[NCUC-EC] ICANN staff comments on the bylaws

[Mueller, Milton L]

I have just reviewed the first four pages and am seriously concerned.

First a bit of background: the reviewer Ken Bour, is an ICANN consultant, formerly with AT&T, who has no involvement with or understanding of noncommercial civil society activities. Bour was involved back when we were trying

Bour has taken it upon himself to rewrite the PURPOSE of our constituency, which is something he has no competence and no business doing. Please make it clear to Robert H that we will not under any circumstances have a commercial ICANN consultant telling us what the purpose of our constituency is. We define our purpose, not ICANN. They simply have to be told to back off here.

Second, we are going to run into friction regarding membership and eligibility. Bour wants to completely eliminate notions of “membership” and membership eligibility from our bylaws, leaving that entirely to the NCSG level. He suggest that we eliminate entirely the notion of membership (call them “associates” or “affiliates”) and delete all eligibility criteria.

But this is madness. It’s literally insane, because we have to elect officers, and having votes requires defined members, and having members requires eligibility. Furthermore, after some of the games that have been played at the GNSO and NCSG level, we thought it was very important to retain our own membership eligibility criteria.

Bear in mind that ICANN itself forced us, back when the GNSO was redesigned, to retain separate and distinct constituencies with their own membership criteria. And you can’t have constituencies without membership. Indeed, we begged them not to have constituencies at all, just one integrated SG, and they consistently refused as part of a plot to divide and conquer NCSG by creating new constituencies. Now they seem to be telling us that we can have all of the disadvantages of constituencies and none of the advantages.

Of course, it will be interesting to see if this concept of not having members is applied consistently to the commercial SG and even to NPOC. Someone with spare time should check the bylaws of IPC etc and see if they have membership, and membership eligibility criteria.

Even though I am not on the EC except as Treasurer, I think you need to include me in any meeting with Rob on this. Someone with deep institutional memory will be required.

--MM

From: NCUC-EC [mailto:ncuc-ec-bounces at lists.ncuc.org] On Behalf Of farzaneh badii
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2017 10:38 PM
To: Exec. Comm <ncuc-ec at lists.ncuc.org>
Subject: [NCUC-EC] ICANN staff comments on the bylaws

EC,

Please find attached ICANN staff comments on NCUC bylaws. I will arrange a meeting with Rob and staff but before doing that we need to go through the comments. We can do that within two weeks and then have a meeting with him and staff to explain the comments to us. Then we will discuss with Rob and staff and then discuss with our members, finalize and ask Rob to send it to Board.


Farzaneh
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