[At-Large] Fwd: Board appointments to fill 3 non-commercial seats on the new Council

[David Cake]

At 1:25 PM -0400 1/10/09, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>David
>Sympathy is not the issue here;

	Milton, there is no one single issue. Both the injustice of
the past, and how we are going to proceed in the future, are issues.
Both the situation we wish we had, and the situation we have to work
with, are issues for this list.

>  the issue is that the entire representational structure of ICANN is
>supposed to be based on some basic stakeholder categories that are
>balanced.

	Milton, I'm not applauding the decision. Why would I? I
applied for one of the council positions myself, and I'm led to
believe came relatively close, an appointment almost certainly
mutually exclusive with Rosemaries. I fully agree that the seats
should not have been allocated the way that they were, and that NCUC
should have had far more say.
	The reality is that the decision has been made, and rather
than simply complaining about the process and the outcome, we need to
assess the practical position it leaves us in.

>A person who represents commercial users of telecom services is NOT
>a proper representative of noncommercial stakeholders. (And I know,
>I spent 20 years in telecom policy circles and know various INTUG
>people and user groups in various countries. Your typical member of
>a telecom user group is a corporate network manager who purchases
>dedicated lines and telephone/internet services from vendors and
>lobbies for lower prices for business services.) Nothing wrong with
>that, it's just not bringing a noncommercial perspective into the
>policy debate. This is not a criticism of Ms. Sinclair, it's a
>criticism of the ICANN process and an irresponsible Board that is
>abusing its already illegitimate authority to appoint our
>representatives.

	And I agree with your criticism of the process, and the issue
of making a representative of commercial groups a non-commercial
delegate. But as you say, those things are not criticisms of Ms.
Sinclair herself - and I was just pointing out that, despite the
circumstances of her election and the nature of the organisation she
represents, she may well be a useful friend to NCUC, and we should
endeavour to make that happen.
	Cheers
		David