[ALAC] [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?

[William Drake]

Hi Roberto,

May I just correct once again one whopping bit of bad info, please.

On Oct 17, 2009, at 8:16 AM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:

> Beau,
>
>>
>> By the way, is it true what I heard that the three newly
>> appointed GNSO people have now been hard-wired in to two-year
>> terms? I don't really see a constituency model working under
>> those circumstances. Who's going to join a constituency if
>> they have to wait two years to be able to directly elect a
>> representative? No consumer group I am aware of is going to
>> want to do that.
>
>
> I think that we will need to clarify many things in Seoul, one of  
> which is
> the reason for certain decisions of the SIC.
>
> For instance, the SIC has decided, after long discussion, not to  
> have an
> automatic link between creation of a constituency and establishment  
> of a
> seat in the Council. The reasons against this position include what  
> you
> correctly point out, i.e. that it will be more difficult to get  
> people's
> interest if there's no immediate representation in terms of voting  
> rights.
> However, there are also reasons for taking this approach. One of  
> these is
> that we have to avoid the "frivolous" creation of constituencies for  
> the
> simple purpose of getting a vote. A bit like create empty shells as
> registrars to have a higher firing power for getting valuable names.  
> Another
> observation is that in the "old" council it was exactly the fact  
> that the
> creation of a new constituency would have altered the voting balance  
> that de
> facto prevented the creation of any new constituency in 10 years.
>
> But the main point for the SIC to maintain the concept of  
> constituency,
> against the open opposition of NCUC, but to keep it without an  
> automatic

NCUC is NOT and has NEVER been against the concept of constituencies,  
period.  I do not understand what the purpose would be in telling ALAC  
people something about NCUC that is patently untrue, but it really  
does not facilitate trust building and the collegial resolution of the  
issue. The charter NCUC submitted, and which you set aside without  
comment, has an page of clear language about the formation and  
operation of constituencies in Section 2.3. http://gnso.icann.org/files/gnso/en/improvements/ncsg-petition-charter.pdf 
   I would encourage you to read it if you have not.  A few key bits  
of note include:

-------------

*Constituencies are self-defined groupings of NCSG members organized  
around some shared policy goals (e.g. consumer protection, privacy);  
shared identity (e.g., region or country of origin, gender, language  
group); type of organization (e.g., research networks, philanthropic  
foundations) – or any other grouping principle that might affect  
members’ stance on domain names policy.

*There is no requirement that NCSG members join a constituency.

*When at least 3 organizational members or at least 10 individual NCSG  
members volunteer to join the Constituency on the public list within  
two months of the publication of the notification of intent the  
prospective Constituency becomes eligible to schedule a meeting (which  
can be either in person or online).

*The eligible constituency holds a public meeting(s) to draft a  
charter and appoint an official representative of the constituency.  
The meeting(s) can be online but must be open to observation by the  
general public.

*The proposed constituency charter is submitted to the NCSG Policy  
Committee for ratification.

*Once accepted by the PC the constituency application will be sent to  
the ICANN Board for approval. The Board shall also serve as the  
vehicle for appeals to NCSG decisions on the recognition of a  
constituency.

*Constituencies have a right to: 1.	Place one voting representative on  
the Policy Committee; 2.	Delegate members to GNSO working groups and  
task forces; 3.	Issue statements on GNSO Policy Development Processes  
which are included in the
official NCSG response, but marked as constituency positions, and not  
necessarily the position of NCSG as a whole.

-------------

I do not know how this possibly can be characterized as opposition to  
the concept of a constituency.

The principal difference with the charter you've imposed on us, as  
we've explained time and again, is that we do not think it wise to set  
up constituencies as purely self-regarding silos that compete against  
each other for council seats, recognition and influence, and thereby  
spend their time fighting and jockeying for position rather than  
working together to advance noncommercial public interest perspectives  
in ICANN.  We think it is better for constituencies to collaborate in  
an integrated community.  Hence, we did not think it sensible to hard  
wire council seats (which would get absurd if the number of  
constituencies exceeds six, as it hopefully will...we're glad you  
agreed on this), and instead suggested that GNSO Council  
Representatives be elected directly by all NCSG members in an annual  
SG-wide vote.  To secure a council seat, a constituency on consumer  
protection, registrants, privacy, gender, freedom of speech or  
whatever else would simply have to be a vibrant group that puts  
forward a candidate and vision that others find persuasive.  Given  
that noncommercial people tend to share certain broad values and  
priorities, I'm hard pressed to imagine that, for example, a solid  
consumer constituency that actually comprises noncommercial actors and  
advocates for the public interest would have a hard time getting  
support from people who care about privacy, speech, and so on.  So  
it'd be a matter of persuading colleagues rather than having a  
birthright fiefdom within which one does one's own thing and ignores  
everyone else.

We understand that questions have been raised about voting formula and  
whether it might make sense to put in place mechanisms to prevent the  
'capture' of the council, and we've said we're open to viable  
suggestions on that score.  Have yet to hear one. One might add that  
if NCUC's proposed charter had been approved and constituency  
formation were made as easy as we'd hoped, the NCUC itself would have  
ceased to exist, and those of our current 80 organizational and 87  
individual members who wanted to off and form constituencies on  
privacy, gender, or whatever else would have done so.  So there'd be  
no NCUC to be capturing anything in the first place.  In contrast,  
under the SIC charter, NCUC would be nuts to disband, inter alia  
because it'd leave our members homeless, especially the individuals.   
Hard to see how that would be good for ICANN.

> voting power, against the obvious concerns of who wants to build new
> constituencies, is the leit-motiv that has guided the whole process  
> of the
> review: move the focus away from the vote, which is by its nature  
> divisive,
> onto the consensus building process.
> New constituencies will not have the right to appoint their "own"
> councillors, but will have the right to participate in WGs and other  
> policy
> making processes and bodies, will have support from ICANN staff and
> resources to self-organize, will be able to participate with their own
> representatives in the Executive Committee of the NCSG, etc.
> In simple words, what we have tried to do is to create a balance and
> hopefully a possible way to coexist and, in time, to collaborate,  
> for all
> the different components of the wide and diverse non-commercial  
> internet
> community. Somebody on this list has spoken about "reconsideration"  
> of the
> Board's decision. This is surely possible. But what I would propose  
> is to
> try to discuss and understand if what the SIC has proposed can work in
> practice, although it is not going to be perfect for anybody, before
> shooting it down and start all over again. This discussion is for me  
> one of
> the main priorities, if not the first priority altogether, in Seoul,  
> which
> as you all know will mark the end of my term as Director.
>
> The ALAC and the NCUC are two big parts of this picture, the only  
> organized
> bodies in ICANN so far (for non-commercial users), I personally  
> think that
> the first step can be to have a joint discussion in Seoul. Bill's  
> proposal
> of meeting in an event that is not only work, but also social, goes  
> in this
> sense, methinks.

Here we agree.  And I think finding common ground will be a lot easier  
if ALAC colleagues are not laboring under the false impression that  
NCUC somehow wants to prevent them or other from forming  
constituencies, hence the above.  Our main concern has been that we  
first have an opportunity to work out a final, non-divisive charter  
with the board, after which constituency launches could begin in  
earnest.  In contrast, launching constituencies under the SIC charter  
would likely lock us into that framework and engender the very  
fragmentation the meeting is intended to help overcome.

Cheers,

Bill