Charter drafts - and the related process so far

Fri Jul 24 00:14:35 CEST 2009

Mine is in too.

Konstantinos

FYI

Dear ICANN,
It is with great disappointment to see the ICANN Board suggesting a
structure for
the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC), which is a result of top-down
rather than bottom-up coordination. I am also dismayed by the fact that NCUC
was the only constituency having been asked to amend its charter so as all
other
constituencies within ICANN did not feel threatened by the support NCUC has
been receiving over the years. Why else would you ask NCUC to amend a
charter
that has been signed and supported by approximately 80 organizations and
individual users across the five regions of the world?
The new model you have suggested is highly problematic and you know it. It
is as
if ICANN wishes to create within NCUC  the only non-commercial constituency
within ICANN able to preserve human rights and non-commercial interests  an
internal conflict, which will, subsequently, disunite its members. The
strength of
the NCUC is that, despite the fact that sometimes we may share different
priorities and approaches, in essence, we  as one, conjoined unit, advocate
and
support the same philosophy: the protection of non-commercial interests on
the
Internet. We are the civil society in ICANN and our job is to promote the
needs of
individual users, as expressed by themselves and their representatives. What
we
all share in common in NCUC is that we want to balance the influence of
commercial interests within ICANN and engage in an active dialogue with the
other constituencies. We want to find the best possible solutions for the
Chinese
blogger who fights for his voice to be heard, the child who is daily exposed
to
various illegal Internet activities, the parents who are concerned about
their
children  we are here to talk about all those people who should be our
first
priority  the simple Internet user. The charter we originally proposed
would
ensure that all voices within the NCUC would be heard; our charter promoted
transparency and dialogue; it sought to bring together than distance our
philosophies  isn¹t that what democracy is all about?
You have to understand that our vision for NCUC is not driven by commercial
interests and monies. We have tried to come up with the most democratic
solution that will represent and respect the views of all parties concerned.
And, I
believe we have achieved it. Look at the support that our charter has
received 
you cannot possibly overlook that. We are reasonable and our proposals are
equally reasonable. The fact that they do not conform to other interest
groups
within ICANN is unfortunate but, at the same time, it is not a legitimate
justification for rejecting and re-writing our proposed charter.
I strongly urge you to re-consider the benefits of NCUC¹s proposal.
Rejecting our
proposal will result in transmogrifying a constituency, currently operating
under
democratic and just procedures, into a body, where lobbying will
proliferate. The
way you have envisioned NCUC, we will have to spend all our efforts in
political
maneuvering rather than in tackling contentious and fundamental issues that
are
of great concern to all of us. We can really help you, if you let NCUC and
its
members continue to do their jobs with the same passion and principles.
Thank you.
Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis
NCUC Member

On 23/07/2009 21:21, "Norbert Klein" <nhklein at GMX.NET> wrote:

