTW, Jeff would get a vote in my scheme. One vote. Provided he
> documented his identity. :-) (Check IIIF.ORG in whois and you will
> see he is the holder of a domain.)
I see you are back to asking for documentation ...
> >It isn't just the phantoms that are a problem; it is also the whimsical:
> >those who will become ICANN activists simply because they have nothing
> >else to do, or because they see it as a world government in evolution,
> >or because they simply enjoy strutting the cyber-stage.
>
> Bob Allisat will be a tiny minority of one vote. There will be 20,000
> or more domain holder members who are not Bob. He will have
> dramatically less effect on the vote than on the lists he frequents.
How do you know how many votes there will be? Kent Crispin assures me
that there will be 2,000 or so. You say 20,000.
Personally, by the way, I think that Bob Allisat represents a principled
point of view, however eccentric.
> >The Internet is an enterprise, or set of enterprises, of enormous
> >personal and financial significance to many people. Many people have
> >devoted their lives to its development. Others have invested their
> >life savings in it. The number of people whose careers involve the
> >Internet is exploding.
> >
> >Most of these people will be appalled if they learn that core functions
> >of the Internet are at risk of falling under the control of an ICANN
> >whose membership consists in large part of phantoms, Net kooks, the
> >fanciful, and people pursuing political agendas that have nothing to do
> >with the Internet.
>
> My feeling is that 99% of domain name registrants who take up their
> membership rights in ICANN will not be "phantoms, Net kooks, the
> fanciful, and people pursuing political agendas that have nothing to
> do with the internet."
It is foolish to plan for the best of all possible worlds. While you
may optimistically believe that 99% of members will be serious, others
will not agree. A large percentage of the people I talk to in person
about these matters consider everyone participating in this debate at
least a little nutty.
> >These people, the ones who are seriously involved with the Internet,
> >will recoil in horror from your 'keep it simple' ICANN. They will
> >scramble to keep the core assets at risk -- the DNS, operation of the
> >root servers, IP address space, and protocol development -- out of
> >ICANN's grasp. They will make sure that no further responsibilities
> >come ICANN's way.
> >
> >A small amount of thought might persuade you that this process is already
> >well under way. The root servers remain with NSI. The root zone is
> >frozen. The RIRs, the regional IP address space registries, are thinking
> >things over. RFC editing has been moved away from IANA. The IETF isn't
> >terribly keen on the PSO.
The lack of any reply to these two paragraphs is interesting.
> >So while I understand the attractions of simplicity, I suggest that you
> >look for a more complex solution, one that has a chance of working.
>
> I always look for the simplest, not "a more complex", solution that
> will work as I have a strong preference for Occam's Law over Dixon's
> Law. :-)
Perhaps you should take a better look at Bishop Occam's razor. He says
that things should not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. He does
not advocating simplification by elimination of the necessary.
A global individual membership for ICANN is indeed attractive and would
add greatly to ICANN's credibility -- but only if that membership is
real and responsible. What we have been talking about is the cost of
verifying that members are real and unique individuals, to get rid of
the phantoms. This would be very expensive. We haven't dealt with the
equally serious problem of armies of directed voters.
There are many countries in the world in which governments or
organizations have complete control over real and unique individuals.
They can create small armies of ICANN voters at whim, and so can
control ICANN at whim.
So the prognosis is not good. You seem to wobble between two models of
ICANN membership. In the first, which has reasonable cost, there will
inevitably be many phantom voters; if ICANN attracts the attention of the
hacker community or others with a similar sense of humor, there will be
armies of these among the membership. In the second model, which has
extravagent costs, you will have real, verified members, but all that
money won't protect you should my "directed" elements take an interest
in ICANN. What precisely do you do if 10,000 Hari Krishnas from all
over the world register and vote in an all Hari Krishna board?
Personally, I think that it is important for ICANN to have some sort of
individual membership. But I think that it should have a minority of
votes and be set in a separate class. This would give us the benefits
of individual membership with managed risks.
Your preferred alternative will give us an ICANN that no one will entrust
the Internet to. As I said above, there is already ample evidence that
people are already shifting assets away from ICANN; your simple membership
model will complete that process.
--
Jim Dixon Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316
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Member of Council Telecommunications Director
Internet Services Providers Association EuroISPA EEIG
http://www.ispa.org.uk http://www.euroispa.org
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