Roberto: As you know I've been in opposition to the "stakeholder" model of governance since before ICANN was created. And as many foresaw way back then, certain "stakeholder" groups have become rather more powerful than others to the degree that one can fairly argue that ICANN is a regulatory/governance body that has been captured by those who it purports to regulate.
Let us not forget that when ICANN was created promises were made that a majority of the seats on the board of directors would be chosen by the public. That promise remains unfulfilled. The community of internet users ought to have a loud and commanding voice in ICANN yet the stakeholder model has left the community of internet users with little more than an easily ignored whisper.
One of the things that amuses me, or concerns me, is that stakeholder thinking tend to pre-conceive what a given person or thing might be interested in - in other words, it ordains, without ever consulting the person involved, where a person's "stake" lays. That kind of top-down-imposition is, well, not very bottom-up.
Let's look at my own case. Which "stakeholder" pigeon hole box should I be stuffed into? Or, should I be allowed to operated as several "stakeholders" and thus (unfairly) multiply my voice?
- I am an individual
- I own for profit business corporations (both as a founder or as a shareholder.)
- I am a member of public-interest groups.
- I live in a country (and citizen of two.)
- I and my corporations register domain names.
- I and my corporations have trademarks, copyrights, patents and other intellectual property.
- I and my corporations have public IP address space (allocated from Jon Postel, not by the RIRs.)
- I am an attorney who is involved in intellectual property matters.
- I have written full internet standards that continue wide use on a daily basis.
- I have property (partial ownership) interests in domain name registries and registrars of ICANN granted TLDs.
I am hardly unique in this way. Every person is a bundle of interests that are often at odds with one another. It ought to be up to each individual to reconcile these interests, to formulate a vote based on a self-made evaluation of which personal interest is more important and ought to prevail. Stakeholderism deprives people of the right to reconcile their interests; stakeholderism imposes an externally pre-made decision onto that person about what are that person's most important concerns.
Stuffing me into one stakeholder box or another the organization (or whoever is creating that taxonomy) is a Procrustean act that arbitrarily pre-decides which of my interests best express my views.
Stakeholderism, like Procrustes, chops off our arms and stretches our legs in order to make each of us fit onto whatever iron bed the organization feels is most appropriate.
(For those of you who wonder about "Procrustean" - here's the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Procrustes )
I suggest that the atomic unit of interest is the individual human being. And as a consequence, the only thing that should have a countable vote in matters of internet governance are individual human beings. Anything else, corporations, domain name owners, intellectual property warriors, etc ought to have no voting authority - but will, of course, retain the power to articulate arguments to try to convince individual people to use their vote in certain ways.
--karl--
On 7/16/18 8:28 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
It is of course a risk that the multi-stakeholder model be tilted towards the interests of one part of the stakeholders - this is why, incidentally, Fadi was talking about *global* *equal* multi-stakeholder (“GEMS") model.That there is a potential corruption of the model is no good reason for rejecting it, in particular in lack of a better system. So I would argue that the way to go is to make sure that the voice of the different stakeholders compose with the requirement of being “global” (meaning all have a chance to get to the table) and “equal” (meaning all have the same voice).In practice, civil society, because of the inherent limitations about financial power, should be subsidised to participate, and civil society itself has to make sure that it avoids infiltration of lobbyists among its rank and file.Cheers,R
On 16.07.2018, at 00:05, bzs@theworld.com wrote:
On July 16, 2018 at 01:48 6.Internet@gmail.com(Sivasubramanian M) wrote:
On Mon, Jul 16, 2018, 12:16 AM <bzs@theworld.com> wrote:
Multistakeholderism is open to all -- like the Ritz Hotel.
( Understand that it is an anology that isn't perfect). Going by this anology,
it merely requires a simple, very simple fix: Reserve a third of the hotel by
unconditional funding to the stakeholder group that can't afford it, and to
anyone relatively less privileges even from within even the wealthier
stakeholder groups. Then we will find the elusive balance.
I was thinking of how it exists, specifically ICANN, rather than some
hypothetical implementation.
The problem is that there is no tie-in (GAC possibly excepted but they
are advisory) between those who participate and those who are affected
by the various policy development processes.
Yes in theory anyone, even the poorest internet user, could simply buy
themselves plane tickets and hotel rooms etc and participate in the
meetings.
Given the actual way it's organized one would likely have to do that
three times per year for a few years to rise to any level of
participation beyond open mikes.
But it's open to anyone! Much like the Ritz Hotel.
It's no accident that multistakeholderism has been referred to as
system which is "of, by, and for the lobbyists"*.
In a nutshell get rid of anything remotely resembling popularly
elected voting members (even indirectly) and just let the big
registries, registrars, and others with financial interests be the
stakeholders and do all the policy development and approval.
Yes one can identify the occasional exception to that.
* That point was essentially on the wikipedia page for
multistakeholderism under "Criticisms" but disappeared about a year or
so ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title= Multistakeholder_governance_ model&diff=768793583&oldid= 750897618
Criticism of multistakeholderism comes from Paul R. Lehto,
J.D.{{Citation needed|date=March 2014}}, who fears that in
multistakeholderism, those who would be lobbyists become
legislators, and nobody else has a vote. Lehto states that "In a
democracy, it is a scandal when lobbyists have so much influence
that they write the drafts of laws. But in multistakeholder
situations they take that scandal to a whole new level: those who
would be lobbyists in a democracy (corporations, experts, civil
society) become the legislators themselves, and dispense with all
public elections and not only write the laws but pass them,
enforce them, and in some cases even set up courts of arbitration
that are usually conditioned on waiving the right to go to the
court system set up by democracies. A vote is just a minimum
requirement of justice. Without a vote, law is just force
inflicted by the wealthy and powerful. Multistakeholderism is a
coup d’etat against democracy by those who would merely be
lobbyists in a democratic system."{{Citation needed|date=March
2014}}
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com| http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD
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