Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 365
Netizens-Digest Tuesday, September 26 2000 Volume 01 : Number 365
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Reminder of the netizens list digest
[netz] Change to digest
[netz] Emails with Esther Dyson About ICANN
[netz] Report from Melbourne Demonstrations -- Prague is next!
[netz] Fallout From An Exchange of Emails with Esther Dyson
[netz] Article from the Financial Times (London)
[netz] Events in Prague
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 12:33:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Reminder of the netizens list digest
Hi,
Just a quick reminder that there is a digest form of this mailing list.
If you prefer the digest form, please send your preference to jrh@ais.org
and I will switch you to the digest.
The digest form is archived at:
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/netizens/digest/
The files are listed chronologically.
Take care.
Jay
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 18:15:54 GMT
From: "Pratyush Bharati" <pratyush1@hotmail.com>
Subject: [netz] Change to digest
Jay,
Can you please change me to the digest format. I recently joined the list
and I find it very informative.
Regards,
Pratyush
- ----Original Message Follows----
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Reply-To: netizens@columbia.edu
To: netizens@columbia.edu
Subject: [netz] Reminder of the netizens list digest
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 12:33:47 -0400 (EDT)
Hi,
Just a quick reminder that there is a digest form of this mailing list.
If you prefer the digest form, please send your preference to jrh@ais.org
and I will switch you to the digest.
The digest form is archived at:
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/netizens/digest/
The files are listed chronologically.
Take care.
Jay
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 09:36:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Emails with Esther Dyson About ICANN
Curtis Sahakian sent the following to the netizens list. He leaves out of
his list any of the arguements against the existence of ICANN or
supporting participatory democracy rather than representation:
An Exchange of Emails with Esther Dyson About ICANN Disenfranchising
Internet Users Right to Vote For the ICANN Board Governing the Internet
Hi,
I've collected some private and public messages exchanged with Esther
Dyson about problems with the what many believe an abuse of power by ICANN
in disenfranchising internet users from the right of represenation on
ICANN's Board.
Some of you have recieved emails on this subject before. What I have done
is add a number of popular journalists to the email list in the
expectation that they will learn more about this problem and in the hope
that it increases the likelyhood that they cast a critcal eye on what's
happening.
Please send me your comments... and of course If you aren't interested in
this subject, ,just mail me back at Cpart@Corporate-Partnering.com
Thanks
Curtis Sahakian 847/676-2774
PS: Here are a collection of Links that you may find of interest in
learning more about this subject:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/full_coverage/tech/domain_names_and_registration/
(100s of articles written by reporters who've been covering these issues)
http://www.icann.org (ICANN's Web Site)
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/gao-icann/DNS-Proposal.txt
http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/ (background on the development of the Internet
and the role of the government)
http://www.domainhandbook.com/toc.html
http://www.iciiu.org/ (International Congress of Independent Internet
Users)
http://www.domainnotes.com/
http://www.eff.org/ (electronic Frontier Foundation - the ACLU of the
Internet)
- -----------------------
Curtis Sahakian
847/676-2774
Cpart@Corporate-Partnering.com
- -----------------------
Curtis Sahakian's compilation of email messages and posts can be seen at
http://www.columbia.edu/~jrh29/geneva/ICANN-election.txt
Take care.
Jay Hauben
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 23:13:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Report from Melbourne Demonstrations -- Prague is next!
Hi,
This forwarded message appeared on the Canadian Universal Access list
cpi-ua@vcn.bc.ca . The use of the net described in the article should
interest and encourage netizens.
- ----- Original Message -----
From: Peter K. <peterk@enteract.com>
To: <lbo-talk@lists.panix.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: Melbourne report, WTO troubles
Nothing in today's New York Times, but the Chicago Tribune carried a front
page, above the fold story - no photo however. It's great there's so much
anti-capitalist, anti-corporate language seeping through the media, rather
than just anti-trade, anti-globalization talk. Also, first Seattle, now
Melbourne and then Prague. The internationalism of the opposition is also a
morale booster.
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,CTT-23543816,FF.html
Chicago Tribune
"World trade targeted Down Under
By Uli Schmetzer
Tribune Foreign Correspondent
September 11, 2000
MELBOURNE, Australia-Stunned Australians are learning this week just how
global anti-globalization protests have become.
. . .
Many of the demonstrators who placed this stately Victorian capital under
siege were part of a mobile protest force organized via the Internet, using
some of the very tools that have made the globalization of world trade such
a controversial issue.
Observers say such data-based demonstrators form the roots of a social
revolution that is growing via cyberspace.
The activists keep in touch and organize rallies through an escalating
number of Web sites on the inexpensive information highway, which can
accommodate anyone's pet cause and allows everyone a voice.
. . . "
The whole article is worth reading.
