It seems to me if 80% of Internet users are in North
America and Europe, then they should be selecting 80% of the five representatives,
or 4 of 5. Now, this isn't "fair" according to the ICANN board, but would be
a much more accurate representation of the electorate. More to the point, why
are we electing people on a geographical basis? I (a North American) might
want to have something say about the Asian/Pacific member because my websites are
run from there (say, Taiwan).I think I understand ICANN's reasoning behind the
geographical separation of the @Large members, but I just don't see it as valid.
I believe that this merely makes a sufficiently determined group of individuals able
to capture a majority of the @Large seats simply by organizing via the web across
the lesser-populated regions. A smaller electorate is more prone to being co-opted
by a fairly small percentage of it's voters. And mailing address is not a very
valid way of determining residence -- I can obtain a mailbox in Venezuela for a relatively
small sum, and a Venezuelan can get a box at a Mailboxes Etc the same way.
Respectfully,
I would suggest possibly categorizing users by their ISP, or by groups of ISPs.
Of course, one can switch ISPs relatively easily, but when you do so, you become
a de facto user of that other ISP (even if it's only a mail redirect) and therefore
a valid user, entitled to a vote there. As each user can only have one valid
email address at a time, they can only vote as a member of one ISP. And, if
they have tried to bypass the system by having multiple accounts with ICANN claiming
different ISP's, that's okay -- they are a user of each of those ISPs, are entitled
to vote there, and can pay the $whatever a month it will take to maintain all of
those email addresses. The only problem might be doing this on grand scale
-- would be difficult, but not impossible -- and I don't know how ICANN would deal
with an organized effort to get people into as many regions as possible. I
think it would make the @Large directors much more representative of their electorate
-- in other words, representation by Internet space, not Real World space.
Here's
another idea -- perhaps a random (or specific) grouping of users by IP address or
IP subnet? Some technical difficulties, but not insurmountable -- even road
warriors generally have a home ISP of some sort. This might require a bit of
instruction for our less technically oriented members, but would not be undoable.
Even with ipmasq boxes and proxy servers, it should be a fair enough distribution,
although that might change over time. Just some ideas -- I don't know if these
have been worked over and rejected by ICANN or not, but they make a lot more sense
to me. I'm sure someone out there has a better recommendation; lets hear
it!
Aetius