Ronda Hauben a écrit:
> It is the illegitimate effort of the U.S. government to privatize
> IANA that is the problem with ICANN just as it is the illegitimate
> effort of the U.S. government to privatize the domain name
> system that was the problem with NSI.
This is a correct statement, IMO. Ronda is right. Her analysis is
true. But it leaves us nowhere because obviously the same entity
that made these blunders - the USG in the form of the DOC - can't be
trusted at all to manage the DNS and the Internet themselves. So,
who's to do it? The U.N.? The ITU? WIPO?
What's the answer? Probably, a new entity needs to be created. This
is what ICANN is doing, many will say. However, because of its bad
birth and the apparent inability of its interim board to deal
effectively with the many difficult problems involved (e.g. no
solution, nor even a suggestion of one, for the thorniest question
of all: voting), ICANN doesn't seem able to fulfill the
responsibility it's been given.
Would the IFWP have been able to do so? Maybe. The people who were
in line to be chosen for the initial, creating council of the IFWP's
NewCo seemed at least to understand the problems better than the
present ICANN board does, and had proven that they were not going to
opt out by taking the path of least resistance as ICANN is doing,
not so much out of opportunism or even their personal partiality but
because they are simply unable to deal with the challenges.
A NewCo able to put the Internet on a firm structural footing
remains a possibility. The Internet community is capable of creating
such an organism. But it requires some sophistication and experience
in the use of methods for creating a democratic institution. The
present designers don't have this experience. Their naivety is
perfectly well evidenced by their abdication from the all-important
methodological challenges of informational and voting mechanisms and
their apparent helplessness in structuring the DNSO process and the
current constituency formation. The shield of "self-formation" no
longer convinces anyone.
What the Internet needs are a few experienced administrators. Such
people can no doubt be found. It's not unlikely that, if the IFWP
process had been allowed to evolve, its leaders would have realized
the need for administrators and sought them out, because the IFWP
was pragmatic. The present ICANN board isn't; they are covering up
their own inadequacy, and when people are doing that they have no
sense of what needs to be done and where to look for help because
they fear that doing those necessary things will reveal their own
ineptitude.
How many companies with a good product go down the drain just at the
time they could achieve success, only because their directors can't
admit that they don't know how to manage a successful company? Maybe
the majority. They become the objects of takeovers and are often
turned around in very little time and become successful, just
because the new directors have no stake in proving their own
capacities, like the original ones did, but are only interested in
the well-being of the enterprise.
So, while Ronda's critique is just it doesn't point to the solution,
which is not really conceptual or even political but practical: how
can the Internet be administered efficiently? For that,
administrators are needed. Can they be found? Yes. Will they be
searched for? Not by the present people in charge. Who will do it,
then? The persons shaping up to take charge of the IFWP, like Jim
Dixon, Tony Rutkowski, Kathy Kleiman, Barbara Dooley, and others,
might have known where to look for them. What's going to happen now,
then? Things are going to get worse, and the Internet will suffer,
until this process has to start over again. When you get on the
wrong train, it doesn't matter how long you ride, you never get to
your destination.
