Reflection and input on LSE Report

[Milton Mueller]

Here is my suggested response: Please Councillors, take it from here.
======================

NCUC welcomes the LSE's GNSO report and urges the Board to implement
many, but not all, of its recommendations.

The LSE report suggests that GNSO be restructured into three basic
groupings: the registration supply industry, business interests, and
civil society. NCUC agrees that this is a cleaner and more workable
constituency structure than now exists. There are important details to
be worked out, however.

LSE recommends repackaging participation in DNS policy as being a
member of ICANN, not of the GNSO, which the public has never heard of.
The GNSO Council would be reduced in size to 16 from its present 21. The
report tells ICANN to financially support the participation of the
members of this smaller Council. NCUC strongly supports all these
recommendations.

We disagree with the report's proposal that registration suppliers and
business users be given 5 votes on the policy making Council, while
civil society be given only 3. This kind of discriminaton against a
particular sector of societal interests is unjustified. Nothing in the
factual findings of the report supports this discrimination. The report
does not even mount an argument for it.  We suggest that the supply
industry be given 5 members, and business and civil society each given
4, with the remaining 3 appointed by the NomCom.

We note that the existence of three "at large" GNSO Council members
appointed by the Nominating Committee does not compensate for this
inequality. The NomCom-appointed Council members can come from any
constituency; the NomCom contains diverse interests and is not
guaranteed to appoint members sympathetic to civil society.

How the civil society representatives on the Council are selected is
very important condition upon our support. We note that the concept of a
"civil society" category leaves unresolved issues about the relationship
between NCUC and ALAC. While we strongly favor a more unified structure
for civil society participation in ICANN, NCUC representatives are
elected under a formal and legitimate membership structure, whereas the
process of selecting ALAC Board members is complicated and
non-transparent and generally unacceptable. As long as ALAC and GNSO are
structurally separate, and ALAC's structures are incomplete, civil
society representation within the GNSO will have to be mediated by NCUC.


If representation on the council is to be weighted, it is reasonable
that the registration industry, whose survival depends entirely on ICANN
contracts and policies, have some kind of special status in the outcome
of policies. They need to be protected against various forms of
crippling regulation or expropriation at the hands of GNSO Council
legislators who do not have to directly bear the costs of their
policies. But there is no legitimate reason why business users should be
given the same veto power and civil society groups denied it. We also
think that registrars and registries often have conflicting interests
and therefore it is better for there to be wider representation for them
in order to accommodate this structural difference.

The LSE Report proposes to raise the threshold for a "consensus policy"
to 75% of the vote. We do not support this recommendation and would
prefer to retain a 2/3 supermajority as the threshold for "consensus."
Under the LSE proposal, supplier interests and business interests could,
if only 4 of their representatives agreed, prevent a 75% majority from
forming and thus block any policy. The public interest advocates in
civil society, even if they were completely unified, could not exercise
such a veto. This is not a correct balance of policy influence.

Moreover the very high 75% requirement would basically freeze the
status quo in place. If the status quo were a very good state of
affairs, this might be an acceptable approach. However, most of the
existing registry contract framework and registrar contract policies
were put into place by a small number of special interests at the origin
of ICANN and did not have to meet these consensus requirements. Policies
that have proven to be flawed
but which disproportionately favor some sector, such as Whois
publication, could never be changed under this proposal.



>>> Mawaki Chango <ki_chango at YAHOO.COM> 12/11/2006 12:28 PM >>>
Folks,

During the GNSO Council public meeting and the Board's public forum,
it was mentioned that the Constituencies need to advise the Board
and/or post their input/reaction to the LSE Report. The time line
often suggested was within 2 weeks after Sao Paulo meeting. I
remember a while ago there was a lot of discussion of the report on
this list. So please, if you'd like to put your (existing) written
thoughts or heads together and advise the Board and the GNSO Council,
this is the time.

Robin and Norbert, please advise if I didn't get this information
right. Particularly, I'm not quite clear if this was a decision
agreed upon by the Council and just a suggested item discussion
without any decision. Anyway, it's at least strongly suggested and I
heard a couple of Board members making mention of this, too.

Mawaki



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