On 4/18/07, John L <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:

> Where do users of cybercafes (those with email addresses or those
> without who just surf) fit in?  Are each of these "individual users"

Sure.  I don't see them as having interests significantly different from
those of users who depend on an ISP for access and mail.  Cybercafe users
have little trouble setting up e-mail accounts on web mail providers, and
all are at the mercy of their providers for their online identity.

> in this scenario how in practice could you separate an Internet "user"
> from a member of the general public ...

In developed countries, you're right, they're approximately the same set
of people.

> Also what about those who use common Internet access points ...

Seems to me that the individuals are all the people using the access
point.  Same idea if they're using mobile phones, either their own phones
or if they rent phones by the call from phone ladies in developing
countries.

> My sense is that the terminology that is being used here is highly
> culturally specific.

I don't intend for them to be culturally specific, and I hope we don't get
bogged down in technical details in a vain attempt to map users to devices
or IP addresses or e-mail addresses.  Individual users are people.  I am
one user even though I use six different computers in a typical day, and
if six people share a computer down the street or on the other side of the
world, they are six users, not one.

I'm really glad that you brought up these scenarios, because these are
exactly the users who are invisible in ICANN's debates.  The WHOIS
argument is a notable example -- many of the arguments advanced for WHOIS
privacy are about people who want to register their own domains to host a
web site to make political statements and want to avoid reprisals for
those statements based on tracking them through their domain registration.
While I believe that such people exist, they must be about 0.001% of the
users in the developed world, and 0.00001% of the users in LDCs.  I'd like
to spend less time on technically appealing exotica and more on questions
like how do you make e-mail work for legitimate individual users in west
Africa when so much of the mail from that part of the world is sent by 419
criminals.

R's,
John

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