My opinion on the Consumer Constituency

[Milton L Mueller]

Just to follow up a bit more. The reason this is important is because of the charter issue. 

NCUC and civil society made a good faith concession: we accepted a completely unfair situation (3 Board appointed seats, and a SIC NCSG charter that imposes this awful constituency model on us) in order to help ICANN get the GNSO reforms rolling by Seoul. In exchange, we asked that this situation be TEMPORARY. That we have a clean-slate review of the NCSG charter, that ALAC and others negotiate with us about finding a model that we can both agree on. This allows the Board to correct what is obviously a mistake.

For that honest and open review to take place, you cannot create new constituencies under the SIC charter model. Because once you do that, you've locked the SIC charter into place. You won't be able to implement the NCUC's model of the NCSG without abolishing the Consumer Constituency that was just created. That is unlikely to happen. 

That is why the NCUC unanimously asked the Board to defer the creation of new constituencies. 

Why, then, did ALAC go on the warpath against NCUC and try to interfere with that by systematically organizing all the RALOs and ALAC in an attempt to ask the Board to reject our request? 

For Adam to suggest that this is all about personalities and not being polite is just wrong. There is a lot more at stake here. Those folks know what they are doing and why they are doing it. If an unvarnished description of their actions shocks people it isn't my problem. As usual, I get blamed for telling the truth about this situation, while the people trying to pull a fast one posture as these poor, wounded parties. Nope, sorry Adam, I am not the slightest bit apologetic, and if I've broken some unspoken ICANN codes about not calling a spade a spade, then I'd suggest there's something unhealthy about communication in ICANN and not something wrong with me. 

--MM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Non-Commercial User Constituency [mailto:NCUC-
> DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
> Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:46 AM
> To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] My opinion on the Consumer Constituency
> 
> Of course this is my blog post and not an NCUC position.
> Adam and I have been having some private emails about this. He began by
> asserting that there were factual inaccuracies but so far he has not been
> able to document any.
> 
> There are no factual inaccuracies in that blog post. Unfortunately, it's
> all quite true. What this disagreement is about is style and tactics, not
> facts.
> 
> We have a different approach to things. Adam likes to work on the inside,
> not ruffle any feathers, etc. I like to tell it like it is. Needless to
> say, Adam is more popular in ICANN than I am.
> 
> :-)
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Non-Commercial User Constituency [mailto:NCUC-
> > DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Adam Peake
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 5:11 AM
> > To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> > Subject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] My opinion on the Consumer Constituency
> >
> > At 5:58 PM -0400 9/22/09, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> >
> >http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/9/22/4329523.html
> >
> >
> > I hope the NCUC will make clear it does not support Milton's
> > inaccurate, personally vindictive blog.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Adam
> > (member of ALAC and NCUC. Opinions are my own.)