[Pt53] Welcome to the Planning List for NCUC's Regional Outreach Session at ICANN 53 in Buenos Aires

Tue May 5 09:32:39 CEST 2015

Hi

Certainly we do want to hear what the concerns are ‘locally,’ but this should be with respect to ICANN related issues.  It would not be desirable to end up focusing on net neutrality and mass surveillance and other Internet issues that are not related to ICANN.  It’s an ICANN meeting, we are an ICANN entity, and we are indeed doing ICANN-funded outreach to share info about what we’re doing and engage in dialogue on the same.  As I said, if we just come away from this with greater mutual awareness that’s fine, but if someone decides they might like to get involved at some level, even better and NCUC provides a vehicle for engagement.

I’m not entirely sure what Carlos means by the international legitimacy aspect of IANA functions' oversight, but assume he’s referring to the questions of ICANN’s legal incorporate, jurisdiction, and applicable law.  This nexus of issues has been debated in the ongoing IANA and accountability processes, and it was decided that they need to be addressed in work stream 2, as a bigger and longer term question to be addressed after those items in work stream 1—accountability mechanisms that must be in place in order for the transition to occur—have been dealt with.  Reasons include inter alia a) there’s no possibility of consensus on any changes right now; b) there’d be massive legal problems with the contracts through which ICANN governs the registries and registrars; c) people involved in the respective processes are already doing ten hours a week of conference calls and thousand of emails trying to sort out the minimum requirements of transition and may well miss the target dates as is, so the bandwidth to address this now just isn’t there; and d) above all, putting this into the mix now would be a strategic disaster as it would kill the transition on Capitol Hill and we’d end up with NTIA having to renew the contract, which would then kick the process into the Presidential electoral cycle and make “Democrats want to give away the Internet” an even juicier talking point for the Tea Party et al than it has been already. This would be the perfect way to kill the transition and any hope of denationalization, which is presumably not what we want to happen.  One step at a time...

We can certainly talk about these issues in the meeting, as we did a bit in the DC meeting.  But we shouldn’t replicate the mess of the WSIS debate and let it block out everything else; we have the CSTD meeting in Geneva this week and the UN GA debate in December for that.  We’re not the G77 & China, and there are a ton of really important things going on that NCUC and the wider community are dealing with that should be addressed as well.

