[ncdnhc-discuss] FYI
Chun Eung Hwi
ehchun at peacenet.or.kr
Mon Nov 26 00:41:54 CET 2001
Dear Kent and others,
There are several points in "conflict of interest" issue.
One is the different concern or interest of NCDNHC from other commercial
entities. This is more general and very comprehensive difference as a
unique characteristic of NCDNHC from other constituencies of DNSO. Our
Charter reflects this. Already NCDNHC have represented our own positions
on most highlight issues emerged in DNSO discussions. Most resolutions of
NCDNHC shows up it well. Nevertheless, you argue that the interests of
commercial interests and non-commercial interests are very similar. It
simply means that you have a different idea of non-commercial interests
from other majority of NCDNHC members's thinking. Therefore, at least,
your argument is not fit to the present NCDNHC.
To avoid redundant representation of other constituency members,
non-voting member system was set up. This is also carefully devised to
hold the unique characterisctics of non-commercial community and to keep
it from the plausible distortion of the concern of this community through
intentional or unintentional intervention of other commercial interest
groups.
Above two points are definitely applied to organization rather than
individual. You are exactly right for this respect. However, in line with
the spirit of those provisions, and given the importance of contact point
of member organization - now unsubscription of contact point email address
from announce list are regarded as expressing withdrawal from NCDNHC
because then we could not have any standing communication way, it must
be very natural that such person who are working in internet name/address
resources related industrial field and furthermore also positively
participate in other constituencies would give up their status of contact
point of their organizations in NCDNHC. If such autonomous decision is
not to be expected, NCDNHC should take some measure for that so that its
value and spirit of non-commercial group could not be defamed.
Another one is more specific "conflict of interest", which means the
participation of those who have direct commercial interest in ICANN
related businesses in directly or indirectly affecting issues debates and
making policies of NCDNHC as a voting member. We adopted one resolution
regarding this issue - Refer to
http://ncdnhc.icann-ncc.org/docs/resolution/Melbourne/ME-CoI.html. And
ICANN has one document for this policy. - Refer to
http://ncdnhc.icann-ncc.org/docs/resolution/Melbourne/ME-CoI.html. In
this context, the conflict of interest is applied to individual person but
not organization. Up to now, in our constituency, whenever this issue of
conflict of interest is raised up, those cases no doubt have had this
problem. Even in this case, the most desirable solution is disclosure and
self-declining but if not, NCDNHC should take some measure. Above
referred ICANN document of "conflict of interest" seems to suggest a good
solution in those cases.
As you pointed out it, some parts are not so clear in NCDNHC Charter even
though we could easily induce the above reasoning. And in fact, if the
persons in problem would take up reasonable attitude to this conflict of
interest, some form of enforcement mechanism are not necessarily needed.
But if we could no longer expect such a reasonable and wise solution, the
only one thing we could do is to revise and clarify Charter's provisions.
Regards,
Chun Eung Hwi
------------------------------------------------------------
Chun Eung Hwi
General Secretary, PeaceNet | phone: (+82) 2- 583-3033
Seoul Yangchun P.O.Box 81 | pcs: (+82) 019-259-2667
Seoul, 158-600, Korea | eMail: ehchun at peacenet.or.kr
------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, Kent Crispin wrote:
> 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
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>
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