NPOC Q&A Document

Tue Nov 9 23:56:02 CET 2010

Hi,

First, Welcome to the NCSG.

A quick answer.  

The NCSG adopted  a charter and that is what we are living by in so far as it does not conflict with the bare bone charter imposed by the Board as an Interim charter, found at:  <https://st.icann.org/data/workspaces/ncsg-ec/attachments/non_commercial_stakeholder_group:20091126180409-0-22043/original/ncsg-approved-charter-30jul09.pdf>. 

We have informed the Board that this is how we are operating, and they have never, in their oversight role, taken any exception to this. Of course that interim charter is still the operating charter and any action we take in contravention to that would be in breech of the charter as defined by ICANN.  I think, however,  if you review the criteria included in the interim charter imposed by the Board for NCSG membership, you will find that we are not in contradiction to that charter in any way in our proposals, though we do go further into detail.

In the meantime, I have been in near constant negotiations with the Board on a revision of our charter, based on the charter we approved, but responding  to several comments that board members had; these board concerns are listed on the same page as the charter currently under review:  <https://st.icann.org/ncsg-ec/index.cgi?ncsg_charter_board_issue_resolution>

We are close to the end of those talks, though we do not yet have approval.  In the last several weeks, Staff raised several issues regarding our charter, which I have since responded to.  I am currently waiting for the Board's next actions.

While it would have been best, in my opinion, if the Board had accepted the charter as approved by the NCSG members by 70%, that did not happen and the by-laws do make the Board responsible for SG charters.  It is my fervent hope that the negotiations with the Board will reach a successful conclusion in the near future.  But if I fail, I will leave the challenge to my successor as Chair of the EC.

a.

On 9 Nov 2010, at 17:30, Amr Elsadr wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
> 
> I am new to the NCUC, so I will try to very briefly introduce myself.  My
> name is Amr Elsadr, and I am an Egyptian national.  My academic background
> is medical, however, I have not practiced clinical medicine since my year as
> an intern.  Instead I have sought a career in providing service to the
> healthcare sector using ICT tools and am now the COO of a tele-medicine
> service provider based in Cairo.  Having said that, I have to be very clear
> that when engaging in discussions with the ICANN community (and Internet
> governance in general), I wear a completely different hat, and that is as a
> volunteer with the Cyber Peace Initiative's youth empowerment program using
> ICT, Net-Aman.  I am one of the founding members of this initiative, and if
> you are interested in learning more about it, you can check our website at
> http://www.cyberpeaceinitiative.org.
> 
> Please excuse the fact that I am still pretty much a novice in all the
> discussions and debates going back and forth, but the issue of forming a
> NPOC as part of the NCSG is the first I have come across as a member on this
> mailing list, and you will find that I have more questions than anything
> else for the time being.
> 
> For one thing, the criteria for membership of the NCUC are pretty obvious,
> but I am still perplexed on what makes an organization eligible to join the
> NCSG at large (least of all, forming a new constituency under the NCSG all
> together).  I have been looking for membership criteria since this string of
> emails has started, and found the content Avri pointed out below a few days
> ago, but unless I'm missing something, the very top of the page clearly
> states that although 70% of the NCSG approved (an earlier??) version of this
> charter, The NCSG approved charter was not accepted by the ICANN Board
> Structural Improvement Committee.  Does that mean that the eligibility and
> ineligibility of organizations as described under section 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 of
> that charter stands or not?  If not, is there some other reference?
> 
> Dan Krimm made an excellent point earlier regarding the difference between
> NPOs and noncommercial organizations.  Being a not-for-profit organization
> and being a noncommercial organization are two completely different things
> as far as I can tell as well.  Commerce is defined as the buying and selling
> of commodities according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Commodities
> could be either products and goods or services.  Hospitals and universities
> are two examples that I can think of at the top of my head that, more often
> than not, provide services such as the provision of education and healthcare
> at a cost, yet not with the goal of creating profit.  My question is,
> shouldn't there be a clear consensus on what makes an organization eligible
> of being a member of a constituency under the NCSG?  That has been spelled
> out pretty clearly in the link Avri provided under section 2, but again I
> ask, do these criteria stand?  If not, someone please provide reference for
> some that do.  If these rules for eligibility are valid, then I believe that
> the NPOC Petition and Charter will need to be revised, and there should be a
> good reason why the organizations involved in trying to create this
> constituency would rather do so rather than be a part of the NCUC (I find
> myself making assumptions of what the operational impacts ICANN policies
> will have on the member organizations of the NPOC since I don't know what
> these organizations are).  If they do not stand, then maybe that is the
> discussion that should be taking place in order to keep this stakeholder
> group truly free of members engaged in commerce.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Amr Elsadr M.D.
> Chief Operating Officer
> Tele-Med International
> http://www.telemedint.net
> Tel: +2(023)534-6098
> Fax: +2(023)534-6029
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NCSG-NCUC [mailto:NCSG-NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Avri Doria
> Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 10:52 PM
> To: NCSG-NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Subject: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: NPOC Q&A Document
> 
> On 9 Nov 2010, at 15:34, Rosemary Sinclair wrote:
> 
>> Hi Avri
>> 
>> Could point me to the section in our proposed Charter on constituencies?
>> 
>> Ta
>> 
>> R
>> Sent from my BlackBerryR from Optus
> 
> 
> https://st.icann.org/ncsg-ec/index.cgi?ncsg_charter_board_issue_resolution
> 
> section 2.3
> 
> a.