My opinion on the Consumer Constituency

[Jorge Amodio]

> Unfortunately, people do associate Milton with NCUC. And as changing such
> perceptions is hard, it's best to just say he doesn't speak for us.

The first two words of the Subject on Milton's email read "My opinion."

While true that some people may perceive Milton's comments as an
NCUC position, the same people surely know that the IGP blog is not
the "official" NCUC site or way of communication of NCUC positions
on anything related to ICANN.

I'd be very concerned if we all agree 100% all the time, having different
points of view and expressing them is what creates dialog, which is the
most important vehicle for building consensus about particular issues.

What's really clear, at least to me, and the standard disclaimer that this
is my opinion applies, is that something is going on between ALAC
(better said some particular people from ALAC) and NCUC.

I've been participating also in ALAC, and to be frank I became amazed
about how the bottom-up process is being manipulated and the Chair
instead of providing general direction and let each RALO do its own
independent analysis, micromanages the entire process with support
from ICANN staff even in the creation of documents, where many times
the local folks only get to participate to say if they agree or not with the
document.

On the other hand, the current mechanics for ALS certification cast
(again this is my personal opinion) a big doubt about who/what
they really represent.

It takes only a bunch of buddies, few bucks, and a little bit of paperwork
and noiseware, to create a non-profit org and claim status as an ALS,
much easier if you know really well how the internals work and already
some of your buddies are in and ready to support you.

I've seen ALSs without any track record, just recently created claiming
to be representative of the Internet users, well to be frank they are,
just them (I mean the ones that created the ALS).

And this is happening right now, where former board members are
asking for certification for an ALS when the ink on the filings is still
wet, and besides the track record of particular individuals the
organization itself does not have any.

I hope we can move away from this "he said, she said" non-sense
and focus on the issues.

The agenda is packed (unfortunately I can't make it today to be on
the meeting), there are too many things going on, the new version
of the DAG will be published soon, its only a week until the JPA
ends and what? begins, the domainers are demanding immediate
implementation of the new gTLDs (VC capital drying?), there are
issues regarding scalability of the root zone and overall stability of
the DNS, Seoul is around the corner, and so on.

My .02
Jorge