Best

Bill

> On May 5, 2015, at 7:09 AM, Stefania Milan <netpolicy at stefaniamilan.net> wrote:
> 
> hello everyone, nice to see this group up and running, and ideas flowing in. 
> 
> Carlos raises an interesting point: is the event designed only for NCUC outreach? Actually no. The way we see it is more nuanced: while NCUC will be happy to share the most recent updates on the fields/issue-areas members are active in (and they are manyfold), the main aim is to hear what are the concerns ‘locally’, and see how they (and the approach taken by local groups) intersect NCUC work and the broader ICANN community.
> 
> My first reaction reading your mail, Carlos, is that this might not the most productive approach for the BBAA section. Not everyone might be as familiar as some of us are with ICANN jargon, algorithms, and processes more in general. We should aim at being inclusive, and not necessarily ICANN-centric. It seems to me that the questions you raise are more apt for the Constituency Day (for those not familiar with ICANN: the moment in which the constituencies come together for updates and further debate), rather than for the outreach event (remember it is only 2 hours, and some time is to be allocated to getting acquainted with each other). 
> 
> My two cents. 
> 
> Other than that, may I suggest some concrete steps following on directly from Bill’s welcome email?
> 1- work on the list of names/organizations to be involved/approached: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRnbG-zlSzke5D2bQO30yXAu2kXxfuLNXIRL1jwj9v0/edit?pli=1 <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRnbG-zlSzke5D2bQO30yXAu2kXxfuLNXIRL1jwj9v0/edit?pli=1>
> In this respect, I suggest to add names by May 15: it is 10 days from now
> 2- work on a tentative agenda: let’s say 5 interventions from NCUC and 5 interventions from the ‘locals'
> Can we have the agenda done by May 20?
> 3- when the two of them are ready, we can start sending invitations emails so that we reach out to people roughly a month ahead of the event. Invitations should be out by May 25.
> 
> Now, this is not a strict timeline —extra names can be always added at a later stage. But let’s be ambitious and efficient :-)
> Thoughts?
> Stefi
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Apr 29, 2015, at 5:47 PM, Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca <mailto:ca at cafonso.ca>> wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks for this, Bill. Good group indeed (myself notwithstanding :-)).
>> 
>> We will have a sort of formidable challenge in the Bs.As ICANN meeting.
>> I thought until now that what should be one of our main concerns as NCUC
>> with 96 countries' people participating is the international legitimacy
>> aspect of IANA functions' oversight, which in my view (and Norbert
>> Klein's as far as I know) is being left aside by the CWG. I thought this
>> was a problem related to the names function only, as the IETF-ICANN
>> relationship seems well established regarding protocols (and I have not
>> heard any rumors regarding any significant change here in any scenario),
>> and the January proposal by CRISP was a no-brainer according to Steve
>> Crocker himself.
>> 
>> I am now recovering from reading Milton's review of the current status,
>> and what I see is far worse. ICANN seems to have reversed its view on
>> the original CRISP proposal and basically crushed it. It is essential to
>> read the slide presentation quoted by Milton:
>> 
>> https://www.arin.net/participate/meetings/reports/ARIN_35/PDF/monday/crisp_panel.pdf <https://www.arin.net/participate/meetings/reports/ARIN_35/PDF/monday/crisp_panel.pdf>
>> 
>> I understand from Bill's opening message in this list that the basic
>> function (I am starting to hate the word) of the outreach meeting is to
>> do NCUC outreach. OK, fine, but could we have time to raise crucial
>> issues we will be confronted with immediately afterwards in the ICANN
>> meeting?
>> 
>> My recommendation for NCUCers not dealing with these issues on a daily
>> basis is:
>> 
>> - read the CWG proposal (big challenge, if you can complicate a
>> presentation, why simplify it?);
>> 
>> - read the January proposal by CRISP/NRO (far simpler);
>> 
>> - take a careful look at the slide presentation by the RIRs' team in the
>> April 14th meeting with ARIN (catch it from Milton's article or the
>> above link);
>> 
>> - read the excellent review published yesterday by Milton, here:
>> http://www.internetgovernance.org/2015/04/28/icann-wants-an-iana-functions-monopoly-and-its-willing-to-wreck-the-transition-process-to-get-it/ <http://www.internetgovernance.org/2015/04/28/icann-wants-an-iana-functions-monopoly-and-its-willing-to-wreck-the-transition-process-to-get-it/>
>> 
>> What is NCUC's position (which is a multi-country non-commercial civil
>> society organization) regarding all this? This is a challenge for our
>> meeting, I guess, besides just trying to bring more folks to the tribe
>> and so on.
>> 
>> frt rgds
>> 
>> --c.a.
>> 
>> On 04/29/2015 09:27 AM, William Drake wrote:
>>> Hello everyone
>>> 
>>> To facilitate our work, we have set up this mail list and taken the
>>> liberty of subscribing everyone who was on the initial Cc thread, i.e.
>>> Analia Aspis, Carlos Afonso, Cristiana Gonzalez, Eduardo Bertoni,
>>> Enrique Chaparro, João Carlos Rebello Caribé, Marília Maciel, Stefania
>>> Milan, Valeria Betancourt, William Drake, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, and
>>> Verónica Ferrari.  I hope this is ok with you all, I recognize not
>>> everyone mentioned is currently a NCUC member and some might not be sure
>>> yet how deeply they want to get engaged here.  Of course, anyone who
>>> wants to can simply unsubscribe at any time, no worries.  In any event,
>>> I would not think that pulling this together will not require a large
>>> amount of traffic.  
>>> 
>>> Herewith a little boot-up information:
>>> 
>>> *Background*
>>> 
>>> NCUC works to advance civil society objectives in ICANN, especially with
>>> respect to gTLD policies in the GNSO.  As
>>> per http://www.ncuc.org/about/members/ <http://www.ncuc.org/about/members/> we currently have 417 members
>>> from 96 countries, a substantial share of which are from the global
>>> South.  However, aside from a fairly active Brazilian contingent, we
>>> arguably don’t have enough engagement from the LAC region.  So what we
