Important blog post about the ICANN Accountability CCWG

[Milton L Mueller]

Talk about "the commons" is as confused as talk about "the market." Both constitute a form of fundamentalism, a religious belief that one of them is good no matter what, a belief that is so abstract it is virtually useless in policy discussions.

Definite articles are the enemy of meaningful discourse here. There are markets in particular resources under particular rules. There are commons in particular resources, and these can be subdivided into open access commons, common pool resources, club goods, etc. Quite frequently, commons in one resource (e.g., TCP/IP protocols) support markets in other domains (e.g., internet-based information services or equipment).

Before we can have a meaningful discussion you have to tell me what commons, in what resource, under what conditions, are you actually talking about?

If it's DNS we are talking about here's the scoop:

*        gTLDs and SLDs are private goods. They are exclusively registered to one administrator.

*        gTLDs are more regulated than SLDs (for better or worse)

*        One could make a case that ccTLDs are a kind of trustee relationship

*        The DNS root is a common pool resource

*        No domain name resources are open access commons. None. Nada.


From: NCSG-Discuss [mailto:NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Avri Doria
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 11:49 AM
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [NCSG-Discuss] Important blog post about the ICANN Accountability CCWG

Hi,

Private property is not really the problem as we all have a right to what we need.  It is accumulation of people's private property rights in the corporate property right, and the transform of the commons into corporate private property that are problematic.

And one problem with the majoritarian point of view is that it promotes tyranny of the majority in so many cases.

The public interests of both the majority and of the many minorities, especially endangered minorities is some thing that ICANN should worry about.  Not just majoritiarian corporate acquisitiveness.


avri
On 27-Dec-14 10:49, Milton L Mueller wrote:

-----Original Message-----

That's what I liked about Joy's phrasing, I'll pull it verbatim here: "The

broader notion of public interest ... ensures that the mighty cannot

overpower the weak, just because they are more powerful"



OK, so this will put to rest all those folks out there who are advocating overpowering the weak by the mighty. That will settle a lot of ICANN policy debates. Seriously, is this intended to provide a constraint on majoritarian rule? Or what?



ICANN context this notion of public interest needs to be protected to ensure

the DNS is not appropriated to suit purely private ends."  This seems to me

the core of what PI is all about, especially at ICANN.



This is where we part company. What the heck does "purely private ends" means and why does this PI rhetoric always imply that the private is BAD?  I am a registrant of a domain name and so is a small organization I am affiliated with. My main concern is to ensure that my right to use that domain and the speech associated with it - which is a purely private matter - is not interfered with or limited in certain ways. Yes, certain forms of private malfeasance, such as criminality or business fraud or monopolistic pricing, might be of concern to me here and there, but on the whole I think policy should be FACILITATING DNS  use for "purely private ends," and that privacy should be protected, and more often than not the imposition of so-called 'public interest' standards is all about one group exploiting its power to serves their collective ends at the expense of my private ends, or a weaker groups collective or private interests.



And this is the trap that a PI standard always falls into.





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