> This is simply not true. In most societies there are real, physical
> people and then there are artificial persons, corporations. The
> existence of the latter is much easier to verify than the existence
> of the former.
I personally find it very easy to look at a person and say "you are a real
person". Phantoms and robots are pretty easy to spot.
On the other hand, I tend to find it very hard to look at something that
says "corp" or "inc" or "ltd" after its name and know anything more than
that it says "corp" or "inc" or "ltd" after its name.
For instance, we *know* that there are one or more humans behind Jeff
Williams -- nobody has yet invented a machine that passes the Turing test
-- but we do not know anything about his claimed INEG.
> The creation of a corporation necessarily involves
> the creation of an audit trail;
The birth of a person usually involves a birth certificate. And people
generally carry government issued identification papers (drivers licenses,
passports, etc) around with them.
Corporations don't carry their articles around and one can never be sure
whether a corporate spokesman is really speaking for a real corporation
without doing some background checking.
On a number of contracts that I have entered into, the corporate parties
exchanged photocopies of their corporate documents -- either the entire
articles or simply a copy of the Secretary of State's certificate.
But such an exchange of documents really doesn't prove anything -- the
documents could be forged or simply copies of real documents being passed
on by people having nothing to do with the actual corporation.
The interesting twist about corporations is this: Corprations are unable
to act except through actual living, breathing people.
As such, there is always a significant question whether a person does, in
fact, represent a particular corporation even if that corporation is
legitimate.
We may learn through side channels that "Fred Smith" is empowered to vote
in ICANN on behalf of the Yoyodyne Corporation. But how do we know who is
the real Fred Smith? Thus it devolves to the same question as before --
how do we know who a person is.
And it gets worse because on May 1 Fred Smith may speak for the
corporation but on June 1 he may be out on the street. Are we going to
continuously re-verify his status with the corporation?
And then there's the fact that corporate families give birth to new
entities faster than bunnies. Ever consider how many corporations there
are around the world under the general heading of "General Motors
Corporation"?
It would be unfair to give such a corporate family a multiplicity of
votes.
So are we going to audit the various threads of ownership to determine
when two corporations really are one?
> usually corporations are registered
> centrally and their existence is relatively easy to verify, by law.
It usually doesn't take law to recognize that the thing standing across
the room is a person.
The fact that bureaucracies have been created in all nations to keep track
of these legal fictions called "corporations" speaks directly to the
difficulty of recognizing the real thing.
> In other words, ICANN is going to create an international bureaucracy to
> verify candidate ICANN voter/members. Have you costed this?
ICANN is going to have to do that whether the voters are corporations or
people.
Indeed, the cost with corporations is higher because one must not only
validate that the corporation is real, but also that it has delegated its
vote to a particular person, and then prove that a given individual is, in
fact that person to whom the vote has been delegated.
One may say "well there will be fewer corporations than there are people,
so even if the unit cost is higher, the net will be lower".
And that actually may be true.
But if we are going to give DNS and IP addresses up to corporate
ownership, we really ought to do it right and simply put it out for sale
to the highest bidder.
Corporations and associations are not formed to better the Internet --
they are formed to make money and to promote special agendas.
> .... Well, to the best of
> my knowledge, that means that you write something up, go to a solictor,
> sign it while he is watching, and he signs his bit certifying that
> he saw you sign it.
...
> One problem is recursion: you have simply substituted the solicitor's
> unverified signature for mine. There are tens of thousands of
> solictors in the UK. Do you propose to keep all of their signatures
> on file?
Many if not most countries have something called a "notary" or "notary
public". These are officials, usually found just about everywhere - banks,
attorney's offices, government offices, etc -- and they do more than
verify that one simply has signed, notaries also check identification.
For most purposes one accepts the notary's stamp without further
investigation.
And I would suggest that obtaining a vote in ICANN is not something of
such earth shattering weight that we ought to require full DNA sequences
to prove identity.
> How will you detect forgeries? Another problem is that the solicitor
> doesn't ask you for any ID.
Perhaps that's a weakness where you live. Notaries *do* ask -- they are
subject to not insignificant penalties for failure.
> * I say that administering a large individual membership is
> fraught with difficulties
Yes, you say that.
But then again, administering a corporate membership is fraught with
difficulties and comes at the cost of destroying ICANN as a body
reflective of public policy.
> > >... What precisely do you do if 10,000 Hari Krishnas from all
> > >over the world register and vote in an all Hari Krishna board?
The answer is clear: We seat an all Hari Krishna board.
> * Some sort of system of classes of membership is necessary to
> balance the interests of the various stakeholder groups
I disagree.
Membership classes are nothing more thatn arbitrary, and permanent
allocation of power.
Had classes been formed 10 years, ago, there would have been three
membership classes: 35% Military, 35% Universities, 20% large techology
companies, 10% everybody else.
That class structure would have entombed that judgement of "balance of
interests".
The only way to obtain the fluidity to adapt to changing conditions is to
simply not have classes.
> * Individual memberships should be very valuable, but in the near
> term at least it will not be practical for this to be the only
> type of membership in ICANN or for this membership class to have
> predominant power
I find it entirely practical. Indeed, I find it entirely practical for
the general membership to have plenary power.
> If the last point is too obscure, what I am saying is that if, for
> examples, the ISPs who actually operate the Internet backbone don't come
> to trust ICANN, they will ensure that ICANN's influence over their
> operations is minimal. The ISPs don't need ICANN. But ICANN needs the
> support of the ISPs.
That is a proposition which I would be willing to see tested. Overall, I
don't believe that ISPs are all that important to the today's Internet.
ISP services are entirely fungible and can be replaced as easily as one
changes the brand of tires on an automobile. Perhaps in five years, when
consolidation has given rise to a dozen of so mongo-carriers, will a
threat of joint anti-competitive actions by the mongo carriers be
something to be concerned about.
So if some ISP today wanders off and allocates itself its own block of
address space and finds that as a result it has only partial connectivity,
well, that ISP has just committed commercial suicide.
And if some ISP offers a DNS service that blacks out significant numbers
of services, then that ISP is on a short trip to receivership.
> ... The ccTLD registries can walk away from
> ICANN.
And the ccTLD registry that does so without clear and firm backing from
that country code's government may wake up the next day to find that the
pointers in the root zone for the ccTLD point to servers operated by
someone else.
Push does come to shove.
> Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent the ISPs from endorsing
> an alternative set of root name servers, or some equivalent system.
Nothing except the incredible inertia that makes doing so very difficult.
> None of this is desirable. What is desirable is that ICANN continue
> IANA's role as a focal point for cooperation in the Internet; one
> requirement for this is that it have an acceptable membership structure.
And acceptable means that it is not sold to the highest bidder or that its
powers be allocated according to some arbitrary and capricious guess as to
what would make a pretty pie chart.
--karl--
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