Names for the Working Group on InternetGovernance

[Milton Mueller]

Adam,
I appreciate your willingness to bluntly express
opinions about nominees.

But I don't agree with your assessment of Karl at all.
I know that you have much more moderate and
protective views about ICANN than Karl (and I),
but if you disagree with his policy positions you
need to make that clear, not malign his personality
and spread provably wrong statements about his
participation.

I think Karl has gotten a bad rap because the
early ICANN self-selected Board deliberately
tried to isolate and marginalize him. The Board
did some really nasty things, like instantly modifying
the bylaws so that he and other the elected members
could not participate in the new TLD selection, or
forming an Executive Committee composed of a small
minority of cronies which made all the real decisions, and
then railroading those decisions . To resist this, Karl
ended up looking like a marginalized, protest
Board member - which he was. But the point is that
the ICANN Board at that time badly NEEDED a
vocal protest member.

Regarding communication, Karl appeared in as many if
not more NCUC meetings than any other Board member -
but it would be hard for you to know that, Adam,
because you almost never attend NCUC meetings.
I think the last NCUC meeting you attended was
in Yokohama 2000, which preceded Karl's installment
as a Board member. While you are a valued participant
on our list, I sincerely believe that Karl has
appeared in more NCUC/NCDNHC meetings than
you.

Regarding list communication, I think if you
check the NCDNHC archives from the period when
our list was open, you will find active participation
from Feb.-April 2002. It is true that he showed more
interest in At Large than NCDNHC most of the time.
But: 1) he was elected by the At Large, and 2)
the nomination is for a civil society representative,
not an NCUC representative per se.

If you can, try to put forward a technically-oriented
person from NorthAmerica who is more accountable and
more wise to the ways of Internet governance politics than
Karl.

--MM