ICANN SOI to fill sham noncommercial council seats

Fri Aug 7 15:48:48 CEST 2009

Dear Adam,  All:

I want to confirmed  that  one ICANN staff attended last year TACD
meeting in DC. The TACD is a forum of US and EU consumer organisations
which develops and agrees on joint consumer policy recommendations to
the US government and the European Union to promote the consumer
interest in EU and US policy making. Some of the organizations who are
members of TACD are members of NCUC (including EPIC). Many consumers
groups does not have ICANN in its own priority line of work. I would
strongly suggest to contact TACD Liaison and explained to them this
issue. We need a formal answer as this argument is hurting civil
society advocacy work. Civil Society should be unified in this cases,
and we should work together in other to solve our own problems. Then,
we should communicate our position to ICANN's Board

In this regards, I would strongly suggest that NCUC send a formal
letter to the Chairman of the ICANN Board including the signature of
all the NGOs who support the NCUC letter/charter. Many of this NGOs
has pass through their own internal discussion in order to sign that
NCUC  petition. How we could explained to them, that they were
ignored? This letter should explained 1. NCUC proposal charter, 2. The
critics to the ICANN's charter, 3. How civil society works in order to
get consensus of non commercial organizations around the world (The
important of the endorsement of NCUC charter through signatures. The
latest is important as they might not be familiar of how civil society
works and how we get support from civil society organizations around
the world.

If the letter is strong enough, I really doubt that ICANN Board will
ignore it. If they do it, we could still think in other strategics
(i.e Ombudsman). I am pretty sure that most of the strong
organizations around the world who works for the public interest will
work together on this.

Finally, in my own opinion, I am extremely surprise with this whole
discussion, which is unique compare to other Internet policy making
processes.

Regards,

Katitza Rodriguez

On Aug 7, 2009, at 8:54 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:

>> 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