"NCUC opposes constituencies"

[Milton L Mueller]

Very good reply, Bill. I like the way you got tough with him on the "top-down" question.
Incredible that this guy can rationalize his actions as "consultative" when NO efforts were EVER made by SIC to contact anyone in NCUC involved in developing our charter. And he still refuses to acknowledge that the enormous public comment response we got - on an obscure charter issue, for God's sake - actually means something.

--MM

________________________________
From: Non-Commercial User Constituency [mailto:NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of William Drake
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 5:32 AM
To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] "NCUC opposes constituencies"

More

Begin forwarded message:


From: William Drake <william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch<mailto:william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch>>
Date: October 18, 2009 11:18:41 AM GMT+02:00
To: Roberto Gaetano <roberto at icann.org<mailto:roberto at icann.org>>
Cc: "'At-Large Worldwide'" <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org>>, "'ALAC Working List'" <alac at atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:alac at atlarge-lists.icann.org>>
Subject: Re: [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?

Hi Roberto,

Thanks for your reply, glad we're talking about this stuff, helpful.

On Oct 18, 2009, at 1:01 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:



Bill,

We might have a communication problem.
What I meant, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that:

- the NCUC was against the creation of constituencies as groups that had
automatic voting seat(s) in the Council
- groups did not see any interest in doing the work of creating
constituencies if they were guaranteed no seats in the Council

If that is what you meant, then yes indeed we have a communication problem.  You wrote,

"But the main point for the SIC to maintain the concept of constituency, against the open opposition of NCUC," which sounded to me like you were saying the main point for the SIC is to maintain the concept of constituency, against the open opposition of NCUC.  Sorry for my confusion.

Bear in mind, I'e been hearing this kind of thing for months now, including from board members in MC, and there's list traffic this morning indicating that others here were not clear on the point.  So especially at a time when some ALAC folks are proposing constituencies, it's a cause for concern when someone in your position of authority appears to be saying NCUC opposes the whole concept.  That would be the RySG, not us.  (BTW, why did SIC ok RySG eliminating constituencies in their charter?  I never understood the rationale for not having harmonized structures across SGs, and it makes the misimpression about NCUC's charter which explicitly provides for constituencies seem all the more odd.)

Entirely separate from the principal of constituencies are two issues:

*Whether council seats should be hard wired.  On this we agree with the SIC, as you know.  I understand there are folks here who feel differently, and say nobody will want to do the work of launching a constituency if they don't automatically get a council seat.  I'm not convinced that's true---I know I and others I've talked to wouldn't feel that's necessarily a barrier, if per the NCUC proposed charter constituencies could run candidates in an open election and in all likelihood get one that way---but I understand the concern and that's a design issue we ought to be able to talk through and build confidence.

*Whether constituencies should be formed soon under the SIC/staff transitional charter, rather than waiting a little while until a mutually satisfactory final arrangement can be arrived at.  We remain concerned that doing it under the SIC/staff version would lock that in and make a joint review and revision impossible.  The timing here is up to you folks on the board, not us.  We'd prefer to resolve things with you ASAP, and constituency launches could then proceed as soon as there are viable proposals.  Unfortunately, I think NCUC folks have contributed to confusion on this point by saying the review should happen within a year, which some have processed as meaning we want to wait a year before anything can be launched.  Within a year doesn't mean in a year, we can do this as soon as you're ready.



Is this a fair representation of the reality, yes or no? If no, I apologize,
as I did really miss something important. If, on the other hand, the answer
is yes, I stand behind my whole post.

The question, as I understood it, was to find a balance that could have
taken into account to the maximum extent possible these two different and
apparently radically opposed positions. The fact that the solution is being
shot from both sides confirms that it was not an easy problem, and that
positions were really opposed. The point is now where we go from here. Can
we discuss and see if this is a solution that can work or not?

I sure hope so, and we are looking forward to meeting with the board and getting the process started.  But let's make sure we understand the positions and the differences between them accurately, that'll help facilitate things a productive dialogue.


To make statements that imply that SIC has not read the NCUC charters is not
helpful.

Didn't mean to imply this, but rather that if you believe NCUC opposes constituencies as you appeared to be saying, you might look again at the NCUC charter which endorses constituencies and suggests mechanisms for their formation and collaboration.


We have two possibilities, one is to get together and to make it
work, the other one is to insist that the bad and ugly SIC has imposed a
top-down solution against the will of the masses.

I didn't characterize the SIC as bad and ugly.  It is unquestionably true though that the SIC imposed a solution that was opposed by NCUC's 80 organizational and 87 individual members and a wide array of non-member supporters and was supported by 3 people.  If you don't like calling this top down, ok, give me another term for something done by the board over the strenuous opposition of the community in question.  I'm not hung up on language, just facts.


I see these as alternative
positions, for the simple fact that accepting and propagating the latter
means not to have understood (or to pretend not having understood) the
amount of consultation, negotiation and compromise that went into the
solution, which is the exact opposite of having imposed a top-down view.

Unfortunately, the consultation, negotiation and compromise didn't really involve NCUC.  But we can still do that, and very much look forward to working with you in Seoul and beyond to arrive at a lasting solution that is supported by the actually existing NC community.

All the best,

Bill




-----Original Message-----
From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch]
Sent: Saturday, 17 October 2009 11:58
To: Roberto Gaetano
Cc: At-Large Worldwide; ALAC Working List
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<mailto:william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch>
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
***********************************************************



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