"NCUC opposes constituencies"

[Carlos A. Afonso]

Amazing...

--c.a.

William Drake wrote:
> Ay yi yi
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: William Drake <william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch>
>> Date: October 17, 2009 11:57:43 AM GMT+02:00
>> To: Roberto Gaetano <roberto at icann.org>
>> Cc: At-Large Worldwide <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org>, ALAC 
>> Working List <alac at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
>> Subject: Re: [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?
>>
>> Hi Roberto,
>>
>> May I just correct once again one whopping bit of bad info, please.
>>
>> On Oct 17, 2009, at 8:16 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
>>
>>> Beau,
>>>
>>>>
>>>> By the way, is it true what I heard that the three newly
>>>> appointed GNSO people have now been hard-wired in to two-year
>>>> terms? I don't really see a constituency model working under
>>>> those circumstances. Who's going to join a constituency if
>>>> they have to wait two years to be able to directly elect a
>>>> representative? No consumer group I am aware of is going to
>>>> want to do that.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think that we will need to clarify many things in Seoul, one of 
>>> which is
>>> the reason for certain decisions of the SIC.
>>>
>>> For instance, the SIC has decided, after long discussion, not to have an
>>> automatic link between creation of a constituency and establishment of a
>>> seat in the Council. The reasons against this position include what you
>>> correctly point out, i.e. that it will be more difficult to get people's
>>> interest if there's no immediate representation in terms of voting 
>>> rights.
>>> However, there are also reasons for taking this approach. One of 
>>> these is
>>> that we have to avoid the "frivolous" creation of constituencies for the
>>> simple purpose of getting a vote. A bit like create empty shells as
>>> registrars to have a higher firing power for getting valuable names. 
>>> Another
>>> observation is that in the "old" council it was exactly the fact that 
>>> the
>>> creation of a new constituency would have altered the voting balance 
>>> that de
>>> facto prevented the creation of any new constituency in 10 years.
>>>
>>> But the main point for the SIC to maintain the concept of constituency,
>>> against the open opposition of NCUC, but to keep it without an automatic
>>
>> NCUC is NOT and has NEVER been against the concept of constituencies, 
>> period.  I do not understand what the purpose would be in telling ALAC 
>> people something about NCUC that is patently untrue, but it really 
>> does not facilitate trust building and the collegial resolution of the 
>> issue. The charter NCUC submitted, and which you set aside without 
>> comment, has an page of clear language about the formation and 
>> operation of constituencies in Section 2.3. 
>> http://gnso.icann.org/files/gnso/en/improvements/ncsg-petition-charter.pdf  
>> I would encourage you to read it if you have not.  A few key bits of 
>> note include:
>>
>> -------------
>>
>> *Constituencies are self-defined groupings of NCSG members organized 
>> around some shared policy goals (e.g. consumer protection, privacy); 
>> shared identity (e.g., region or country of origin, gender, language 
>> group); type of organization (e.g., research networks, philanthropic 
>> foundations) – or any other grouping principle that might affect 
>> members’ stance on domain names policy.
>>
>> *There is no requirement that NCSG members join a constituency.
>>
>> *When at least 3 organizational members or at least 10 individual NCSG 
>> members volunteer to join the Constituency on the public list within 
>> two months of the publication of the notification of intent the 
>> prospective Constituency becomes eligible to schedule a meeting (which 
>> can be either in person or online).
>>
>> *The eligible constituency holds a public meeting(s) to draft a 
>> charter and appoint an official representative of the constituency. 
>> The meeting(s) can be online but must be open to observation by the 
>> general public.
>>
>> *The proposed constituency charter is submitted to the NCSG Policy 
>> Committee for ratification.
>>
>> *Once accepted by the PC the constituency application will be sent to 
>> the ICANN Board for approval. The Board shall also serve as the 
>> vehicle for appeals to NCSG decisions on the recognition of a 
>> constituency.
>>
>> *Constituencies have a right to: 1.    Place one voting representative 
>> on the Policy Committee; 2.    Delegate members to GNSO working groups 
>> and task forces; 3.    Issue statements on GNSO Policy Development 
>> Processes which are included in the
>> official NCSG response, but marked as constituency positions, and not 
>> necessarily the position of NCSG as a whole.
>>
>> -------------
>>
>> I do not know how this possibly can be characterized as opposition to 
>> the concept of a constituency.
>>
>> The principal difference with the charter you've imposed on us, as 
>> we've explained time and again, is that we do not think it wise to set 
>> up constituencies as purely self-regarding silos that compete against 
