Jonathan Zittrain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>from exercising their rights to participate, is a serious problem. My
>question: what do you see as the best online architecture for open
>discussion on contentious issues that doesn't have a small minority of the
>stakeholders de facto dominating the discussion?
I'm pulling the above out from the bottom of this quoted message,
because it is especially important as a question.
The Internet makes it possible for people with diverse views from
diverse networks to participate and Usenet newsgroups
provide the forum.
Thus a Usenet newsgroup that is available easily as part of
Usenet (i.e. not on someone's own private server like the Berkman
Center's cyber.law which is hard to configure some
browsers to point to) is something that makes a broader discussion
possible than on a mailing list like IFWP.
The paper I have just worked on and have in draft form (which I
hope still to do one further revision at least in the next few
days) takes up just this question.
The problem with the IFWP listing and similarly would be a problem
with the ORSC list, is not *only* the number of posting, which
as for the IFWP list, I can't handle in the kind of mailbox space
I have available).
More importantly, the problem is that the issues have been
framed in a way that puts constraints on the exploration of
the problem, rather than removing the constraints for the
needed broad ranging discussion.
I take this up further in the draft paper which is available in form,
but I do welcome comments at this stage, so anyone interested and
willing to comment, can write me and I'll send a copy.
Now for the rest of the original post by Jonathan Zittrain of the
Berkman Center who wrote:
>Bob,
>The personalities bouncing around the IFWP and related lists provide a good
>microcosm of some of the issues. A few who have the energy, time, and
Actually it doesn't provide a microcosm at all, as it the title
IFWP actually limits the participation of those on the list
to very narrow issues, rather than the real question which is
what is needed in the ownership, control, and administration of
the essential functions of the Internet which include the IP
numbers, the domain names, the root server system, and port numbers,
and protocols, etc. to scale the Internet.
Instead of this broad question raised and raised in a forum that
is open to and welcoming of discussion by anyone on the Internet
who is interested, the question is framed in a way that is intended
to only attract those who main have a commercial interest in
selling domain names.
Thus only a very narrow set of people are being involved in an
issue that actually affects all Internet users and will have
a significant impact on them, but they are being excluded
from the discussion.
And this broader set of people are needed to help to figure
out what the important issues are that have to be identified
to solve the more narrow issue of what to do about domain names.
Recently there was a related discussion on Usenet and one of
comments in the discussion was that the decision to privatize
the Internet naming authority in the U.S. raises the issue of
"whether or not you can afford to have something as important
and central as that working in commercial conditions."
That is an essential question that has to be raised and then
examined.
But I don't see how it ever gets raised in the narrow confines
of the IFWP mailing list about how to make money off of the
domain name functions of the Internet.
But the problems are *not* by any means the fault of the volunteer
who administers the IFWP list nor of the person you are accusing
of driving out others by the nature of his responses.
So it is important to keep a focus on what is the real problem
and what are the symptom of the problem.
>passion post early and often, with messages ranging from the hopeful to the
>bitter, professing to want reconciliation and cooperation with each other
>sometimes, "battle" at others. Indeed, some of your messages--like the one
>below--ring of smoke and fire ("careful or we'll be up against the wall
>when the revolution comes"), while others contain detailed ideas offered up
>to ignite progress to a new, and in your view, balanced and fair system (or
>un-system) for net names allocation. I've visited fcn.net and seen some of
>its spirit--your digital bill of rights sings--and read your notes on IFWP,
>including the ones that come from a view that says there's a war on, and
>people either have white hats or black hats, yours white, most others'
>either black or white-but-suspect. They suggest an orthodoxy that reminds
>us that any new boss--however well intentioned--can channel his or her
>passion to be as tyrannical and judgmental of who's in and out, crazy and
>sane, naive and grizzled, on-point and fuzzy, as the old boss.
The old motto of Voltaire, that I may disagree with what you say,
but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it,
is my response about your comments about Bob's postings.
That Bob is someone who has been on Usenet and on this mailing list.
On Usenet we learn to value all opinions and views and contributions.
It is that broad range that helps to show that differences are an
opportunity to expand our views and to get to the real underlying
difference.
