does the internet need a government? everywhere, even in europa where the fear of a hegemonic us-controlled net is quite huge, the "internet corporation for assigned names and numbers" (icann) is named the "internet's government". fact is that the organisation is holding some "democratic" elections of 9 of the 18 director's board members now due to public pressure icann was facing lately (more at slashdot.org).
ridiciously, the people entitled to vote (older than 16 years and having a valid e-mail address) are not told who they can vote for, yet... seems like a new attitude towards and quality of democracy have risen since absurd online polls and arbitrary "democratic" manifests flood the net society.
generally, there is a lack of information and communication about icann and those elections in europa as well as in the states. it is said that only a few thousand of us-american citizens registered for voting at the time. an initiative by german news magazine der spiegel in cooperation with broadcast station zdf tries to spread the word, lift conscience and get people to vote at least in germany.
"we are sorry. the database is currently overloaded. please try again when the system is less busy. " – error message trying to reach the icann election application form
i ask myself what kind of theater this "internet government" crap is... can this election ever be called a democratic act? is icann necessary at all? would it help the internet community keeping their niches and ideals or will i, you, we, the users, be among the bleating sheep once again being controlled by some unpredictable reincarnations of esther dyson? what's going on in other european and non-us countries?
q: is this not a global issue? a: this is internet dada.