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,CTT-23543816,FF.html
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 10:30:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Fallout From An Exchange of Emails with Esther Dyson
Non-member submission from [cpart@interaccess.com]
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 23:13:07 -0500
Subject: Fallout From An Exchange of Emails with Esther Dyson About ICANN
Disenfranchising Internet Users Right to Vote For the ICANN Board
Governing the Internet
Hey everyone
1. Juliana Gruenwald just wrote an article on ICANN on page 12 of the September 18, 2000 issue of Interactive Week. You can also read it here:
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2628751,00.html
We are getting some good coverage on this issue. Unfortunately she missed some important points
(a) She didn't report on who the real ICANN member/shareholders are. Those are the people who get to vote for the people who appoint the 10 non-elective positions. We never hear about these member/shareholders.
(b) She didn't explain how the 5 "elective positions" can be eliminated at the election of the 10 appointed members.
(c) She didn't discuss how it is that even the "pseudo members" number only 76,000 (out of hundreds of millions of internet users) because of the electronic equivalent of the games played by Southern Politicians in the 50s to keep discourage black voter registration.
2. In the same issue, there is an article about how NSI is squatting on 1,000,000 expired domain names. http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2628748,00.html
3. You know its pretty foolish that ICANN is unable to conduct a vote without using paper and is using that as a rational to keeping the pseudo membership so low.
Would anyone be interested in running our own open election outside of ICANN and presenting ICANN real voting members 15 a board of 15 freely elected board members to either accept or reject? They would reject such a board, but then we could take this board to the applicable congressional committee and ask them for help.
It would sort of like be conducting a shadow vote in Serbia, Peru, Nigeria, or Iraq, then showing up to take office. Only it might be that there would be a congressional committee to supply some adult supervision.
You know, ICANN, NSI, what's the difference? What is it about the internet that brings out the passive aggressive worst in people? Not enough eye contact?
Anyway, there are several internet companies in the business of conducting votes over the internet. I bet they could conduct a vote without having to rely on snail mail as ICANN does (the concept of ICANN using land mail to conduct an election just continue to amaze me).
Any volunteers to stir the pot on this? Does anyone know who these internet voting companies are? I've read of them. I think they are all located in the Washington DC area. Does any of you know anyone at any of these companies?
4. Here is a collection of resources for anyone who wants to learn more about ICANN vs. Internet Democracy.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/full_coverage/tech/domain_names_and_registration/ (100s of articles written by reporters who've been covering these issues)
http://www.icann.org (ICANN's Web Site)
http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/gao-icann/DNS-Proposal.txt
http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/ (background on the development of the Internet and the role of the government)
http://www.domainhandbook.com/toc.html
http://www.iciiu.org/ (International Congress of Independent Internet Users)
http://www.domainnotes.com/
http://www.eff.org/ (electronic Frontier Foundation - the ACLU of the Internet)
5. Please pass this email along to anyone who might want to be added to the distribution list.
Curtis Sahakian
1-847-676-2774
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 10:18:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Article from the Financial Times (London)
The following appeared on the nettime mailing list:
> From: "nettime's_roving_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>`
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 08:34:54 -0100
Subject: <nettime> Fighting to be heard (FT on pressure groups)
Reply-To: "nettime's_roving_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>`
Fighting to be heard
In spite of their real power, pressure groups feel increasingly
beleaguered, says Vanessa Houlder
Financial Times September 19 2000
The days when campaigners were mocked as woolly-minded
idealists are gone. On issues ranging from world trade to
genetically modified organisms, from multilateral investment to
climate change, activists are exercising unprecedented influence
over the decisions of governments and businesses.
Activists have become part of the backdrop of political and
business life. They are gathering in Prague for the annual meeting
of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund over the
coming week. Earlier this month, anti-globalisation protesters
disrupted the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, Australia. And
Europe's petrol disputes demonstrated the potency of informal
protesters armed with little more than e-mail, mobile phones and
popular sympathy.
The activists' power impresses their detractors and supporters
alike. "Ordinary people working together can achieve extra-
ordinary things," says Jody Williams, the Nobel Laureate who led a
coalition of hundreds of pressure groups in the campaign to ban
landmines.
Yet despite their growing influence, the campaigners feel
surprisingly beleaguered. "Protesters" range from the respectable
to the anarchic. Established groups must wage a relentless fight
for members, money and media attention. Although that suggests
pursuing direct action and pithy sound bites, they are grappling
with complex, long-term issues that do not always lend themselves
to such treatment.
And in the search for publicity, established groups risk losing
credibility. Their growing power has led to accusations of
unaccountability, scaremongering and pursuing single issues at
the expense of the broader good.
The success of campaigners in responding to these pressures is
"very mixed", says Ulrich Steger, a professor at the IMD business
school in Switzerland. Failures of activist and voluntary groups
attract little publicity and do not appear in bankruptcy statistics. The
larger groups, which are bolstered by professional fund-raising efforts,
tend to hold their own, while many start-ups, formed for a single
campaign, fade away. Disillusioned volunteers just drop out.
Prof Steger says support for the environmental movement is
steady, levelling out after a sharp rise in the early 1990s. The
World Wide Fund for Nature has more than 4.7m supporters,
generating an income of $320m (£228m); Friends of the Earth has
1m members. Greenpeace has reported the first rise in the number
of financial supporters for nine years, with 2.5m contributors,
generating an income of E126m (£77m).
However, competition between campaigning groups is growing. Prof
Steger points to greater interaction and tighter competition between them.
