"Individual vote" is a red herring. I assume we've all heard of representative democracy structures. For example the justices on the US supreme court are not elected. But they are each nominated by the president who is popularly elected (more or less), and require approval of the senate and senators are popularly elected. The game-theoretic point is whether or not there is any (useful) path between the policy development and approval process back to individuals, not that the path is direct. I'd say right now with ICANN there is no such path. There isn't even a plausible market-based path as one might have with corporations. For example if you don't like some company's policies perhaps organize a boycott. But since ICANN is in effect a global monopoly and registries generally operate TLDs as monopolies on that TLD it's just not a realistic scenario even if one could imagine some hypothetical market action. And this certainly shouldn't be the only path to influence. Also, corporations which are public have shareholders and shareholder votes, etc. and it's not unheard of for those shareholders to, for example, sack their board or members of their board. I'll assert this is a problem in ICANN's governance structure. Let's not just argue for the sake of arguing. There might be a very real problem here. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*