Dear PAB Members,
The elections are over, and we have a new set of officers, whose
intelligence and dedication bode well for PAB. They will have a much more
difficult job than the outgoing officers.
The PAB is going to change a lot. I predict that its membership will grow,
its responsibilities will mount, and the internal political groupings that
have largely been absent from our group will become more manifest.
Perhaps, if the changes recently proposed by the POC are adopted, these
power groupings will even be mandated. No matter how it happens, as PAB's
power grows, the pressure to bow to commercial "realities," as articulated
by self-interested parties, will grow too.
Personally, as this group and that group jockey for position, and the
intrigue inevitably grows, I will try to keep in mind why I support the
gTLD-MoU -- because I believe that the domain space, like all the Internet,
belongs to the entire world, not just to commercial imperatives, and that
its stewardship really is a public trust, both for those who use the
Internet and those who will.
While some PAB members will make convenient arguments that happen to favor
their money or power interests, I will try to remember that the world is
full of people who haven't yet, but will someday, use the Internet. In
most countries, you can't get a domain name under the country-code domain
unless you are a company, approved by the local government. gTLDs allow
people to speak to the world, from a visible platform, without having to
modify their message to suit local politics. It's a small part of the
Internet's promise, but it closely mirrors the larger promise.
As the first attempt to bring participatory governance to any non-technical
part of the Internet, the gTLD-MoU movement has attracted a lot of
attention. Of the three groups in the gTLD-MoU, the PAB is the most
original and important part of the gTLD-MoU. If it fulfills its promise of
bringing previously unheard voices to the debate, and gives them a say in
how this little part of the Internet is managed, the PAB will have achieved
a tremendous thing that will be copied again and again. If it fails in
that promise, we can expect that large-scale participation in the
governance of other areas of the Internet will suffer a significant setback.
I will do my utmost to make it work. From what I know of our new officers,
so will they. Let's support them and get on with our important work.
I really enjoyed helping the PAB come into being, and I thank all of you
for the opportunity to do something worthwhile. So out with the old, and
in with the new, and let's make a New Year's Resolution to make our work
count. Thank you, one and all.
Antony
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 30 2000 - 03:22:17 PST