>> each other for council seats, recognition and influence, and thereby 
>> spend their time fighting and jockeying for position rather than 
>> working together to advance noncommercial public interest perspectives 
>> in ICANN.  We think it is better for constituencies to collaborate in 
>> an integrated community.  Hence, we did not think it sensible to hard 
>> wire council seats (which would get absurd if the number of 
>> constituencies exceeds six, as it hopefully will...we're glad you 
>> agreed on this), and instead suggested that GNSO Council 
>> Representatives be elected directly by all NCSG members in an annual 
>> SG-wide vote.  To secure a council seat, a constituency on consumer 
>> protection, registrants, privacy, gender, freedom of speech or 
>> whatever else would simply have to be a vibrant group that puts 
>> forward a candidate and vision that others find persuasive.  Given 
>> that noncommercial people tend to share certain broad values and 
>> priorities, I'm hard pressed to imagine that, for example, a solid 
>> consumer constituency that actually comprises noncommercial actors and 
>> advocates for the public interest would have a hard time getting 
>> support from people who care about privacy, speech, and so on.  So 
>> it'd be a matter of persuading colleagues rather than having a 
>> birthright fiefdom within which one does one's own thing and ignores 
>> everyone else.
>>
>> We understand that questions have been raised about voting formula and 
>> whether it might make sense to put in place mechanisms to prevent the 
>> 'capture' of the council, and we've said we're open to viable 
>> suggestions on that score.  Have yet to hear one. One might add that 
>> if NCUC's proposed charter had been approved and constituency 
>> formation were made as easy as we'd hoped, the NCUC itself would have 
>> ceased to exist, and those of our current 80 organizational and 87 
>> individual members who wanted to off and form constituencies on 
>> privacy, gender, or whatever else would have done so.  So there'd be 
>> no NCUC to be capturing anything in the first place.  In contrast, 
>> under the SIC charter, NCUC would be nuts to disband, inter alia 
>> because it'd leave our members homeless, especially the individuals.  
>> Hard to see how that would be good for ICANN.
>>
>>> voting power, against the obvious concerns of who wants to build new
>>> constituencies, is the leit-motiv that has guided the whole process 
>>> of the
>>> review: move the focus away from the vote, which is by its nature 
>>> divisive,
>>> onto the consensus building process.
>>> New constituencies will not have the right to appoint their "own"
>>> councillors, but will have the right to participate in WGs and other 
>>> policy
>>> making processes and bodies, will have support from ICANN staff and
>>> resources to self-organize, will be able to participate with their own
>>> representatives in the Executive Committee of the NCSG, etc.
>>> In simple words, what we have tried to do is to create a balance and
>>> hopefully a possible way to coexist and, in time, to collaborate, for 
>>> all
>>> the different components of the wide and diverse non-commercial internet
>>> community. Somebody on this list has spoken about "reconsideration" 
>>> of the
>>> Board's decision. This is surely possible. But what I would propose 
>>> is to
>>> try to discuss and understand if what the SIC has proposed can work in
>>> practice, although it is not going to be perfect for anybody, before
>>> shooting it down and start all over again. This discussion is for me 
>>> one of
>>> the main priorities, if not the first priority altogether, in Seoul, 
>>> which
>>> as you all know will mark the end of my term as Director.
>>>
>>> The ALAC and the NCUC are two big parts of this picture, the only 
>>> organized
>>> bodies in ICANN so far (for non-commercial users), I personally think 
>>> that
>>> the first step can be to have a joint discussion in Seoul. Bill's 
>>> proposal
>>> of meeting in an event that is not only work, but also social, goes 
>>> in this
>>> sense, methinks.
>>
>> Here we agree.  And I think finding common ground will be a lot easier 
>> if ALAC colleagues are not laboring under the false impression that 
>> NCUC somehow wants to prevent them or other from forming 
>> constituencies, hence the above.  Our main concern has been that we 
>> first have an opportunity to work out a final, non-divisive charter 
>> with the board, after which constituency launches could begin in 
>> earnest.  In contrast, launching constituencies under the SIC charter 
>> would likely lock us into that framework and engender the very 
>> fragmentation the meeting is intended to help overcome.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Bill
> 
> ***********************************************************
> William J. Drake
> Senior Associate
> Centre for International Governance
> Graduate Institute of International and
>  Development Studies
> Geneva, Switzerland
> william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
> www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
> ***********************************************************
> 
> 
>