John L wrote:
I have always found a major lack of agreement about who the at-large is supposed to be.
I guess I've been oblivious to this particular debate, as the answer was always pretty clear to me.
One group believes it is the domain registrants who are not part of other constituencies, which more or less means individuals (like me) who register personal vanity domains.
The other group believes that it's all the Internet users who are not parts of other consitutencies, all the people who have never registered a domain and never will, but use domains every day when they use the Internet.
The first group is a subset of the second group, and the At-Large I know includes both. It's my understanding that the whole reason for the ALSs is that we get to represent the interests of Internet users, most of whom use client software to receive and send information. Web and Email and occasionally real-time communications such as IM or VOIP, and that's about it. Most of my constituency is people who are very web savvy, but few of whom have their own domains (indeed, one of our member services is provision of a 'user@linux.ca' email forwarder). Consider many of the other constituencies here. How many would you say purely represent the interests of individual domain owners? How many members of Consumers Union do you suppose own their own domains?
In a lot of areas, the interests of these two groups are the same, e.g., we all would prefer that our registrars were competent and honest. But in a lot of other areas, they aren't, with WHOIS being the most obvious place.
I don't see this, as I see the interests of responsible providers of information in sync with those of their recipients. As a source of information it is reasonable that a domain owner should be tracable at some level, not just for trademark issues but also for libel and other reasons. I happen to be one of those throwbacks who believes that freedom of expression also entails taking responsibility for what one says. As I've mentioned before, there have been historical low-tech ways to achieve partial anonymity (ie, "name withheld by request" on letters to the editor, unlisted phone numbers) in a manner that provides a reasonable balance between the rights of speakers and listeners. Such methods exist in the Internet, such as WHOIS proxies.
Am I the only one who thinks that non-registrants count, or is ALAC a club for vanity registrants?
It's not either-or, you're right on both counts. Non-registrants certainly count, and make up the bulk of the constituencies that are most current ALSs. But it is inevitable that we will attract a disproportionate number of individual participants who, by their being domain owners, are more familiar with the workings of the net -- and with the role of ICANN -- than the general public. So we are, to a certain extent, a self-selected club for people who understand ICANN enough to be involved with it. What's critical is that the club is not exclusive, and that we do outreach to demonstrate the need for others to be involved. - Evan