> FYI
> 
> Norbert Klein
> 
> =
> 
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> Subject: Charter drafts - and the related process so far
> Date: Friday, 24 July 2009 (Cambodia time - USA: 23 July)
> From: Norbert Klein <nhklein at gmx.net>
> To: gnso-stakeholder-charters at icann.org
> 
> Though I have seen that many voices from different parts of the world have
> sent in their support for the original proposal, prepared within the
> Non-Commercial Users Constituency in an intensive process of online and
> international Internet communication, in which we received an overwhelming 
> an almost unanimous consensus  I thought it might not be important to state
> this again.
> 
> But I write because I am utterly surprised that  in spite of this process of
> wide and open consultation  the result of this process was sidelined so far.
> The litany of ³bottom-up consensus building,² which is in so many official
> ICANN statements, became  more and more hollow over the years.
> 
> I say so as a person who was involved in the pre-ICANN efforts  the 1998
> Singapore meeting - and since 1999  Santiago de Chile  I fairly regularly
> did participate in ICANN affairs, the ³ICANN fellowship² as I felt it was, in
> the early years  learning a lot for my efforts to start the first Internet
> connection in Cambodia, creating the country code .kh in 1996 and
> administering it until 1998, and continuing to be involved in the UNICODE
> codification of the Khmer script and then the localization of software etc.
> 
> Over the years, our situation seemed to get more and more into the background
> of the ICANN dynamics  but WSIS 1 and 2 were an encouragement, when the
> Declaration of Principles of WSIS 1  said:
> 
> ³We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, assembled in Geneva from
> 10-12 December 2003 for the first phase of the World Summit on the
> Information Society, declare our common desire and commitment to build a
> people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society,
> where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and
> knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their
> full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their
> quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of
> the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal
> Declaration of Human Rights.²
> 
> Instead of a ³people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented Information
> Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and
> knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their
> full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their
> quality of life,²  I do not see much of this vision in ICANN's efforts to
> secure the stability and security of the network.
> 
> This vision has been held up especially in the Non-Commercial Users
> Constituency and in the At-Large structures, where the people-centered,
> inclusive activities have their representation, and where they hope to be
> supported, so that the purposes and principles of the UN Declaration of Human
> Rights will be kept central in our operations.
> 
> The details for this are well stated in what the Non-Commercial Users
> Constituency has elaborated and presented before  as the result of a wide
> participatory process. I do not need to repeat it  I only hope that the
> members of the ICANN Board will really take note of this and not pass quickly
> to some ³pragmatic² suggestions which are not based on the principles on
> which we started to cooperate.
> 
> I want, however, highlight one aspect where I see a grave failure in the
> process, where the Non-Commercial Users Constituency  on the basis of what
> the organizations and persons here cooperating  thought to be important. We
> raised it repeatedly, but we remained without an answer. When the discussions
> about new gTLD touched on the restrictions to be considered, the NCUC raised
> the question that such restrictions must be included against efforts to erode
> the fundamental rights (as stated above) - the protection of rights for this
> new developments. Many of us live in environments where this is crucial.
> Instead the problem of ³generally accepted legal norms of morality and public
> order² became more prominent, and the repeated official requests by the NCUC
> Chair to the staff, how the staff identifies these principles,
> supposedly ³recognized under international principles of law,² did never get
> an official response.
> 
> Many of those who are not part of the larger technical or economic bodies
> cooperating in ICANN, but who live somewhere ³on the periphery,² need that
> ICANN finds again ways to live up to the ³bottom-up principle² for our social
> development and  in some cases  for our survival.
> 
> The Non-Commercial Users Constituency, built up from the bottom, is an
> important instrument for this. The new move I read a while ago, that a WIPO
> initiative is accepted as the basis for a revision of the UDRP  without
> considering immediately what this means in terms of a bottom-up process  is
> a sign that the fundamental orientation of ICANN  from the point of view of
> its world wide membership  not from those who control it  remains a most
> important task. The non-commercial and the at-large users are the most
> important basis for giving bottom-up orientation.
> 
> 
> Norbert Klein
> 
> 
> Open Institute
> Phnom Penh/Cambodia
> Member of the NCUC
> 
> 
> --
> Editing a review of the Cambodian press - in English translation.
> I leave this standard note here. It shows the context from which I participate
> in ICANN.
> 
> If you want to know what is going on in Cambodia, please visit
> The Mirror, a regular review of the Cambodian language press in English.
> 
> This is the latest weekly editorial:
> 
> Struggling to Understand - Faced with Different Reports and Opinions - Sunday,
> 19.7.2009
> http://tinyurl.com/m2572j
> 
> (To read it, click on the line above.)
> 
> And here is something new every day:
> http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com

-- 
Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,
Lecturer in Law,
GigaNet Membership Chair,
University of Strathclyde,
The Lord Hope Building,
141 St. James Road,
Glasgow, G4 0LT,
UK
tel: +44 (0)141 548 4306
email: k.komaitis at strath.ac.uk 