The Purpose of Constituencies?

[Alex Gakuru]

Thank you KK,

These constituencies mostly serve to divide, balkanize and fragment
Non-Commercial Users rights advancement at ICANN. I do not believe the
"reward" of being leader(s) in tiny rights zones, often
in perceptual overlapping and/or conflicting, is worth any more than one's
commitment to a truly global public interest - for the rights of others not
for own-self.

regards,

Alex


2011/6/30 Konstantinos Komaitis <k.komaitis at strath.ac.uk>

> 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/
>
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