On 26-Jul-07, at 7:38 AM, John L wrote:
The other group believes that it's all the Internet users who are not parts of other constituencies, all the people who have never registered a domain and never will, but use domains every day when they use the Internet.
On 26-Jul-07, at 8:19 AM, RJGlass | America@Large wrote:
I'm not sure if there ever will be a time when the 'Internet user with an email address' will ever have a concern about ICANN. However, the individual registrant is greatly effected by anything that ICANN does or says.
It never occurred to me that there was any other definition than individual Internet users (ordinary people getting on with daily life online), regardless of their "registration" status. ICANN is a manifestation of an essential institution in a knowledge society. Internet users should not be defined by their relationship to ICANN but rather by the open nature of the society they inhabit. In the long term, those users (or, to put it another way, everybody) will become more conscious of ICANN-like mechanisms because: 1). If we [win?] (we could lose!), the citizens of a knowledge society will become more generally aware that Internet Governance means governance of online relationships by the Internet (and, in particular, Internet Protocol) more than it means governance of the Internet. 2). Achieving that growing awareness will depend, in large part, on resolution of the fundamental issue of autonomy in the ownership of the online expression of the self. We need to advocate for an evolution of IP that encodes "user-centric digital identity" (although that's such an awful expression). Although they are entwined, the right and ability to define who I am is a much broader question that the "registration" that defines where I live. Garth Graham Telecommunities Canada