[ncdnhc-discuss] FYI

[Kent Crispin]

I am cc'ing this to Louis Touton, General Counsel of ICANN, and I am
asking that he investigate this situation and give us an opinion.  I
believe that the "policy" that Milton discusses below is basically
incoherent, pernicious, and, to the extent that it makes any sense,
explicitly contrary to the ICANN bylaws.  Moreover, Milton's actions in
this case and in the earlier case involving Dave Crocker and SVPAL look
very much like personal vendettas that seriously call to question his
suitability as a representative of the NCC on the Names Council.  That
the NCC would condone such behavior calls to question its viability as a
representative of non-commercial interests in ICANN. 

On Sat, Nov 24, 2001 at 01:18:59PM -0500, Milton Mueller wrote:
> Kent:
> A clear and hard-won part of the 
> NCDNHC charter is that we exclude from
> membership eligibility organizations 
> that are voting members of other
> DNSO constituencies.

I'm sorry, but you and several others are seriously misrepresenting
things.  

First, the Potter-Yachters is *not* a voting member of any other DNSO
constituency.  Consequently, the statement you make above simply doesn't
apply. 

Second, there is no such language in the current charter posted at the
web site, http://198.6.250.8/ (I have appended it to this email for your
reference).  The web site says in introduction to the charter:

    Then the charter has be revised earlier in 2000, by a subgroup lead
    by Raul Echebarria.  This revised version was not approved by ICANN,
    because the point concerning alternates was not considered as
    consistent with ICANN by-laws. 

    A second revision has been worked out by another subgroup.  The last
    version is in date of September 21st, 2000.  This version did not
    receive any comment from the constituency.  It has been submitted
    also to ICANN for approval.  ICANN did not comment it so far. 

The charter mentioned above is the latest one.  (In fact, at this time,
this is the only charter we have -- and even more, there is NO NCC
charter that has recieved final approved by ICANN.)

Earlier draft charters did have such exclusionary language, but there are 
various reasons why that language wouldn't apply, either:

  1) That language addressed the *organizations* that are members of the
  NCC, *not* their representatives.  Nobody contests that the
  Potter-Yachters is a completely legitimate voting member of the NCC
  (see below).  The PY is not a member of the BC; it has no conflict of
  interest. 

  2) That languange contradicts the ICANN bylaws.  This matter has been
  raised multiple times in the past, and the issue never was resolved. 
  In fact, that language was removed in later drafts precisely because
  it did run foul of the bylaws. 

  3) For the moment accepting that your conflation of organizations and
  the people that represent them made sense (which it doesn't): Not only
  is it true that PY is a legitimate voting member of the NCC, I am
  obviously a perfectly legitimate representative for the PY, because I
  have served in that capacity for several years.  Note that the *only*
  significant thing in my circumstances that has changed is my
  participation as Songbirds rep to the BC: I was owner of Songbird
  before, I am still the owner of Songbird, and my opinions have not
  changed one iota because of Songbird's membership in the BC.  The ONLY
  THING that has changed is that I am now the representative of Songbird
  to the BC.  That is, the ONLY criteria that the NCC is using to
  exclude me from being voting representative of the PY is my
  participation in another constituency.  That is quite explicitly
  contrary to the ICANN bylaws.  (Though I must repeat: the confusion
  between organizations and their representative really undercuts the
  argument in a more fundamental way.)

  4) Moreover, no one in the constituency has EVER articulated what
  "conflict of interest" might exist between "commercial" and
  "non-commercial" interests might be, as far as domain name policies
  are concerned.  In fact, it seems that the interests of commercial 
  interests and non-commercial interests are very similar -- 
  non-commercial entities have trademarks; non-commercial interests are 
  concerned about stable administration of the DNS; there are 
  commercial interests that are concerned about reverse-domain name 
  hijacking; etc.  So the so-called "conflict of interest" between 
  commercial and non-commercial interests is instead really an 
  ideological litmus test that some in the NCC are using to try to 
  "purify" the membership.

[...]

> From its inception the constituency has 
> established online review of membership 
> applications. Some of our practices are 
> informal outgrowths of that review process.
> Specifically, we have for some time 
> established a precedent that organizations
> that legitimately span the NCDNHC and 
> other constituencies must appoint another
> voting representative.

Indeed -- you are simply repeating your confusion.  You needn't worry:
the PY does not span other constituencies.

> The "Potter Yachters" organiyation appears to
> be nothing more than a vehicle for you to gain
> voting status in NCDNHC. If you are unable to
> find another member of this so-called organization
> to represent its "interests" in domain names
> I suggest that the legitimacy of its status
> as an organization might be in question.

Sorry, that's absolutely absurd, as a couple of hours browsing the
website (http://potter-yachters.org -- it would take at least a couple
of hours to look at it all) will reveal.  The West Wight Potter is a
very small sailboat with a very long and distinguished history; the
Potter-Yachters is the longest lived Potter club in the US (there are
several other such clubs, in fact).  We have well over a hundred
dues-paying members; the website has well over 100 megabytes of stories,
pictures, history, travelogues, and other stuff -- eg, Stanley Smith's
voyage from the Isle of Wight to Sweden
(http://potter-yachters.org/stories/ssmith.html), newspaper reports of
John Van Ruth's sail from Mexico to Hawaii in a 15 foot potter
(http://potter-yachters.org/stories/vanruth.html); a tale of a more
contemporary cruise of the Bahamas in a P-19
(http://potter-yachters.org/stories/bahamas/index.html), and many
reports on activities of the club.  Some of the material is educational,
some of it is historical, some of it is just for the running of the
organization, some of it is just for the entertainment and amusement of
the members.  You have only to look at the web site to realize that it
is the product of a real organization. 

In sum, there is no question about the legitimacy of the PYs as a member
organization of the NCC; they are a REAL non-commercial organization
with REAL members that has a REAL purpose that long predates ICANN or
the NCC or even the Intenet.  In fact, the legitimacy of the NCC would
be greatly enhanced if it had many more organizations like the Potter
Yachters. 

It is true that there probably is no one else in the Potter Yachters
that has any particular interest in ICANN.  This is not surprising --
there aren't many people in the world that have a particular interest in
ICANN.  This is another reason why the NCC's attempt (or, I should say,
the attempt by some participants in the NCC) to apply an ideological
litmus test for representatives of member organizations is so pernicious
-- many REAL organizations will in fact have very few people
knowledgable about ICANN or the DNS, and it is quite common for those
people to be professionally involved in the Internet.  That is true for 
most of the organizations that are members of the NCC.

Kent Crispin

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent at songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain