[NCUC-DISCUSS] Bribery at ICANN

[Raoul Plommer]

>
> On Nov 25, 2016, at 13:12, Raoul Plommer <plommer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's my general point of view, that any organisation as big and powerful
> as ICANN wouldn't be immune to corruption, be it in the form of bribes or
> other means. It's not a conspiracy theory, when you state that water is
> wet, either.
>
> Whether the people in constituencies are corrupt or not, is besides my
> point.
>
>
> This is a publicly archived mail list that is read by staff and other
> parts of the community and you are throwing around groundless assertions
> about bribery while standing for election to a leadership position.  Sorry
> but this does not help NCUC’s position in the community and its various
> organs.
>

Is it really a groundless assertion, that some forms of corruption might
exist in ICANN, that is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars for its
position to process applications for namespaces, among other things? We're
talking of decisions that affect businesses to the tune of billions of
dollars in the long run. That's not an accusation, it's a conservative
suspicion. In any case, it was James that first said the word bribery and
started blowing it out of proportion. I wasn't thinking of a specific form
of corruption and was really just trying to explain, how other SG's are
"paid off" I.e. sacrificing human rights principles to get bigger profits.
To his defense, he did ask whether he may extrapolate and I forgot to deny
it.

Almost all of the comments in this thread, that try to knock my view down,
have come from Tatiana and her public supporters. Nothing to do with the
elections I'm sure, but it's definitely a trend. Are you trying to think
more of what's best for the NCUC as opposed to trying to knock me down for
something I haven't even said? Let's get more constructive, please.

We could make an analysis, of exactly how all the ICANN-funding is spread
out between the SGs and show the board how badly we are doing, when you
take into the account, how many of us are getting paid to do ICANN work. I
think that would show a massive difference between the CSG and NCSG people,
for example. Have a look at the world outside ICANN. There, at least on
paper, it's the civil society, that has the power to make laws. I'm not
saying that a similar emphasis would make ICANN work better, but compared
with 1/7 seats for the GNSO we're just too damn far from it, to give our
seal of approval to ICANN, as a necessary part of the multistakeholder
model.

I'm trying to find some fresh persepective to the NomCom issue and I think
the least, that my com-non-com division can be used for, is to point out
the current imbalance within the GNSO, too. It's tough all over for us. I
do not think it's something that we should omit from our report to the
NomCom review. I think rubbing the board's nose on our current, almost
non-existent means of funding and representation to do our work have far
better possibility of succeeding, than zero, and I think it should be one
of the valid arguments that we can throw in their face, figuratively
speaking.


> Suspect we are all busy, but people were taking the time to respond to you.
>

The deadline for RightsCon 2017 submission is tonight at 23:59 UTC so I
really must go now. I appreciate taking the time to answer and I only
mentioned ignoring the conversation until tomorrow, so that you know why
I'm not answering all of you in the next 16hrs. It's not because I have
nothing to say but because I have to temporarily change my priority from
this EC election to getting OKFI into RightsCon and sleep a little too.

Respectfully,

-Raoul
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