GNSO reform consensus reached!

[Milton L Mueller]

Dear members:

The small working group created at the Paris meeting has come to an
agreement about the voting distribution in a new GNSO Council. It
remains to the ICANN Board and staff to accept and implement this
proposal. The Board is expected to follow the consensus of the group,
however. 

 

I am reasonably happy with the solution. The new structure is bicameral
and involves two distinct voting "houses," one for contracting parties
(registries and registrars) and one for noncontracting parties (i.e.,
users, with an even number of votes for commercial and noncommercial
stakeholders). There is an even number of votes for commercial and
noncommercial stakeholders.

 

This new structure eliminates an old injustice in the GNSO's structure.
Back in 1999, ICANN created 3 business user constituencies with a total
of 9 votes, all three of them essentially trademark/IPR advocacy groups,
and only one noncommercial user constituency. As a result public
interest/noncommercial voices were constantly marginalized and the
IPR/trademark interests became a dominant force in domain name policy.
Later, registries and registrars were given weighted voting, which
balanced the trademark groups but gave industry suppliers too much
control. The new structure is a huge victory for a more fair and
balanced domain name policy making apparatus. It balances all
stakeholder groups evenly and requires balanced support across both
houses before any proposal can go through.

 

An unfortunate but important fact about the process of reaching this
agreement is that we received very little support for balanced
representation from our colleagues in ALAC. For reasons that are not
entirely clear, the ALAC representative on the working group, a Nomcom
appointee, was exclusively concerned with retaining Nomcom appointed
seats on the Council and showed little or no concern about the broader
political balance on the Council. I will communicate more on that topic
later, but this will make our joint discussions with ALAC in the
upcoming Egypt meeting interesting. Once again, I'm afraid, we see ALAC
bogged down in its own internal politics and somewhat disconnected from
the larger issues. I am sure this is something we can rectify as we
engage in more discussions and education of ALAC members. 

 

A general description of the new structure follows:

 

General Principles of Agreement:

 

A. No single stakeholder group should have a veto for any policy vote.
B. Council recommendation of binding policy should have at least one
vote of support from at least 3 of the 4 stakeholder groups.
C. Each House will determine its own composition.
D. Equal number of votes between registries and registrars.
E. Equal number of votes between commercial and non-commercial users.

 

New Structure:



1.	One GNSO Council with two voting "houses" - referred to as
bicameral voting - GNSO Council will meet as one, but houses may caucus
on their own as they see fit.   All voting of the Council will be
counted at a house level. 
2.	Composition - The GNSO Council would be comprised of two voting
houses 

a.    A Contracted Party House - an equal number of registry and
registrar representatives and 1 Nominating Committee appointee.  The
number of registry and registrar stakeholder representatives will be
determined by the ICANN Board based on input from these stakeholder
groups, but shall be no fewer than 3 and not exceed 4 representatives
for each group.

  

b.    A Non-Contracted Party/User House - an equal number of commercial
and non-commercial user representatives and 1 Nominating Committee
appointee.  The number of commercial and non-commercial stakeholder
representatives will be determined by the ICANN Board based on input
from these stakeholder groups, but shall be no fewer than 5 and not
exceed 9 representatives for each group. 

 

GNSO Council Chair. No consensus was reached on this point.  NCUC
supported having the chair be a neutral party with voting status
appointed by Nomcom. The business constituencies blocked consensus on
this and prefer to elect the Council chair by obtaining a 60% majority
of either house. 

 

Voting thresholds (incomplete list):

 

	a.	Create an Issues Report (currently 25% of vote of
Council)- either greater than 25% vote of both houses or simple majority
of one house  
	b.	Initiate a PDP within Scope of the GNSO per ICANN Bylaws
and advice of ICANN GC (currently >33% of vote of Council) -- greater
than 33% vote of both houses or greater than 66% vote of one house 
	c.	Approval of a PDP without Super-Majority (currently >50%
of vote of Council) -- Simple majority of both houses, but requires that
at least one representative of at least 3 of the 4 stakeholder groups
supports 
	d.	Super-Majority Approval of a PDP (currently >66% of vote
of Council) - Greater than 75% majority in one house and simple majority
in the other

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