[ncdnhc-discuss] Robert Shaw's 24 June note on GAC meeting

[James Love]

 From Robert Shaw's weblog

http://radio.weblogs.com/0108486/

24 June 2002

NN GAC Meeting in Bucharest

Bret Fausett, notes today in his [icann.blog.us], that the GAC "met all day 
in closed session" and "even the ICANN Board members are not allowed to 
attend most of the GAC meetings". That's entirely correct and, as a 
participant in the GAC here in Bucharest, even if I may not agree with this 
policy, I have to respect the GAC operating procedures. That said, I think 
it's reasonable to give some general gist of the meeting. First, it's clear 
that the majority of GAC participants were extremely surprised to have to 
suddenly digest ICANN's Blueprint for Reform, released on June 20th. As most 
of the delegates had not even seen this document yet, the meeting had to be 
almost immediately suspended for an hour to allow everyone to read this 
document which contains some very substantive changes from earlier drafts. 
Afterwards, we had a session with Stuart Lynn and Alejandro Pisanty, who 
when directly asked, indicated that their expectations were that this basic 
Blueprint, perhaps with some changes based on conversations during the week, 
be adopted by the Board at the end of the week in Bucharest. I, for one, was 
immediately struck how this seemed to contradict the statement in the 
Blueprint that the "GAC should receive adequate notice and an opportunity to 
comment on all ICANN policy decisions before they are taken" as well as the 
existing provisions in the ICANN Bylaws that "The Board will notify the 
chairman of the Governmental Advisory Committee of any proposal for which it 
seeks comments under Article III, Section 3(b) and will consider any 
response to that notification prior to taking action."
  11:41:18

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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love at cptech.org
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