Staff summary of charter public comments

[Robin Gross]

Thanks, Bill.

Here is the link for the document with staff's "summary and analysis"  
of public comments for GNSO Stakeholder Group Charters.
   http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-stakeholder-charters/msg00074.html

Despite the overwhelming public opposition from noncommercial users  
to the ICANN drafted NCSG charter, the ICANN Board of Directors  
adopted it a few days ago in defiance to noncommercial users.  The  
board was not even provided with civil society's NCSG charter by  
staff/SIC with the meeting documents so I don't believe it ever  
understood what NCUC's concerns actually are.   It turns out the only  
NCSG charter tabled for adoption at all at the board meeting was the  
staff/SIC drafted NCSG charter, so users never had a chance to  
influence ICANN, and the public comment period was just another prime  
example of ICANN's "public participation" farce.

I am not convinced that we have to accept this charter, and I  
certainly think we need to work to raise awareness of ICANN's growing  
inability to govern in an open, accountable, and transparent way.

In this "summary", ICANN uses against us the fact that we engaged in  
outreach on the charter injustices and encouraged participation, by  
calling it a "letter writing campaign" in order to justify why ICANN  
doesn't have to consider the views expressed by those people who  
submitted comments in response.   If we don't engage in outreach,  
ICANN holds it against us, and we do engage in outreach and try to  
raise awareness of important issues of concern to noncommercial  
users, ICANN holds that against us too.

It was amazing how ICANN attaches the label of "ALAC" to the  
statement of personal support for the staff-drafted charter from  
ALAC's Cheryl Langdon Orr in ICANN's attempted justification.   
Especially since the CLO statement explicitly said it did not have  
the support of ALAC; and the only ALAC statement on record in April  
said there was no consensus supporting the model staff chose.  I  
don't believe that ALAC's membership would appreciate being used by  
ICANN to impose a charter on noncommercial users that 80+  
noncommercial orgs have said would harm their interests.

ICANN's ability to selectively choose nonsense to support its pre- 
determined result has to be examined and have the clear light of day  
shone on it.  We need a major campaign to raise awareness of of  
ICANN's incompetence to govern and squeezing out of noncommercial  
users in the policy development process.  We should write and blog  
this travesty of justice in each of our communities, and we should  
contact our local politicians, our representatives of the Govt.  
Advisory Comte, and media and other press outlets to raise awareness  
of these ICANN injustices.  And we need to continue to conduct  
outreach (even though ICANN holds it against us) and grow our  
membership, and bring in new and more diverse perspectives into the  
policy development process.    This is far from over.

Best,
Robin


On Aug 3, 2009, at 7:53 AM, William Drake wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Now available for your reading pleasure at http://forum.icann.org/ 
> lists/gnso-stakeholder-charters/pdfxiUwB0LQJc.pdf.  Especially  
> enjoyable is section 1, "The perceived failure by ICANN to accept  
> the V-NCSG Charter."  "Perceived" is a leitmotif; NCUC's members  
> and supporters have all just imagined the problems.  Ultimately,  
> the rationale for rejecting NCUC's NCSG charter comes down to this,  
> "The S-NCSG follows the Board‟s direction that the Constituency is  
> the primary organizational unit within SGs and, as such, they are  
> its only legitimate members."  However, this apparently applies  
> only to our charter, as the Registry and Registrar group charters  
> do away with "the primary organizational unit within SGs."
>
> Also of interest is this nugget:
>
> "Finally, although the majority of comments were strongly in  
> support of returning to the original NCUC Charter version, ALAC  
> favored the SIC‟s NCSG Charter that, “best meets the aims of the  
> new GNSO Model and the Boards criteria, which we support, and  
> believe is (with the additional version changes as at July 19th )  
> being essentially met.” Continuing in this vein, ALAC noted,  
> “Maturity and development of the new design GNSO and specifically  
> the parity and viability of the User House will benefit greatly  
> with the „fresh start‟ this Charter in our opinion provides and  
> it should be noted that in it we can see that the opinions and  
> views brought forward in our processes, activities and meetings on  
> the matter have been recognised, heard and considered.” "
>
> Which is interesting since there's been almost no discussion within  
> ALAC since it's last statement on a prior version of the NCUC  
> proposed, http://forum.icann.org/lists/sg-petitions-charters/ 
> msg00020.html, which noted that there was no ALAC consensus on the  
> matter.  It is rather unclear on what grounds staff can depict  
> Cheryl's personal statement as a collective ALAC position, other  
> than political convenience.
>
> Best,
>
> Bill
>
>
>
> ***********************************************************
> William J. Drake
> Senior Associate
> Centre for International Governance
> Graduate Institute of International and
>   Development Studies
> Geneva, Switzerland
> william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
> www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
> ***********************************************************




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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