That won't work. ICANN will scuttle it in 2 seconds.
> You have opposed such an effort.
No, I haven't. I said: "I'm not sure that an IDNO needs to exist",
which is a very different thing. However, I am *definitely* opposed to
the turn that this *prospective* IDNO is taking.
> It makes little sense to have
> someone who doesn't support that individuals should have a
> constituency in a constituency that is created for that purpose.
Some requirements are reasonable; some are not. What you are in
effect demanding is that members sign a loyalty oath. That is not a
reasonable requirement. ICANN will see right through it.
I was asked to put forth my own vision of how an IDNO should be. I
will do that over a few messages -- in this one I would like to
respond in more detail to the issue of membership criteria.
Personally, I don't think that owning a domain should be a
requirement for membership. Suppose that someone just LOST a domain
because of a trademark dispute? Should that disqualify them from
participation? There is an old saying, attributed, as I recall, to
Ben Franklin, on the topic of requiring property ownership as a
condition of voting:
"A man owns an ass; he can vote. The ass dies; he cannot vote.
Who owns the vote?"
I think the requirement for membership should be:
"Any real individual with an interest in Domain Names may
participate. Proof of existence may be required."
Concretely, the identities that participate are email addresses; what
we need is a fairly reliable binding between an email addresses and a
human individual -- that is what the "Proof of existence" clause
means.
It further says "MAY be required" because you only require it in a
case where the question is raised -- that is, you accept anyone, and
someone may be removed if they are questioned and cannot provide an
acceptable proof of identity.
One form of proof of existence, of course, would be the binding
between an email address and a human being that is recorded in a
whois database, indicating a domain registration. But other forms of
identification (to be determined) should be allowed as well. And
after all, the problem isn't that difficult -- we are only trying to
establish the reality of an individual, after all. The idea is that
you can't allow bogus or multiple identities (so easy to construct),
but that otherwise you should allow anyone who has a personal
interest in domain names to participate.
The argument has been made that you have to require "ownership
interest" (in some very fuzzy and poorly defined way) in a domain
name, or otherwise you will not be able to distinguish the idno from
the General Assembly. But in the same breath, the argument
continues: "besides, anyone who wants to participate can just get a
domain name." However, this last point actually destroys the former
point -- if it is so easy to get a domain name, then the only real
criteria for participating in the idno is interest, which is
PRECISELY the criteria for participating in the General Assembly.
One of the problems I see with any form of IDNO is that it is a
*intrinsically* in conflict with the notion of a General Assembly.
(It's interesting to note that the idea of a *non-voting* General
Assembly came originally from the "Irish Proposal", was continued in
the "Paris Draft", and was adopted by ICANN as one of the compromises
between the "Paris Draft" and the "Barcelona-Monterrey-Washington"
(BMW) drafts.)
It is intrinsically in conflict, because the characteristic of
"individual domain name holder" is covers an extremely broad range of
interests -- it covers commercial, non-commercial, free speech
concerns, Intellectual Property (IP) concerns, and hundreds of
smaller concerns, all in one constituency. (For example, some people
are here apparently because of their concerns with IP issues, and
they hope that the IDNOC will favor their point of view. But that
doesn't follow -- individual domain name owners include those that
have trademarks, and they may have a very different view than is
currently expressed on this list. Remember -- IP lawyers can have
individual domain names just as easily as anyone else.)
Earlier versions of the BMW draft (of which I was the editor) had
the notion of an "at-large" constituency, instead of an "Individual
Domain Name Owners Constituency". The only significant difference
between an "At-Large Constituency" and the General Assembly is that
the At-Large Constituency had seats on the Names Council.
Which all leads to this: I've read the arguments on the web site;
I've seen the arguments on the lists; but I think they are weak. I
don't see a defendable difference in membership qualifications
between an IDNO and the General Assembly, and I don't think the ICANN
Board will either. But this is attacking the problem from the wrong
angle. The real problem is that there is no representation for
General Interests on the Names Council, not that there is some clear
difference in interests between individual domain name owners and
everyone else.
Therefore, I think a better tack is to try to get Names Council
positions for the General Assembly.
-- Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be kent@songbird.com lonesome." -- Mark Twain