Charters

[Norbert Klein]

Dear new individual members of the NCUC (the new NCSG does not yet exist) who 
wrote recently,

"Ralph D. Clifford" <rclifford at snesl.edu>
"Jon Garon" <jgaron01 at gw.hamline.edu>
"Kim, Nancy" <nsk at cwsl.edu>

May I first introduce myself: Norbert Klein, since 1990 in Cambodia, working 
since 1994 in non-commercial organizations – in 1994 I created the first 
Internet system in the country, in 1996 the country address .kh, and in 1999 
I joined the “non-commercials” in ICANN – at that time it had a different 
name. During the last three years I was sent by the NCUC as a councillor into 
the GNSO. Since November 2008, I am a member of the ICANN Nomination 
Committee.

Though my working day – though a Sunday – went beyond midnight, I want to 
write to you and our community, because I am concerned about what you write – 
my mail is still basically a letter of welcome. I may not respond to all of 
your concern and questions in a way you may expect – but I do so on the basis 
of many hours during many years of a struggle to get our voice  - the Non 
Commercial Users Constituency – heard, as it developed over the years, and in 
the context of ICANN. We found ourselves often in a difficult position - 
others with business, intellectual property, and technical mandates had often 
better institutional support structures.

While I understand your hope, saying  to “add that simplicity is also 
valuable,... ... without adding significant complexity to the proposal” - I 
can only plead to spend quite some more time working through the complexity 
of the ICANN website:

http://www.icann.org

Surely you have done it – but I admit, after so many years, that I am still 
struggling to be oriented – not only about the structures – but about the 
dynamics and time lines, which exist and to which we have to adapt ourselves, 
if we want to have our voice heard, according to the right procedure, at the 
right place, and at the right time.

One sentence makes me concerned: “The bottom line is that ICANN is not 
perceived to be an open organization, nor one that is willing to provide a 
voice to new users of the Internet and Web.”

Perceived by whom? A complex network of cooperating organizations and 
institutions with their different interests cannot be called to be “not open” 
for having worked out, changed, further developed, and revised again, certain 
rules and procedures. The discussions and outside consultancies and 
preparations towards the present GNSO restructuring process have been going 
on for several years – and as it is a process where quite different 
institutional actors are involved, not all of our concerns have been received 
with the same “openness” which we would have hoped for. But I cannot easily 
accept to say that ICANN is “not willing to provide a voice to new users of 
the Internet and Web.” 

In 1999, and for some years to follow, there was an effort going on to create 
an “individual membership constituency” - which did not lead anywhere, 
because it was basically an effort by ONE person trying to decide what has to 
happen, and there was no support for this kind of approach in ICANN. We, in 
the NCUC, received since that time the clear mandate to be a membership 
organization of organizations, though we were concerned that this excluded 
the possibility for quite a number of individual persons who would have liked 
to bring their contribution into our fellowship.

Now, when we finally have taken the initiative to remove the institutional 
constraints for individuals – and have received the agreement within the 
ICANN-GNSO restructuring to accept also individual members into the NCUC (on 
the way into the NCSG) - I see no reason to say that ICANN is “not willing to 
provide a voice to new users of the Internet and Web.”

You are among the first coming into this door we have worked to open.

I cannot comment much on the alternatives proposed by Prof. Cheryl Preston – 
presented at a point in time publicly known to have been too late to be 
integrated and sent to the ICANN board – after a draft had been  discussed in 
different stages in the constituency, and we finally had a text which had 
received wide consensus and was sent on.

Let me close with some content concern, and not only with structures. But it 
is again a very complex, not a simple situation we face.

Freedom, justice, and openness have been extremely important elements for my 
work in Cambodia – in a context where the technological, economic, and 
political situation is VERY different from the one in most of the 
north-Atlantic countries. It was for me personally always important to have – 
in the NCUC fellowship – a group of people from where I could get support and 
inspiration for our situation here – even when we were in ICANN encountering 
challenges which were not only encouraging for our efforts in Cambodia (I am 
editing, since more than 10 years, a review of the Cambodian language press 
in English). The media – not only the printed press – is in an unending 
struggle to find ways to communicate freely without intervention. The 
discussions about freedom of expression – in ICANN, including in the domain 
name system - provide always a context for me here, as they have for the 
society in the USA. I just read, before writing to you, the following 
article, a kind of homework for the  GNSO Councillors from the NCUC – and 
this work is being done, of course, on the basis of discussion in the 
constituency. Therefore I hope for some extensive comments back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/magazine/30google-t.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

Whatever the time is at your end when you get this – here it is now 02:50. But 
I wrote now because of a deep concern.


Norbert

-- 
Norbert Klein
Phnom Penh/Cambodia
PGP key-id 0x0016D0A9

If you want to know what is going on in Cambodia, please visit us regularly - 
you can find something new every day:

http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com (English)
http://kanhchoksangkum.wordpress.com (Khmer)


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