The number of groups is estimated to have quadrupled to 20,000 over the
past three decades. But their expansion has not been matched by a growth
in volunteers' time and resources.
Significantly, Greenpeace is losing ground in some of its traditional
strongholds, such as Germany. Campaigning on global environmental
problems such as climate change is hard, partly because they are
scientifically complicated and partly because their impact lies in the
future and, often, far beyond Europe's frontiers.
As well as coping with competition and complexity, campaigners
have to appeal to a new generation that has grown up with protest.
According to Prof Steger, surveys indicate that young people under
23 in North America and Europe are highly environmentally
conscious. But their willingness to take action on environmental
issues is restricted to their personal sphere. Despite the protests
of the anti-globalisation protesters in Seattle, most younger people have
less faith than their parents that direct action can solve complex issues
such as climate change.
Environmental campaigns find it especially hard to cope with this
suspicion. They are increasingly under pressure to address social
and economic issues, having come under fire for a disregard for
jobs and communities. In the recent petrol protests, for instance,
green campaigners seemed torn between arguing the
environmental case for high fuel taxes and offending a populist
movement.
Campaigners have several responses to these pressures. For a
start, they are mindful of the need to maintain their distinctiveness.
Over the past decade, the 10 largest campaign groups have agreed to chop
up the agenda between them, says John Elkington of Sustainability, a
consultancy.
As a result, the groups complement each other, he says. "There is
often a synergy between different groups. One thing that surprises
me is how effective WWF, FoE and Greenpeace are. There is a
complementarity between them."
The symbiosis also extends to the different sorts of action that
organisations undertake. At one extreme are groups set upon
confrontation, and at the other are environmental groups striking
alliances with businesses. Among some mainstream groups,
"there is a covert sympathy for direct action, because you need
shocks to the system to break loose some of the institutional
barriers," says Mr Elkington.
The trend towards alliances with companies, while partly driven by
funding needs, recognises that progressive companies have an
important influence on the environmental debate.
It is also a result of the groups' increasing professionalism. "The
people, especially in the bigger, inter- national organisations are
becoming very professional," says Prof Steger. "After decades of
raising awareness, people ask themselves 'what are we going to
do?' Organisations are forced to come up with solutions, which you
can only do with professional knowledge."
Relations between the groups and business are not always
successful, of course. The requirement for confidentiality makes it
hard for environmental groups to win publicity for their work.
Moreover, some environmental campaigners, whose attitudes were
forged in the anti-corporate culture of the 1960s, find it hard to
overcome their instinctive hostility to business.
This wariness extends to the pressure groups' supporters, and has
fuelled a long-running and acrimonious debate on the wisdom of co-
operation. When the Environmental Defense Fund in the US
pioneered this approach in the early 1990s, it was accused of
selling out. "If you were trying to handle drug problems in your
community, you wouldn't be saying, 'let's try to work this out
with the drug dealers'," said a Greenpeace trustee.
The established campaign groups know there is a risk they could be
outmanoeuvred by more radical protesters. If a group's members
prefer the uncompromising stance of the radicals, more
professional, solutions-oriented approaches may be thwarted.
Supporters have no shortage of alternatives. In recent years, many
high-profile campaigns, including protests against road-building, the
World Trade Organisation and, most recently, the high taxes on fuel, have
been the work of informal groups of individuals.
These new activists may be less professional and sophisticated
than the traditional campaign groups, but they have fewer
constraints. They are, says Mr Elkington, "a huge competitive
challenge to the traditional organisations".
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 14:39:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: jrh@ais.org (Jay Hauben)
Subject: [netz] Events in Prague
Hi,
There are updates constantly on the happenings in Prague surrounding the
efforts of protestors to show European and world disgust with the
Corporate agenda. The site is:
http://prague.indymedia.org/
Here are some examples:
UPDATE 20:07 The McDonalds at the Muzeum metro station has apparently had
its windows destroyed. Police are moving in.
UPDATE 19:50 The Opera has been canceled due to
"unforeseen circumstances." The Ya Basta group
is apparently still holding the bridge to the
convention center.
UPDATE 19:42 Demonstrators have apparently left
the convention center along with delegates.
UPDATE 19:39 Delegates are going to the Opera
Square where a big party is waiting for them but
three thousands protesters are already in the
square and many more are joining and road blocks
have been set up to stop the police entering the
square. Thousands have gathered in the square.
UPDATE from Tel-Aviv Reports of a completely
successful shutdown of down-town Tel-Aviv are
coming in. Demonstrators totally took over a
square and held a moment of silence in solidarity
with actions in Praha.
...
UPDATE 14:41: Reports of large clashes with police continue from around
the city. UPDATE 14:00: BBC is reporting that some police were set on fire
due to molotov cocktails. UPDATE 13:45: Ya Basta is pusing hard against
police lines on the bridge to the convention center. UPDATE 13:20:
Reports of massive police violence from under the bridge to the convention
center. Gas, spray, water cannons and other weapons are being used against
the people marching toward the convention center from the valley. Many
people have recived head injuries. One witness reports hundreds of tear
gas rounds being fired.
Jay
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #365
******************************
