[NCUC-DISCUSS] important information - deep concerns about this action

Tue Aug 9 15:54:56 CEST 2016

Dear Rafik,
Like Avri, I was surprised by your email of yesterday morning. Peter 
Green is a valued member of our SG who has served us well. He jumped in 
to run for the Executive Committee, to represent the interests of a huge 
continent too little represented in our work (Asia), and to provide 
leadership, communication, input and insight.

I know the conflict provisions of the NCUC Bylaws well because, frankly, 
I drafted them into the NCUC charter years ago. What happened then is 
that individuals and companies, including the then-giant Network 
Solutions, Inc., wanted to join every constituency. Compounding the 
problem was the fact that certain large not-for-profit organizations, 
with only commercial organizations as their members, wanted to join us 
too – and that would have made no sense at all.

We created a rule then that you can only vote in one constituency. But 
no one created a rule that you cannot attend the meetings of another 
constituency (or SG). That would be absurd as the whole idea of holding 
open constituency and stakeholder group meetings is to provide the 
transparency and openness that we all claim and that ICANN is committed 
to! We Want People to Attend Other Constituencies and Stakeholder Group 
Meetings to share what the constituencies and SGs are interested in, 
concerned about, and working on (and we certainly have plenty of people 
outside NCUC and NCSG in the back rows of our Tuesday Constituency and 
Stakeholder Group meetintgs watching us and reporting back to their 
managers, associations, constituencies and SGs).

*Plus, the world has changed with New gTLDs:*

What happened recently is that everything became a little more 
complicated. With the introduction of the New gTLDs, with overlapping 
ownership of registries and registrars, the following happened: 
registrars became registries, and registries became registrars. Further, 
many leading members of the Commercial Stakeholder Group went from 
commercial users to both commercial users AND registries  - such as 
Amazon and Google. Now everything is confused and people wear many 
hats!  It is an issue in which all SGs are thinking about and 
discussing, but they have generally done it with all of the members 
present - not behind closed doors.

So Peter is in a unique spot. He has been a strong and active member of 
our SG - attending the intersessional of NCSG and CSG in Washington DC a 
few years ago where I first met him, running for office to serve his 
region and us, and leading the NCUC efforts that year that resulted in 
Bill Drake being appointed to the NomCom (among other undertakings).

His employer is indeed CONAC, which calls itself the ".ORG of China."  
Indeed, CONAC handles the registration of thousands (tens of thousands) 
of noncommercial groups in China at the second level in .CN. Further, 
during the course of Peter's representation in our NCSG, CONAC received 
the delegation of the internationalized domain name which is the 
equivalent of ".Public Interest" in two Chinese characters. I note that 
there is a hardly a philosophical difference of viewpoints or political 
leanings here.

*In this time what have NCSG and NCUC have not done: *

What we have not done is reevaluate the impact on the New gTLDs on our 
membership rules, and the problems related to the new types of overlaps 
of issues and groups ...and  I assure you every other constituencies and 
SG have talked about this issue extensively.

Accordingly, it would have been almost impossible for Peter, who speaks 
English as second (or maybe as a third or fourth) language to understand 
the nuances of the standard you have held him to.

But on his behalf, and with no view on the ultimate outcome, let me ask:

- Are you invoking NCUC or NCSG rules?

- If NCSG (as you cite in your email below), have you consulted with the 
NCSG Executive Committee or NCSG Chair?

- Is it valid to use NCSG rules, without NCSG's Executive Committee 
input, as the means of removing a well-respected NCUC member from the 
Executive Committee, and from membership in the NCSG as a whole?

- has Peter even cast a vote in the Registries SG or is he merely 
attending meetings to learn more?

- Was Peter consulted in the NCUC Executive Committee review and given a 
chance to respond to your concerns?

/*May I suggest that additional procedure and discussion are in order 
before any abrupt action is taken? */

/**/

Best regards,

Kathy Kleiman, Co-Founder of NCUC

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

On 8/8/2016 8:27 AM, avri doria wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Before we judge someone, I am curious about the due process issues.
>
> Was the accused afforded an opportunity to make his case?
>
> Did he know there was going to be a meeting to discuss removing him from
> office?
>
> And I am urious, under what provision of the NCUC 'charter' was this
> secret meeting held and this action taken?
>
> thanks
>
> avri
>
>
> On 08-Aug-16 08:16, Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez G. wrote:
>> Thank you very much Rafik!
>>
>> incredible (un)ethical (double)standards indeed for a member of the EC.
>>
>> Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez
>> +506 8837 7176
>> Skype: carlos.raulg
>> Current UTC offset: -6.00 (Costa Rica)
>> On 7 Aug 2016, at 21:45, Rafik Dammak wrote:
>>
>>> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ncuc-discuss mailing list
>>> Ncuc-discuss at lists.ncuc.org
>>> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ncuc-discuss
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