On Sun, Jan 10, 1999 at 11:36:34AM -0800, Patrick Greenwell wrote:
At last, an intelligent comment! Thank you!
[...]
>
> A question: What in your opinion would constitute demonstration of "legal
> identity" keeping in mind the global nature of the organization?
A very good question.
Remember that this is a requirement for membership; that doesn't
mean that every member must be checked in detail -- it means that if
there is doubt (because of a complaint, or an obviously questionable
case), some form of proof can be requested. There is a "membership
committee" that deals with such questionable cases. [The Names
Council has this role in the MTY draft; but a membership committee
is a better idea, I think]. The membership committee makes the
judgement calls in difficult cases.
It is relatively easy to decide for a corporation or
similar entity, because there are legal documents that must be filed,
and are on public record. It is much more difficult in the case of
an individual, of course. I would expect the membership committee
to develop procedures as they dealt with more and more questionable
cases.
> > With a completely flat membership model you have a "tyranny of the
> > majority" problem, where the majority abuses the rights of a
> > minority. In the US constitution this is dealt with with the "Bill
> > of Rights" -- a statement of rights that the majority simply cannot
> > abridge. [At the Monterrey meeting I presented a short paper on a
> > "Bill of Rights" model for dealing with the "Tyranny of the majority
> > problem". It wasn't adopted. I think the reason is the difficulty
> > of getting agreement on what "rights" are involved.
>
> Another way in which the Constitution deals with this issue is the
> seperation of powers between seperate branches of government.
Yes.
> > A constituency model is another way to get around the "Tyranny of
> > the Majority" problem -- A minority (such as registries) get a
> > guaranteed spot at the table that cannot be voted away by the
> > majority. This is by no means a perfect solution -- there is no
> > perfect solution.
>
> My personal feeling is that a bicameral model might be a reasonable approach > to
>this issue. I believe ISOC employs this very model, with individual
> memberships and corporate memberships. This would seem like a fair
> approach to the DNSO, and a reasonable compromise between a completely
> flat model, and one that is constituency based and involving complex
> weighting schemes. It also takes much of the admistrative hassle out of
> figuring out who is a member of what constituency(and validation of) for
> purposes of DNSO membership. Each branch has equal voting power. Of course
> there is the issue of possible conflicting votes between the two, and some
> sort of "tiebreaker" mechanism would be necessary.
That was the model I proposed in a short note I posted a couple of
months ago -- I proposed an equal split between what I called
"defined constituencies" and "general membership". That was also
the model called for in the last iteration of the POC/PAB model, in
fact.
Though it is much more convoluted, a great deal of that model exists
in the current DNSO proposal. There are constituencies, but one of
the constituencies is special -- the "at-large" constituency. It
has extremely open membership policies, and can be expected to have
a very large membership. [If you look at the Monterrey notes, you
will find that I proposed a representation model where the at-large
has about half the votes on the names council.]
In the current model, unfortunately, the at large has only a
fraction of the votes on the names council. But the at large will
have the majority of the votes in the membership, so that decisions
that fall to the full membership will lean much more to the
sentiment of the at large members.
In particular, names council members are nominated by the
constituencies, but elected by the full membership. This leads to
situation where the balance of power is actually *very* complex. It
is not at all clear that the constituencies are that powerful, when
you look at things closely.
Incidentally, if you look at the three alternative drafts produced
from Barcelona, one of them is explicitly put in terms of "general
members" and "supporting members", rather than the "at large
constituency" and "the other constituencies".
--
Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "Do good, and you'll be
[EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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