The tyranny of the majority

The synchronicity is interesting. A law that will allow members of Parliament to change their political allegiance without losing their seats is raising questions on the merits of proportional representation, and by extension, on what a truly democratic system of government looks like.

At the same time, a public battle is being waged, at varying levels of intensity, around the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Bill. It is mostly about the issue of government control over the .za domain; so much so that more important and far-reaching provisions have all but dropped off the radar.

At a glance they seem like very different issues. The one deals with the problem of keeping notoriously fickle politicians loyal to their electorate in the long lulls between elections, the other with what is in essence an address book for the Internet.

Those that do not exercise their right to vote disenfranchise themselves, and then have to live with the consequences.

Phillip de Wet, news editor, ITWeb

Yet at the root of the seemingly intractable disagreement between Namespace and the government is a disagreement far more political in nature: should a tyranny of the majority be allowed on the Internet?

The government wants all policy relating to the Internet, including .za administration, to be in line with national policy. It has a mandate from the people to take charge of the country and whip it into shape. To do so and rectify past injustices, the government implemented things such as affirmative action and black empowerment, and now it wants to extend that to virtual space.

Its methods may have been crass, leading to accusations of a power grab, but the basic argument is solid.

Namespace, on the other hand, wants to see those affected by the policy being able to influence it. There are more than 40 million people in the country, but less than three million even have Internet access, and only a fraction of those actually give a damn about how the domain name system is operated, especially as it has gone so smoothly to date.

Does this make Namespace the enemy of democracy? Hardly. In fact, it argues that a regulator whose members are appointed by government is far less democratic than one where all interested parties have a vote.

And that after all is true of all politics. Even in a general election of great importance, a voter turnout of 50% is considered good. Those that do not exercise their right to vote disenfranchise themselves, and then have to live with the consequences. Those who do vote subject the rest to their (indirect) will. Even if they are in the minority, they become the counted majority.

It seems to work okay in general politics and Namespace is only calling for the same process on a smaller scale.

Nor are these arguments a facade behind which power-hungry Internet gurus are hiding in their quest to cling to control. The people involved are some of the most honourable you could care to meet, and deeply committed to society, democracy and the Internet, in that order.

Their fear of the tyranny of the majority is also justified. It is a recipe for disaster to have those without any interest in the Internet, and no knowledge whatsoever of its workings, control crucial components of it. This is what makes current .za administrator Mike Lawrie raise civil disobedience as an option. He is acting for the greater good in ensuring that the domain system will be completely stable and fully bullet-proof, to his satisfaction, before relinquishing control as he so badly wants to. He will be vilified for it, but it is a selfless act that is a triumph of conscious over convenience.

Unfortunately it does not end there. The government has at least one valid point to counter all this: it is tasked with the social and economic upliftment of its people. An important part of that is introducing IT and the Internet to the 95% that have no access to it. And to achieve that it needs a complex set of interlocking plans and policies. To allow anything (.za administration for example) to stand outside its control, could mean disaster five or ten years up the line. If that happens, and rural Internet roll-out fails, fingers will quickly be pointed. The fact that it left .za administration up to the community it affected will be no excuse at all.

On such a fundamental level there is no possible compromise between the sides. If control is shared it will create an unwieldy organisation incapable of action and it will never be fully trusted by the policy-makers anyway. Without that trust, it can have no independence and would be ineffectual.

Which leaves us in the current mess.

However, the basic decision is already made. Government has the power and a position from which it cannot back down. The question now is how much influence the Internet community can have over its thinking.

It`s time to start educating those policy-makers. Especially as this will not be the last Internet community vs. government battle.