ICANN SOI to fill sham noncommercial council seats

[Milton L Mueller]

>The NCUC does not have membership (or significant
>membership) from international consumer
>organizations (noted in many recent comments from
>the board and others as a missing constituent in
>all of ICANN), nor for the largest academic
>communities, libraries, R&D, etc.  

Adam
You are buying too much into the premise that these actions of the Board actually have some basis in the facts about NCUC or concern about public representation. 

Libraries? ALA has been a member of NCUC for years. Less active than before, but a member. It is the world's largest library association. The Syracuse U School of Information Studies, which I represent, is the nation's 2-ranked library school. The Library of Alexandria recently joined. 

Academics? What is this bullshit about academics not being involved? some of our most active members, e.g. Mary, Carlos, myself are academics. Many universities and law schools are members, from the U.S, Asia, LAC, Europe. Of course there are tens of thousands of universities worldwide, and most of them are not members, but most businesses are not members of CSG, either, and most "users" are not and never will be members of At Large.

Wrt international consumer organizations, I have been personally acquainted with the policy leader of the U.S. Consumers Union since 2003 (Gene Kimmelman), and have often asked/begged/demanded that CU get involved in ICANN. The answer was always the same: it's not related to our priorities. Their refusal to get involved had nothing to do with NCUC. And CU would be LESS likely to get involved in GNSO if it had to organize its own constituency, because that would be an even greater distraction. CU is a national policy-focused organization and simply can't get its leaders interested in global domain name policy, which is a tiny speck on the ocean of policy issues with which it deals. 

I recently asked a longtime acquaintance who recently got a job at an International Consumer Organization based in KL to join NCUC. He chuckled and told me that ICANN staff had approached him and his organization repeatedly. ICANN staff even sent a person all the way to KL from Los Angeles (or was it Brussels?) to personally lobby him to get involved. His Board said no. Domain names/ICANN is not their priority, and they are not going to waste time on it. If ICANN staff spends thousands of dollars recruiting a single organizations and fails, you have to realize that the willingness of noncommercial organizations to get involved in domain name policy has nothing to do with any failings of NCUC or ICANN itself. It has to do with with simple fact that DNS is a very narrow, specialized area of policy and accordingly only a tiny, tiny percentage of the world's NGOs will ever get involved. 


________________________________________
From: Non-Commercial User Constituency [NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Adam Peake [ajp at GLOCOM.AC.JP]
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 3:37 AM
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] ICANN SOI to fill sham noncommercial council seats

Why not compromise.  Attempt to restart a process
where the SIC and NCUC charters are considered
side by side.

The NCUC has three council seats.

The NCUC does not have membership (or significant
membership) from international consumer
organizations (noted in many recent comments from
the board and others as a missing constituent in
all of ICANN), nor for the largest academic
communities, libraries, R&D, etc.  So why not
accept the interim and offer to work with the
board to help identify possible candidates from
such groups, and to try and bring those groups
into the NCUC or to encourage them to form a
constituency (as consumer groups seem to be
trying to do, can NCUC help them?)

And then look to negotiate differences between
the charters.  Can we accept that councillors
could be selected through a hybrid constituency
based model, where a general membership selects a
slate which is then voted on by constituencies in
an Executive Committee? (just an idea...) And at
the same time emphasize that policy must be
developed in a bottom-up fashion at the
stakeholder-wide level.  Can we come up with
specific rule based criteria for the creation of
new constituencies (no one will apply to the
vague process in the SIC charter, it is no better
than what we've had since the GNSO was created.)

I think we were set back from discussing workable
compromises when the SIC draft was put forward
and the NCUC draft effectively taken off from
discussion.  Ours and the community's responses
were made to the SIC draft, but we did not
discuss and modify in response to comments the
NCUC draft. Where there was criticism of the NCUC
draft was on the static position of some months
ago.

I have heard some people assert that the NCUC has
never shown any willingness to compromise from
its criticism of anything that it hadn't written,
yet claiming that the NCUC documents were still
open to negotiation -- so a public attempt to
engage in negotiation would at least put this to
the test.

Think there are two options: some form of appeal
to the Board's decisions, i.e. reconsideration,
obmudsman (who has the power to open all kinds of
email trails, discover what documents were
presented, what was said), or independent review.
Or more sensible, offer to negotiate, offer some
compromise.

Adam (not on behalf of GLOCOM NCUC member, or
ALAC of which I a member.  Purely personal
observation.)





>Here is ICANN's announcement calling for
>Statements of Interest from those interested in
>volunteering to be appointed by the board to
>represent noncommercial users:
>
><http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-05aug09-en.htm>http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-05aug09-en.htm
>
>"... Of the four new Stakeholder Group Charters
>approved by the Board last week, this temporary
>seat selection by the Board is unique to the
>NCSG. It reflects a fundamental view that the
>current non-commercial community participation
>in the GNSO is not yet sufficiently diverse or
>robust to select all six of the NCSG's allocated
>Council seats (as was originally intended by the
>Board's GNSO Improvements initiative)...." 
>
>ICANN claims we are not "sufficiently diverse or
>robust enough to select all six" GNSO Council
>seats.  Yet NCUC represents 137 noncommercial
>organizations and individuals from 48 countries.
> Our membership has increased by 205% since the
>parity principle was established.  There never
>was any bar for us to meet - that rhetoric was
>invented by the commercial constituencies and
>selectively adopted by ICANN staff to justify
>why 137 noncommercial organizations and
>individuals are not entitled to elect their own
>representation.
>
>Too bad noncommercial users will not be given
>electoral parity with commercial users as the
>BGC originally promised.  Another empty promise,
>another rigged process.  ICANN is more
>aggressive than ever in squeezing out
>noncommercial users in policy development.  So
>sad.
>
>Robin
>
>
>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>http://www.ipjustice.org
> e: <mailto:robin at ipjustice.org>robin at ipjustice.org