The Purpose of Constituencies?

[Konstantinos Komaitis]

I would feel quite reluctant at this stage to have a new academic constituency as I truly fail to see its clear mandate and premise. NCUC already consists of many academics, who are in the position to contribute to policy. Why do we need a new constituency for this? What will be the added value of an academic constituency within the ICANN model? How will an academic constituency advance the role of non-commercial users within ICANN? How will it manage to advance policy within ICANN? These for me are crucial questions and so far that answers that I seem to come up with are not sufficient enough to warrant the creation of a separate constituency. I am an academic, but the truth is that within ICANN I rarely get to use my academic hat since I know that theory-based rationalizations are rarely met with support within an institutional arrangement that is not very friendly to theory-based assertions. So, here comes NCUC that is able to fill this void. Its strength is the fact that its members are so very diverse and come from different disciplines and backgrounds. This has allowed NCUC to grow and become the only constituency that is organically evolving through its debates by academics, techies, sociologists, political scientists, policy makers, advocates and many others. By starting creating many constituencies without standing still for a while and see the value (and the impact) these might have upon non-commercial interests, we might endanger the true representation of users and registrants and their rights. Whoever wants to help advance all these interests will not achieve this through the creation of many constituencies, but through participation in ICANN working groups or through the submission of comments during the public period.

KK

Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,

Senior Lecturer,
Director of Postgraduate Instructional Courses
Director of LLM Information Technology and Telecommunications Law
University of Strathclyde,
The Law School,
Graham Hills building, 
50 George Street, Glasgow G1 1BA 
UK
tel: +44 (0)141 548 4306
http://www.routledgemedia.com/books/The-Current-State-of-Domain-Name-Regulation-isbn9780415477765
Selected publications: http://hq.ssrn.com/submissions/MyPapers.cfm?partid=501038
Website: www.komaitis.org

-----Original Message-----
From: NCSG-NCUC [mailto:NCSG-NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Andrew A. Adams
Sent: Πέμπτη, 30 Ιουνίου 2011 8:29 πμ
To: NCSG-NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: The Purpose of Constituencies?

Milton and Jolie,

Thanks for the information.

I'm still conflicted on whether an academic constituency would be worthwhile. 
If it is needed to help balance the power distribution in NCSG because of the way ICANN/GNSO views NCSG then it's a necessary evil, given that we had the formal constituency model imposed upon us by the Board (that's my reading of the charter process anyway - that NCSG had a majority opposed to constituencies and that we weakened the Board's requirements for giving power to constituencies but couldn't manage to avoid them having some significant effect). We should think carefully as to whether and how to work it. I think most of the academics here would be willing to work to only exert any power that came with a constituency in such a way as to counterbalance other unrepresentative power blocs rather than to try to exert our own power. While the academics might have other personal interests, of course, most of us I think are here because we have an interest in trying to make ICANN fairer and better run. On balance, therefore, with some careful drafting of a charter I might be willing to support an academic constituency.



-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/