<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">more FYI<br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">William Drake <<a href="mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch">william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">October 19, 2009 8:08:45 PM GMT+02:00<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">Roberto Gaetano <<a href="mailto:roberto@icann.org">roberto@icann.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Cc: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">"'At-Large Worldwide'" <<a href="mailto:at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org">at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org</a>>, "'ALAC Working List'" <<a href="mailto:alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org">alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>Re: [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?</b><br></span></div><br><div>Hi Roberto,<br><br>On Oct 19, 2009, at 6:40 PM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Bill,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">This is going to be my last message on the subject. Although interesting, I<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">think that we should continue in Seoul, where in a F2F situation we will<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">reduce the risk for further miscommunication and misunderstandings.<br></blockquote><br>Agreed<br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">A few clarifications:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">"But the main point for the SIC to maintain the concept of<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">constituency, against the open opposition of NCUC," which<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">sounded to me like you were saying the main point for the SIC<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">is to maintain the concept of constituency, against the open<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">opposition of NCUC. Sorry for my confusion.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">The confusion arises, IMHO, from the fact that we use the word<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">"Constituency" to mean different things.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I mean "the body that, as is right now, has īnter alia the right to have<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">councillors in the GNSO Council". And, unless mistaken, the concept of<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">constituency as described is not what NCUC wants. And I do believe that the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">NCUC has stated this openly.<br></blockquote><br>Right, we suggest no hardwiring, but rather democratic elections (which in most plausible scenarios would yield the same results...unless you green lighted the CP80 censorship constituency, they might have trouble getting broad-based support). But so do you: you said "the SIC has decided, after long discussion, not to have an automatic link between creation of a constituency and establishment of a seat in the Council." So by your own definition above, this would mean you've decided constituencies will no longer exist. But this doesn't fit with you saying that the SIC was struggling to maintain the concept against the opposition of NCUC. How can you be agreeing with our position and at the same time working to overcome our position? I mean, I like a good oxymoron as much as anybody, but this makes my circuits fizz out.<br><br>Anyway, let's chalk it up to miscommunication and move on.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">When you say that NCUC is in favour of "constituencies", you mean "the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">bodies that are defined in the NCUC charter as being constituencies", which,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">unless I am mistaken, have many rights but not the right of voting<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">councillors.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">So, one way to progress is to say that that everybody is in favour of<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">"Constituencies", but that we need to come to an agreement to what will be<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the exact "powers" of the constituencies.<br></blockquote><br>Agreed. As far as I can tell, everyone sees the 'powers' fairly similarly, except that NCUC thinks council seats should be filled by elections, SIC thinks the EC should just hash out the allocation of seats (which to us sounds like a recipe for trench warfare), and some in ALAC feel there should be hard wiring. Hopefully we can have a focused discussion on the relative merits of these approaches and the trajectories/scenarios they may point to in order to move this to another level.<br><br><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">[...] (BTW, why did SIC ok RySG<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">eliminating constituencies in their charter? I never<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">understood the rationale for not having harmonized structures<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">across SGs, and it makes the misimpression about NCUC's<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">charter which explicitly provides for constituencies seem all<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">the more odd.)<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I think I have explained this a zillion times, but I can say this for the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">zillionth+1 time.<br></blockquote><br>Not to me, sorry<br><br><blockquote type="cite">One of the roles of the constituencies in the initial design of ICANN was to<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">provide a mechanism to define and register membership. This was addressing a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">concern, which was to avoid capture by a group of people who were joining<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the process in a category where they were not really qualified to be.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">During the discussions related to the review, in the consultations with Ry<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and Rar we realized that this risk was non-existent for them, because in the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">way we had defined the SGs (i.e. as being the "Contracted Parties") we had<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">an automatic mechanism to sort out the issue: if the organization has a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">contract with ICANN, it is in, otherwise it is out. And by virtue of this,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">we also had a complete list of the membership.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">This happened because during the process there was rough consensus by the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">community (although I was personally against, having preferred a "Suppliers"<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">vs. "Consumers" approach) to have the "Contracted" vs. "Non-Contracted"<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">separation.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In the case of the non-contracted parties, we do not have such a mechanism.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Check, for instance, the discussion about the potential individual<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">registrants constituency, where one of the debates is how to sort out who is<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">a commercial and who is a non-commercial registrant, and how can we monitor<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">that the status at the moment of the registration is kept over time. Same<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">issue if we think about a business entity that is also an IP holder, how we<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">determine who is an internet service provider and who is not, etc. In simple<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">words, we do not have an easy mechanism to determine who is qualified and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">who is not to join a SG. However, we have that for the constituencies, in<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the way that constituencies are currently defined and chartered.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">So, the proposal of the SIC (and the decision by the Board) has been that we<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">could get rid of the constituencies in the contractual house, but not in the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">non-contractual house. You may agree or disagree with the decision, that has<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">been already taken by the Board and is not on the table for further<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">discussion, but this is the explanation of the rationale for it.<br></blockquote><br>Ok, well thanks<br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Entirely separate from the principal of constituencies are two issues:<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">[...]