Stmt on ICANN Travel Proposal to Fund Half of GNSO to Participate

[Robin Gross]

Below is a draft statement on ICANN's proposal to fund half of GNSO  
to participate in mtgs.

Please suggest any changes or edits by Friday when the comment period  
closes.

And by all means, send in your own comments on the issue to ICANN here:
   http://www.icann.org/public_comment/#travel-support-draft

ICANN proposal to fund half of GNSO to participate in mtgs:
    http://www.icann.org/topics/travel-support/draft- 
procedure-22may08.htm

Thank you,
Robin

Statement of the NCUC on ICANN's Travel Funding Proposal


ICANN is currently revisiting its policy on providing support for  
travel expenses, and is considering extending the support it  
currently offers to the ICANN Board, ALAC, and NomCom to supporting  
organizations, including the GNSO.  The travel expenses of the  
councilors of these organizations are inherent costs of ICANN's work,  
and paying these expenses should be a priority use of ICANN's  
resources.  Currently ICANN is subsidized by volunteer councilors who  
provide not only their personal time and effort, but also the funds  
to travel to meetings on the other side of the world.

This change is especially important as the GNSO moves to restructure  
its constituencies and strives to increase participation by  
individuals.  High costs present a bar to participation.  Those costs  
may well seem reasonable or incidental to those parties who have a  
large direct financial interest in ICANN policy, but they are  
disproportionately burdensome to individuals and non-commercial  
interests.  Since NCUC is the only constituency not supported by  
commercial interests and large industries, the under-funding of the  
GNSO has been the single most significant barrier to NCUC  
participation in ICANN policy making.  ICANN is financially self- 
sufficient and should bear the costs of its own operation.   
Otherwise, only those who can routinely pay thousands of dollars to  
participate in policy discussions will be able to influence ICANN  
policy-making.

ICANN should fund the reasonable travel expenses of all GNSO  
councilors, who are all needed to carry out ICANN’s policy work.  The  
current proposal to pay the travel expenses of half of the councilors  
is insufficient.  Funding only a fraction of the councilors leaves  
the process open to gamesmanship and favoritism.  Face-to-face  
council meetings are essential to the work of the GNSO, and the  
expense of keeping the GNSO running is as much a cost of ICANN's  
operation as the travel expenses of the Board or SO chairs.

The Internet community would not accept a policy in which only half  
of the board members were funded to participate in board meetings,  
but ICANN proposes providing support for only half of the GNSO  
Council to participate in policy meetings.  The GNSO is supposed to  
represent all of the various stake-holders or interest groups who  
belong at the table in Internet policy negotiations.  As the  
supposedly “bottom-up” part of ICANN, the GNSO should be a fully- 
funded and fully-supported organization within ICANN.  Otherwise, all  
the talk about “bottom up” policymaking at ICANN is empty rhetoric  
meant only for press releases, while the same commercial and  
governmental interests continue to dominate actual policy decisions.






IP JUSTICE
Robin Gross, Executive Director
1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org



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