At 12:14 PM 7/10/99 , Jay Fenello wrote:
>Hi Jonathan,
>
>This email is one of the most ironic
>I've ever seen, coming from the Harvard
>Berkman Center.
>
>To my knowledge, I have never argued for
>a community consensus approach to Internet
>Governance. It is simply not consistent
>with my views on Governance.
I may have read more than you intended to say when you said the following
in an earlier IFWP msg:
>To repeat, ICANN does NOT have any *legitimate*
>claim to manage the old IANA root.
>The last authoritative, community-based consensus
>on that question was the White Paper, which ICANN
>has ignored since its inception. (overly kind as
>this may be :-)
I took this to mean you favored community-based consensus approaches. It's
OK if you don't, and you know your position better than I do! Exchanges
like these help sort this out. Consensus, by the way, if it's taken to
require more than 50% of a group to achieve, has some built-in sense of
minority support. But when formalizing things consensus is hard to
articulate. That's why it always seems to boil down to votes in the name
of due process and rule of law--board votes, names council votes,
constituency votes, whatever.
>Anyone who knows me, knows that I support
>fair and open processes, and the protection
>of minority interests. A straight Democracy
>accomplishes none of those things, as it can
>be more closely equated with "mob rule."
>(hence my reference to wolfs and sheep)
I agree with you wholeheartedly! My original message to which you're
replying must make that less clear than I'd have hoped.
>FWIW, I am a fan of limited Constitution
>Republics, like the U.S. is supposed to be.
>
>The fact that you, a Berkman fellow, noted
>legal scholar, would imply that process is
>not important is beyond comprehension. In
>fact, it appears that you have adopted the
>ICANN Board's style of using their by-laws
>when it supports their hidden agenda, and
>ignoring it when it doesn't.
I don't for a minute believe that the rule of law, and process, aren't
important. I'd hate to suggest anything of the sort. The principles of
the rule of law, and of due process, are quite distinct from the rule of
the market, and are among the bases of the White Paper. ICANN's by-laws
are its consitution, and shouldn't be amended lightly. But the mere fact
of amending them isn't itself enough to say there's no rule of law, any
more than Congress passing a law that amends a prior law, which they do all
the time. The only difference is that ICANN doesn't (yet?) have the
political legitimacy, either structurally or in fact, that Congress
does. ICANN's accountability at the moment comes from the ICANN-DoC
agreement whereby DoC can pull the plug if ICANN were to go off the deep
end. (I understand you think it already has done so.) ...JZ
P.S. I have no idea if this will reach the other cc'd lists, to which I
don't subscribe.
Jon Zittrain
Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
