[NCUC-DISCUSS] important information

[Rafik Dammak]

Dear members:

I am sharing with you an important and extraordinary announcement. Last
week the NCUC EC agreed to ask one of its members, Peter Green, to resign.
It was not an easy act or one that we took lightly, and we had to think
about it for some time. Our action was necessary because of an undeclared
conflict of interest and a clash with our membership eligibility rules.

Peter is an employee of CONAC, a TLD registry associated with the
government of China. As a CONAC employee, he is an active member of and
participant in the Registry Stakeholder Group. It has been a longstanding
principle of NCUC membership eligibility rules that people or organizations
that are members of another SG or constituency in the GNSO cannot also be
members of NCUC (bylaws III.3). This is done to prevent other interest
groups from attempting to control or unduly shape our Constituency, which
is devoted to noncommercial user interests.

Peter has been actively working on behalf of the Registry SG for some time,
even as he has been serving on our Executive Committee. This is evident
from articles such as this
http://www.chinagov.cn/english/News/CONACNews/201509/t20150924_281168.html
and from records of the registry constituency working group such as this
https://community.icann.org/display/S1SF/Drafting+Team
We note with concern that Peter's Conflict of Interest statement when
running for election to the NCUC EC failed to mention his employment at
CONAC.

I wanted you to be aware of this issue and to understand the basis for our
actions.

Best Regards,

Rafik Dammak

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Dear Peter (Zuan Zhang):

For some time we (the undersigned representatives of the Executive
Committee) have received complaints or expressions of concern about your
eligibility for membership in the Noncommercial Stakeholders Group. The EC
has investigated this matter and has come to the conclusion that you are
ineligible for NCSG membership and thus must resign from the NCUC Executive
Committee immediately.

We want to make it clear that this is not caused by any misconduct on your
part; it is purely a matter of applying our eligibility rules. Your
contribution to our EC has been exemplary, but we cannot continue to
contradict our membership rules. This would open the door to many other
ineligible members and possible abuses. We hope you can accept this
decision in a good spirit.

Section 2.2.2 of the NCSG charter specifically excludes from membership
"Organizations that are represented in ICANN through another Supporting
Organization."

Section 2.2.5 of the NCSG charter makes it clear that individuals are
eligible only if they are "not represented in ICANN through membership in
another Supporting Organization or GNSO Stakeholder Group."

As an employee of CONAC, you are a member of the Registry stakeholder group
and have played an active role representing CONAC in the Registry
Stakeholder Group (RSG). CONAC is a domain name registry, which has its own
Stakeholder Group, where your affiliation with CONAC as an employee is
persistent and strong. We understand that before CONAC was a TLD registry,
its employees were admitted into NCSG because there was no other place for
them to be represented and there was less of a conflict of interest. But
that time has passed; CONAC is now a full-fledged TLD registry operator and
its policy interests are represented in the RSG.

We thank you for your prior participation in our group and encourage you to
stay involved in the GNSO via the Registry Stakeholder Group.

Farzaneh Badii
Caribe Joao Carlos
Rafik Dammak
Grace Githaiga
Milton Mueller
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