Elections

[Cheryl Preston]

I include here a statement of my objectives for NCUC and then a link to
a brief bio.

I have worked on issues involving Internet governance and policy for
only a few years.  After looking at federal and state involvement in
Internet law, I began writing a series of papers on the history and
current position of ICANN, and its potential as an organizing force
around which a global law of Internet governance could be discussed,
considered and maintained.  When I attended my first NCUC meeting last
Spring in San Juan, I was presented with the "Keep the Net Neutral"
petition NCUC had drafted and sponsored.  It included a statement
charging ICANN to do everything in its power to impose an absolute free
expression value at every level of the DNS system.

I admit that I was rather stunned that the NCUC was so deeply involved
in promoting a particular social, political and legal position regarding
the role of ICANN.  We were able to work a compromise by striking the
affirmative charge language in the petition, but the petition and the
later workshop sponsored by NCUC evidenced a clear commitment to this
absolutist ideological view.

After that meeting I did considerable investigation about the history
of the NCUC and the people who have been involved, as well as the
history and people involved in the larger sphere of those who advocating
this position in Internet and other policy debates.  In addition, I
spoke with my friends and colleagues who have been involved with other
constituency groups or with long-time players such as VeriSign.

My personal and professional opinion with respect to ICANN and the
Internet, both nationally and globally, is very simplistically stated
as:

(1) Competing values need to be appropriately balanced in this new
virtual world, just as we have strived to do in the real world in every
jurisprudential era;

(2) Even the strongest forms of idealized free speech (i.e. under the
U.S. First Amendment) are balanced and nuanced by centuries of the best
legal minds;

(3) A passionate commitment to the principle of free expression,
including the right of all people to political and subversive speech,
does not mean that we must abandon all forms of constraint on the
Internet;

(4) Having a thoughtful, balanced and realistic view of what few
extreme forms of speech are more harmful than helpful does not mean that
next week we will construct the Chinese Wall, imprison dissidents, or
squelch all religious freedom;

(5) One issue that deserves study, dialogue and exploration is if we
can and/or should look for a way to configure the technology,
traditional and nontraditional forms of regulation, and economic and
social incentives to give a choice to parents around the world who do
not want their children educated in sex and human relations by the kind
of pornography and obscenity now flooding the Internet; and
(6) It may be that ICANN might have an appropriate role in supporting
any kind of eventual resolution to this problem we might someday devise
though the good faith dialogue of the global community.

Yes, in short, although I agree with the extreme importance of free
expression on the Internet and elsewhere, I do not think that now, at
this early date in the development of the technology, law and culture of
this new information society, we should seek to bind ICANN to a
value/politics laden (and revolutionary and untried) legal position of
pushing for unfettered free expression at the expense of all other
values.

And, yes, I do not believe that we ought to excuse entirely ICANN from
the trust and stewardship it has been given over this global resource
created with the funds of the US public standing for themselves and for
all of world’s humanity of this generation and the future.

With that disclosure on the table, my view of NCUC is:

(1) I am confident that the handful of people who have almost
exclusively run NCUC from the beginning are honest, smart, skilled and
devoted.  But, I have researched to the extent I can the backgrounds and
views of these actors and the organizations with whom they affiliate.
These are fine organizations and I do not doubt their good faith or the
quality of their intellectual work.  However, they are uniformly of a
particular social/political viewpoint on critical issues concerning the
Internet.  This viewpoint is not representative of the full range of
noncommercial Internet users, nor of the variety of positions and causes
promoted by the many nonprofit organizations focused specifically on the
Internet in the US - not to mention such users and organizations in the
wide range of countries around the globe.

(2)  I believe that NCUC should not be an advocacy group for same the
reasons that the IGF has determined that their dynamic coalitions not be
advocacy groups.  Moreover, NCUC absolutely should not be used as a tool
for the advocacy of a single, highly contested position just because the
actors who became involved in the beginning (before most of the world
even knew there was such a thing as ICANN or NCUC) share a particular
view.  Nor should it be an advocacy group for my position or any other.
I have heard, but conducted no objective study, the opinion that the
statements coming out of the NCUC, unlike other groups, are routinely
dismissed as a refrain of a single, inflexible, and particularized
approach to ICANN and the Internet, which approach doesn't well
accommodate the dynamic dialogue envisioned by the multi-stakeholder
principle.

(3)  NCUC should take seriously the trust of representing the interests
of noncommercial users of the Internet and make some effort to determine
who falls in this category of users and what these users want in terms
of long-term, global Internet policy.  NCUC should then study, consider
and discuss these interests and make representative, respectful and fair
suggestions to the GSNO for the betterment of the Internet.  This seems
to be the charge given by ICANN.

(4) In any event and notwithstanding all three of the above, the
leadership of any group entrusted to represent a large and diverse
constituency and make, on their behalf, recommendations should be
routinely renewed and refreshed by new perspectives and approaches.  I
fully understand that involvement in ICANN is very expensive and almost
prohibitive for those whose employers or clients do not have the
economic stake or the resources to support the individuals doing the
work.  I agree that NCUC needs to make a case to the ICANN board why, by
definition, the "non-commercial" users cannot afford to participate in
the same way that the commercial constituencies can.  Thus, the
noncommercial interest group exists of record, but it cannot function
effectively without support.  The result of the current system is that
NCUC speaks only for the few such organization that, for what ever
reason, have established relationships with businesses and individuals
with loads of disposable cash, with sufficient economic incentive to
justify supporting that particular organization, with governments, and
with the few universities who generously fund advocacy work.  While I
understand that funds are now given by ICANN to support NCUC work, I
fully understand that the ICANN support is insufficient and those
involved must be financially able to absorb the travel and time costs.


I admit readily that I do not have the hands-on experience or long-term
background that Robert has.  I don't suppose I am the best qualified or
most able person in the North American region to do this work.  I would
joyously vote for anyone else who wanted to do this and who could (1)
begin a practice of reaching out to other viewpoints; and (2) create a
pattern where new people can be given the opportunities and thus the
experience necessary for leadership - with the duty to invite, in turn,
new people and perspectives to work through the system.

My basic biographical information is available at:
http://www.law.byu.edu/Law_School/Faculty_Profile?102

Please ask if you have questions.  Thank you for taking the time to
consider these recommendations and my candidacy.


Cheryl B. Preston
Edwin M. Thomas
Professor of Law
J. Reuben Clark Law School
Brigham Young University
424 JRCB
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-2312
prestonc at lawgate.byu.edu