And the Internet as an internetwork of diverse networks and diverse
people's removes the constraints to us communicating so that we
can figure out what is worthwhile in our differences to make a
new development.
But we don't value advertisements (or at least lots of us on Usenet
don't value them) as their intent is to sell us something, not to
contribute to the discussion.
So Bob's posts are helpful in broadening the issues, not harmful,
and your finding them harmful says to me that you aren't trying
to figure out what the problem is that has to be solved and what
the way to solve it is.
If you were you would welcome all contributions and try to determine
if they were helpful or not.
Sometimes in answering someone I disagree with, I discover the
most helpful considerations that I hadn't before thought of.
Sometimes what someone else points out opens up a whole new
perspective.
Sometime it doesn't help, but to cut it out or ignore it limits
the spectrum and thus the possibility of identifying what will
help unravel any genuine problem or puzzle.
The Internet and Usenet are thus a laboratory for problem solving
and for exploring democratic processes.
However, the Berkman Center, seems not to be interested in learning
from this laboratory, but to be intent on creating forms for
the Internet that will mirror the old kind of representative
forms that around the world are so discredited and have alienated
people from their governments and from any participation in the
political decision making processes.
>Structuring a inclusive membership that votes every so often on a slate of
>(how selected?) nominees for at-large board members is difficult; so is
Yes this is in fact quite difficult and more importantly is is desirable.
The original concern with ICANN was that there was inordinate power
and wealth being put in the hands of the supposed board of directors
and the membership idea was presented as the way to check that
power.
But to many of us who have tried many many membership organizations
only to find how we are used to concentrate power in few hands at
the top and our interests and views are totally ignored, the idea
of any membership process being able to solve the inordinate power
being given to ICANN by the U.S. government is not acceptable.
I propose that real issue is what role does the U.S. government have
to play in the oversight of ICANN? And what role do others have to play
in the oversight of the U.S. government so it takes on its
obligation to the public, rather than to a small set of commercial
interests?
If the U.S. government wanted to share power with the rest of
the world with regard to the adminstration of Internet names
and numbers and protocols, etc. it would have welcomed the proposal
that I submitted to set up a prototype of computer scientists
supported by their governments to form a collaboration to
do what was needed to make the adminstration function.
However, my proposal didn't provide for protecting unknown
and powerful U.S. commercial interests, so the U.S. Dept of
Commerce totally ignored my proposal.
>structuring the membership so collective voices can emerge--an ability to
>lodge protests, to have discussions with itself, to focus enough to say
>something where the whole is greater than the sum of shouting members. So
>here's a question I'm curious for your view on specifically; obviously you
>can ignore it if you think it so inane, vague, etc., as to be worth a
>"frigging stuffing":
But the Internet and Usenet, *not* any so called "membership" structures
are what make such voices possible.
And the Berkman Center is not interested in the Internet or Usenet,
only in creating a set of sound bits from people's comments to pass
off as representation (as the recent supposed summary of comments
that Wendy passed around shows)
>Many of us have dwelt on how to have open, inclusive discussions, and open
>email lists have been the default way of doing this. (n.b. Ronda suggests
>a USENET group to get better circulation.)
I don't see where the Berkman Center nor ICANN nor the U.S. Commerce
Dept have dwelt on "how to have open, inclusive discussions."
Again my proposal said that this was a problem that that had
to be taken up and explored by the cooperating groups of
computer scientists who got support from their governments to
work on this.
My proposal was based on how Usenet formed especially in
Europe where those working at cwi or other research institutions
worked together to solve the problems to get usenet functioning
there.
My proposal was ignored by the U.S. Dept of Commerce and ICANN
and the Berkman Center and instead of efforts to remove the
constraints to communication among those with differences, we
have the effort to impose those constraints by framing the
discussion as "membership" or "representation" and sending
out sound bytes to lists on these topics that fail to get
to the heart of the problem on the table.
