Constituencies was Re: [] . Nomination for …

[Milton L Mueller]

Just thinking out loud...

...I can imagine an NCSG made up of 5 constituencies (Avri, can you think of at least 2 more? ;-)

- Universities/Academics (the current NCUC leadership could grow that without much pain)
- Individual internet users (a great start also with NCUC)
- NGOs/NFPs (NPOC would continue its current pace of membership growth once the Toronto NCSG-EC decisions on membership issues are implemented)
- Consumers (big concerns there!)
- Telecentres and other public internet access points (with private cyber cafes and WIFI/WIMAX going to the BC)


Why this won't work


1.       Most academics join as individuals, because it is too complicated to get their entire university to join

2.       Many academics, including myself and (I suspect) Carlos Affonso de Souza, are involved as rights advocates, not as academics per se. I don't know what the "academic" position on Whois is; I do know what an Internet freedom oriented position is

3.       Many consumer groups are already in NCUC, and advocate for civil liberties/rights as often as they look strictly at consumer economic issues. Why make them label themselves as one or the other? Why allow one small group to call themselves the "Consumers" when everyone in this SG is a domain name consumer?

4.       All consumer and rights groups are NGOs. Why divide them? Why force them to make a choice of arbitrary labels?

5.       Are libraries Telecentres? I work at a library school and am networked with dozens of organizational entities that would fall into both categories. Most telecentre advocates are interested in access, not in telecentres per se. Ten years from now the whole concept of a telecentre might be obsolete.

6.       I could list 6 or 7, perhaps 20 additional, perfectly plausible categories. E.g., a LGBT constituency; a Catholic constituency; an artists constituency; a schoolteachers constituency, etc., etc., etc. where do you stop?

The GNSO is a policy development organization. That is its purpose. Any grouping of people around any policy issue can take form, inside or outside SGs, to develop and advocate specific policies relevant to them in the GNSO Working Groups. To say that we need constituency structures for every single potential policy grouping is just crazy. Worse, it diverts enormous amounts of energy to internal organization building and away from actual policy development.

Milton L. Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
Internet Governance Project
http://blog.internetgovernance.org

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