>>> wanted to do here is some outreach and dialogue with progressive civil
>>> society folks who are interested in Internet governance. The simple
>>> objectives are to share info about what we’re into, and hear about their
>>> views and any interests/activities on ICANN-relevant issues (including
>>> if these are critical with respect to ICANN).  If we just come away from
>>> this with greater mutual awareness that’s fine, if someone decides they
>>> might like to get involved at some level, even better; either way,
>>> there’ll be no hard sell or dispensing of kool aid.
>>> 
>>> *Planning Team*
>>> 
>>> One of the things we’ve done since I was first elected chair in 2013 is
>>> establish ‘working teams' to manage different bits of the constituency’s
>>> operations.  These can be standing teams or temporary, depending on the
>>> need.  This group will be a temporary Program Team for ICANN 53; the
>>> mail list will be taken down after the event.  As soon as we’re able
>>> we’ll get it listed
>>> at http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams/ <http://www.ncuc.org/participate/working-teams/> with an invitation to
>>> other members to click and join the list.  If anyone prefers not to be
>>> listed on website for a couple months just send me a note.
>>> 
>>> Stefi and Analía have both offered to play lead roles in coordinating
>>> our efforts and keeping us on track, which is much appreciated.
>>> 
>>> *Meeting Logistics*
>>> 
>>> As I said previously on the Cc,
>>> 
>>>> On Apr 24, 2015, at 10:18 AM, William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch <mailto:william.drake at uzh.ch>
>>>> <mailto:william.drake at uzh.ch <mailto:william.drake at uzh.ch>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I just spoke with JJ Sahel, the staffer who is supporting this effort.
>>>> We definitely have a room 16:00-18:00 Saturday June 20 with technical
>>>> support (computer/screen/remote participation).  The room will be
>>>> suitable for like 50-60 people.  Do those of you who are locally
>>>> connected think we need to ask for translation facilities?  That’s an
>>>> expensive ‘ask’ and I don’t know if his budget could accommodate it,
>>>> but if we anticipate people showing up whose English isn’t sufficient
>>>> to be comfortable I can try.
>>>> 
>>>> In addition, there will be a reception 18-19:30 for all CS @ ICANN,
>>>> which one assumes will get swamped with other people in search of
>>>> booze as well.  Afterwards people can charge off into the BA night for
>>>> dinner.
>>> 
>>> So that’s it, two hour dialogue and then drinks and nibbles to start our
>>> Saturday night.  Perhaps we can return to the translation issue when we
>>> have a better sense of who might attend and what the needs may be.
>>> 
>>> *Agenda*
>>> 
>>> We’ve done regional outreach sessions at some previous ICANN events,
>>> e.g. last summer in
>>> London https://london50.icann.org/en/schedule/fri-civil-society-ig <https://london50.icann.org/en/schedule/fri-civil-society-ig> and
>>> in January in Washington
>>> DC http://www.ncuc.org/washington-dc-ncuc-meets-civil-society-to-discuss-current-issues-in-internet-governance/ <http://www.ncuc.org/washington-dc-ncuc-meets-civil-society-to-discuss-current-issues-in-internet-governance/>.
>>>  The model we followed rather successfully in DC was to have 6-8 NCUC
>>> members each offer 3 minute summaries of what we’re currently working on
>>> in different issue areas---e.g. the IANA transition, accountability
>>> mechanisms in the context of globalization, human rights, privacy and
>>> WHOIS, access to knowledge and intellectual property, freedom
>>> of expression, development, ICANN in the broader Internet governance
>>> environment—and then ask the local folks to share their
>>> interests/views/reactions, followed by open dialogue. In effect, a
>>> Roundtable type thing. If we were to decide to do that again, then the
>>> substantive agenda would be easy to assemble and we could concentrate
>>> more on identifying and inviting potential participants.  Alternatively,
>>> if people feel a different sort of agenda would be better, whether a
>>> Panel or just a free flowing discussion with no opening comments or
>>> whatever, we can talk that through.
>>> 
>>> *Outreach to Potential Participants*
>>> 
>>> As mentioned when the Cc started, we need help on this from folks with
>>> local contacts and knowledge of the LAC civil society landscape.  Stefi
>>> put up a Google doc to get us started and others have added names,
>>> at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRnbG-zlSzke5D2bQO30yXAu2kXxfuLNXIRL1jwj9v0/edit?pli=1 <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gRnbG-zlSzke5D2bQO30yXAu2kXxfuLNXIRL1jwj9v0/edit?pli=1>.
>>> It’d be great if people could add suggestions there (sorry if you don’t
>>> like G-docs…we could shift to some other platform if someone likes).  We
>>> can also reach out to Rodrigo de la Parra, the ICANN VP for stakeholder
>>> engagement in LAC, for help with names, as he has a data base of
>>> contacts.  He historically has only worked with other groupings within
>>> ICANN, but there’s no reason for him to not help us as well.
>>> 
>>> Ok, that’s more than enough for one message!
>>> 
>>> Thanks again for helping out,
>>> 
>>> Bill
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> PT53 mailing list
>>> PT53 at lists.ncuc.org <mailto:PT53 at lists.ncuc.org>
>>> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pt53
>>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> PT53 mailing list
>> PT53 at lists.ncuc.org <mailto:PT53 at lists.ncuc.org>
>> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pt53 <http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pt53>

*********************************************************
William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
  Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
  University of Zurich, Switzerland
Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency, 
  ICANN, www.ncuc.org
william.drake at uzh.ch (direct), wjdrake at gmail.com (lists),
  www.williamdrake.org
Internet Governance: The NETmundial Roadmap http://goo.gl/sRR01q
*********************************************************

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/pt53/attachments/20150505/18d4f268/attachment-0002.html>