Help Build The New GNSO ???

[Milton L Mueller]

OK, we are now learning what the "new GNSO" is going to be like. Read the next two paragraphs: it is from an ALAC list (one that is NOT open)

>* Proposal that members of the GNSO community work with members of
>the ALAC/At-Large community and representatives of potential new
>"non-commercial" constituencies to jointly develop a recommendation
>for the composition and organizational structure of a Non-Commercial
>Stakeholder Group that does not duplicate the ALAC and its
>supporting structures, yet ensures that the gTLD interests of
>individual Internet users (along with the broader non-commercial
>community) are effectively represented within the GNSO.
>
>The chairs of ALAC and GNSO propose the following: nominate 14
>people, approximately 5-7 from each, to work out a proposal that can
>be brought to the GNSO and ALAC and then passed on to the Board when
>it is agreed upon by both organisations. This can be done in two
>stages 1st the terms of reference, activity time line, etc. should
>be done by the 24th of Janaury with a request to the Board for an
>extension of time to complete the planned activities to accompany
>this interim report (or to follow).

This is real nice. I'd like to ask Avri how she, as an elected chair of GNSO who received the enthusiastic support of the NCUC councilors, justifies to herself the deliberate refusal to notify ANY existing noncommercial constituencies members.

Becomes even more interesting when you realize that Avri is on the NCUC list.

And more interesting yet when you know that NCUC has already developed a NCSG proposal, and kept ALAC, Avri and everyone else fully informed of it, had public consultative meetings with ALAC and everyone else in Cairo, and invited them to participate in amending and developing it. (None of them did, of course; now we know why)

I'd like to ask all Board members on this list how it is that a "GNSO" group that includes many commercial takeholders asserts some kind of a right to define the structure of a noncommercial stakeholders group -- especially when it doesn't include any of the 40-odd noncommercial organizations who have worked hard for 10 years to create a constituency.

What's going on here is a really tawdry power play. It is typical of how the dysfunctional Board-staff interaction defines how ICANN works these days. Board wants to "encourage participation" from NEW people, but sets in motion a poorly defined process that basically incentivizes everyone to compete rather than cooperate, thereby (deliberately or not) triggering power struggles among EXISTING participants and stakeholders and raising the hurdles for any new participants. Danny Younger is not a new stakeholder. Neither is Avri or anyone else on that working group. So this is just a group of ICANN insiders seeking to grab a guaranteed share of 6 Council seats that they see as undefended by existing noncommercial stakeholders -- who are too busy actually trying to do the work of GNSO to play such games. Tell me how that spectacle is going to encourage lots of ordinary nonprofits to get involved in GNSO.

A responsible and aware Board would ask the staff to put an end to this nonsense right away and make it clear that it is going to reject any NCSG structure proposal out of hand if it was developed for exclusionary purposes without any participation from actual noncommercial organizations.

This may seem like boring inside baseball, and it is, but we have to realize that this kind of gamesmanship just drives people away. We just got a new NCUC chair, and elected two entirely new people to GNSO Council from NCUC to devote hours of their lives to doing that unpleasant work. Imagine how motivated they are going to feel when they learn that ALAC and the GNSO chair and a few other GNSO constituencies are conspiring to exclude them entirely from any participation in the new NCSG. Welcome to ICANN. Welcome to bottom up.

I, myself, couldn't care less about who "wins" this little power struggle, because I already know that no one can win it. The mere existence of this kind of activity and this kind of competition is unhealthy and so ICANN, the public interest, and especially the noncommercial sector have already lost. To spend the requisite hours and days and weeks to fight over this shit on conference calls and meetings means that we are not doing more meaningful and important work, such as actually developing policy positions.

Milton Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
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