> DOMAIN-POLICY, to the extent
>that it's completely unmoderated, is a good example. The problem: there
>are people sufficiently put off by the derision and jeers that so often
>ride on the heels of any substantive participation--taking a stand with
>which someone can, and then does, disagree violently and with more than
>just words that speak to the issues--that those people lurk or, more
>likely, beg off the lists entirely. Their voices are not heard. Now you
>may say that's a just desert for a coward--you're certainly not the type to
>back down from any personal attack; indeed, you seem not the least bit
>daunted in public participation despite a whole Yahoo! category about you
--
Why are you blaming someone who does contribute for those who don't?
Is it that he has challenged the narrow ways that you are allowing
contributions, rather than your recognizing that you have
to broaden your own views on what a contribution is and how to
encourage it?
>http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Groups/Cyberculture/Ne
>t_Legends/Allisat__Bob/ -- which includes links to sites that accuse you of
>things that are, I assure you, textbook defamation if false. To me,
>though, the idea that our primary modes of discourse are ones that, while
>"open and inclusive" in a technical sense, in fact repulse many citizens
>from exercising their rights to participate, is a serious problem. My
>question: what do you see as the best online architecture for open
>discussion on contentious issues that doesn't have a small minority of the
>stakeholders de facto dominating the discussion?
No, it isn't that those who present their views in an open and bold
way "repulse" others from participating.
It is that the narrow way that one is allowed to participate and the
uselessness of participating when the decisions have all been made
in some back room beforehand -- these are the kinds of reasons that
repulse citizens in the U.S. and I have heard from others around the
world as well that they too are frustrated by the power plays of
those in the ruling circles to the detriment of the social needs.
The Internet for once makes it possible to challenge this abuse
of power by those who grab it. And it seems that that is why
the U.S. Dept of Commerce is making such an effort to change
the nature of the Internet.
But the Internet is very much needed, and the broader means of
participation (not representation) are needed in the U.S. and
around the world if there is to be progress rather than
stultification.
Thus there is a technical and social need underlying the contest
that is now going on over the abuse represented by ICANN of
the Internet and the users of the Internet.
>Perhaps your attack--however true you think its basis--can be more than
>just that.
Perhaps you can think over how important it is to welcome the diversity
of views and to pause and trying to see how the focus being presented
though different can in fact raise looking at the problem to be
solved in a new light and through a new lens.
>...JZ
At 04:30 PM 1/10/99 , Bob Allisat wrote:
>>Wendy Seltzer wrote:
>>+ An important part of the Berkman Center's study of representation
>>+ in cyberspace is public participation. We are asking a broad
>>+ series of questions -- first collecting responses from a subset of
>>+ volunteers, then sending a sample of those responses to the lists
>>+ to spark and focus general discussion. We will be sending
>>+ questions every three to four days, and reading the lists to
>>+ follow conversation there.
>
>> How disconnected from reality can one get? Your questions
>> are innane, your intentions vague and fuzzy and the level
>> of naivete evidenced in your approach is impressive. My
>> response is: stuff your initiative and the frigging Berkman
>> Center. You've been meddling in this business vastly too
>> much of late. Watch or you might end up on the very wrong
>> side when the smoke and fire clears.
>
>> Bob Allisat
>
>> Free Community Network _ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> http://fcn.net _ http://fcn.net/allisat
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I guess my answers to the questions reflected some of what
Bob tried to say, but I tried to take up the problems a
bit more specifically.
The result, however, was that what I spent half an hour writing
in answering the questions were totally ignored and the Berkman
Center took sound bytes from what others had written and passed
those to other lists.
This is mimicing the worst of the old media, not learning anything
from this new medium
Thus to raise such an attack on Bob rather than trying to determine
if there is a problem shows that there is not much interest in
figuring out how to learn from what the Internet makes possible.
But perhaps this shows the problem of the U.S. Executive Branche
of the government having spent such large amounts of money
promoting commercialization of the Internet and not giving any support
to those who have tried to make clear that there is an
Internet and it is *not* commercial. The Internet is a unique
means of worldwide communication.
Until there is some comprehension of what this means,
there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem
before ICANN or the U.S. government and the things they
do can only make the problems worse.
Ronda
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Netizens: On the History and Impact
of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6
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