<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">You make good points here. I am looking forward to discuss these, among<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">other things, in Seoul. I would like to keep this email short, addressing<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">just clarifications and potential misunderstandings.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">I didn't characterize the SIC as bad and ugly. It is<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">unquestionably true though that the SIC imposed a solution<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">that was opposed by NCUC's 80 organizational and 87<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">individual members and a wide array of non- member supporters<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">and was supported by 3 people. If you don't like calling<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">this top down, ok, give me another term for something done by<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">the board over the strenuous opposition of the community in<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">question.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">I'm not hung up on language, just facts.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Quite interestingly, I just read the email from Dominik Filipp, who agrees<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">with you that the SIC did not follow a bottom-up process.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">However, what he objects on, is exactly the opposite: for him constituencies<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">should be not only created and approved, but should have voting power in the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">council. The fact is that the bottom-up process is usually defined as<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">"taking the decision that suits me" ;>)<br></blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">On a more serious vein, I invite everybody to take a step back and a deep<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">breath. We started this process years ago, with a council where the voting<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">ratio between non-commercial and commercial users was 1:3. The BGC before,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and the SIC[K] after the changes in the Board committee structure, have<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">analysed proposals, discussed with the community (all parts of the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">community), gathered feedback, proposed a solution, presented the solution<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">to the different parts, rediscussed over and over again with all those who<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">were opposing it from different sides, repeated these iterations several<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">times, and arrived now at the final step where hopefully in a couple of<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">weeks we will have this historic change, and a GNSO Council where the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">commercial and non-commercial communities are represented on a base of<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">parity.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In order to achieve this, it was necessary to go through an interim phase,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">during which we had transitional charters, giving ourselves time to think<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">thoroughly the new composition and functioning of the SGs, but in a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">situation in which we were progressing from the past, and established as a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">matter of principle the parity between commercial and non-commercial.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I was prepared to hear the grumbling of the commercial users, noting that<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">they will be less represented than before, but I was incredibly astonished<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">by the fact that all what I am hearing is the bitching of the different<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">components of the non-commercial community, fighting bitterly for the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">control of the additional seats, yelling and screaming at the SIC from<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">different sides, apparently forgetting completely that it was the BGC and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">SIC who recommended in first place to have this new balance.<br></blockquote><br>We all recognize and appreciate the rebalancing, admittedly more in principal than in practice. But 1) there's been a pretty fair bit of bitching from the CSG too, which inter alia you cited as a reason we ought to just suck it up and go along with the SIC charter, and 2) we're not fighting for control of seats, we're arguing the noncommercial space should be organized in a democratic manner that doesn't lock us in perpetuity into precisely the sort of dysfunctional competition you decry.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">To be honest, if I had the chance to rewind the clock, over my dead body I<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">would have ever accepted the task to deal with this matter, and would have<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">much preferred to leave things as they were, raising my arms to show<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">powerlessness, and suggesting to have everybody getting together and achieve<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">consensus in a real "bottom-up way", and to come back to the Board when a<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">consensus was found. Anybody has a guess on where we would be now? My bet is<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">that we would still be with the old GNSO structure, as who likes the status<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">quo would have prevented any move.<br></blockquote><br>Plenty of angst and frustration to go around, alas.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">The bottom-up process is not a process by which the decision is taken by the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">bottom, but a process in which the Board consults the community to the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">maximum extent possible, takes idea and proposals from the community to the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">maximum extent possible, but then makes a decision that does not necessarily<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">please everybody.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Unfortunately, the consultation, negotiation and compromise<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">didn't really involve NCUC.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">What?!?<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In Sydney alone the SIC had two official meetings with NCUC, plus the<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">discussions in the corridors, plus emails before and after. And even outside<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the SIC, other Board members were involved. I know that neither you nor<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Milton were there, but other NCUC folks, including the Chair, were there,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">you can check with them.<br></blockquote><br>I have, but let's not rehash the past at this point. What matters now is we sit and talk through the question of institutional design in a reasoned and depersonalized manner while bracketing all the other stuff that is not integral to it.<br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">But we can still do that, and<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">very much look forward to working with you in Seoul and<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">beyond to arrive at a lasting solution that is supported by<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">the actually existing NC community.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I hope so.<br></blockquote><br>Ditto. Cheers,<br><br>Bill</div></blockquote></div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: medium; 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: 0px; ">***********************************************************<br>William J. Drake<br>Senior Associate<br>Centre for International Governance<br>Graduate Institute of International and<br> Development Studies<br>Geneva, Switzerland<br><a href="mailto:william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch">william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch</a><br>www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html<br>***********************************************************<br><br></span>
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