<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>I remain in shock over the Board SIC (staff's) treatment of the Stakeholder Group Charters and wonder if anyone from the board was even paying attention to what staff did with the Commercial Stakeholder Group Charter.</div><div><br></div><div>In particular, under the SIC approved <a href="http://gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/csg-proposed-petition-charter-22jun09.pdf">charter</a> for the CSG, they are going to allow any of the existing members of the IPR, ISP, and Commercial Constituencies VETO any board vote creating a new commercial constituency in the CSG. Amazing! The press should be having a field day with this level of incompetence and favoritism.</div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Arial"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000FF">"4.2 Membership shall also be open to any additional constituency recognised by ICANN’s Board under its by-laws, provided that such constituency, as determined by the unanimous consent of the signatories to this charter, is representative of commercial user interests which for the purposes of definition are distinct from and exclude registry and prospective registry, registrar, re-seller or other domain name supplier interests."</font> </font></div></div><div><br></div><div>We (noncommercial users) have really been asleep at the wheel over the last year while the ICANN Board of Directors had their heads filled with mis-representations about NCUC by relentless back-door lobbying. They get it from the commercial/IPR crowd and they get it from staff, neither of whom want to see noncommercial users effective in policy development. The fact that we haven't engaged in backdoor lobbying the way our critics do is coming back to haunt us by ICANN trying to take away our newly won 3 elected council seats for noncommercial users and staff imposing its "stranglehold" charter while ignoring all of work we did to develop one that was supported by global civil society (63 organizations + dozens of individuals in public comments).</div><div><br></div><div>We must push-back against ICANN injustice to get them to listen to noncommercial users and to stop developing policy through backdoor negotiations while ignoring the expressed will of the public and a bottom-up process.</div><div><br></div><div>ICANN is accepting public comments until 21 July on their imposed charter, so we have to weigh in loudly on their failure to follow bottom-up processes and allow noncommercial users to govern themselves. More info on comment period: <a href="http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#stakeholder">http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#stakeholder</a></div><div><br></div><div>[Considering the simple fact that not a single comment was taken into account by ICANN in the April comment period, one must ask oneself, "what is the point in commenting again?" But we have to keep up the pressure and at least alert the public of ICANN squeezing out noncommercial users in policy development].</div><div><br></div><div>We must raise awareness of this injustice to noncommercial users in the next few weeks, including awareness with the press and political figures. Are there any volunteers to work in a small task force with me to raise awareness (help with blogs, press releases, email lists, etc.) in the coming weeks? -- please let me know asap.</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you very much!</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Robin</div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div>IP JUSTICE</div><div>Robin Gross, Executive Director</div><div>1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 USA</div><div>p: +1-415-553-6261 f: +1-415-462-6451</div><div>w: <a href="http://www.ipjustice.org">http://www.ipjustice.org</a> e: <a href="mailto:robin@ipjustice.org">robin@ipjustice.org</a></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></div></body></html>