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

[Wolf Ludwig]

Hi Bill and Roberto,

thanks for taking the time on the extensive exchange of infos. 
To me this was very helpful, and I can affirm you that I learned a lot 
about the substance of the issue from your recent mails what was 
rather ambiguous (at least to me) so far. I understood and share 
most of Bill's points, concerns and reflections how best to organise 
and represent public interest and to make them more streamlined 
and resounding at ICANN. I am looking forward to further fruitful  
and progressing discussions on the subject in Seoul.

See you soon,

best,
Wolf


William Drake wrote Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:44:
>Hi Dominik
>
>On Oct 21, 2009, at 1:26 AM, Dominik Filipp wrote:
>
>> Bill,
>>
>> I see some points be more clarified for those not sitting inside  
>> ICANN. If I understand well, the NCUC viewpoint presented by you is  
>> that the NCUC in the new charter supports democratic election of  
>> councilor seats in the GNSO council and those elected councilors  
>> will have obviously voting right exactly as they have it now (the  
>> NCUC has three seats). The difference between NCUC and some At-Large  
>> presented positions is only in a way how the councilors will be  
>> nominated or elected, democratically or hard wired. In other words,  
>> there is no doubt or discussion but a general consensus between the  
>> NCUC and At-Large on the basic fact that NCSG constituency should  
>> have voting councilor seats in the GNSO council in any way.
>> Am I right?
>
>Yes, absolutely.
>
>As I said yesterday in response to Roberto,
>
>> Agreed.  As far as I can tell, everyone sees the 'powers' fairly  
>> similarly, except that NCUC thinks council seats should be filled by  
>> elections, SIC thinks the EC should just hash out the allocation of  
>> seats (which to us sounds like a recipe for trench warfare), and  
>> some in ALAC feel there should be hard wiring.  Hopefully we can  
>> have a focused discussion on the relative merits of these approaches  
>> and the trajectories/scenarios they may point to in order to move  
>> this to another level.
>
>That's it.  We think hard wiring will result in fragmentation within  
>self-regarding silos, with people treating the NCSG as a mere shell  
>within which they can pursue their stand alone agendas rather than  
>feeling an incentive to work with the broader civil society  
>community.  And once you get to more than six constituencies, you'd  
>have to start monkeying around with formula for division of the  
>spoils.  It is often the case that noncommercial interests and  
>viewpoints are in a distinct minority in the council as they are in  
>ICANN more generally, so encouraging fragmentation is just a recipe  
>for staying powerless, in my view.  And as I've said, democratic  
>elections would probably yield the same sort of distribution of  
>council seats anyway, unless a constituency is constitutionally  
>screwed up (e.g. if the consumer group is populated by groups with  
>corporate members who have entirely different agendas) or just a  
>vehicle for a few non-geographically diverse folks, or the candidate  
>is personally impossible to work with, etc.  I can't see CS people who  
>work on say privacy not supporting a good candidate from a solid  
>constituency who's advocating positions that are broadly appealing to  
>other CS people.  In other civil society networks I participate in--- 
>the iG caucus in the IGF, the CSISAC in OECD, etc---mutual support and  
>broadly shared visions have been more than sufficient to bind people  
>together and produce elections to leadership positions that were non- 
>divisive (without every faction demanding "it's" rep, although here  
>that'd be more of a priority I guess).  I can't see any reason the  
>same level of trust and collaboration couldn't prevail in NCSG, other  
>than the generally dysfunctional, trust-free culture that seems to  
>pervade in ICANN.  And the SIC's model is even worse, they have the  
>executive committee somehow just "working it out" amongst itself,  
>which will just transfer the fragmentation and competition into a more  
>intensive and divisive process.
>
>Whatever one's perspective on the options is, it ought to be the case  
>that we can have a reasoned, adult conversation about how each would  
>likely play out, and it's costs and benefits.  We did that internally  
>in NCUC and came to the view that elections were the best way  
>forward.  But we've not had the opportunity for a similar conversation  
>with the board/SIC, or with ALAC for that matter. Hopefully we're  
>about to do that with the former now, but re: the latter, there's no  
>NCUC-ALAC meeting scheduled, so I guess it's a matter of talking over  
>beers.  Whether that'll be sufficient I don't know, but it's all we  
>can manage, I guess.
>
>And BTW, as a member of the council, can I just add that it's slightly  
>puzzling to me that people should be fighting over this particular  
>"prize."   If done properly, it's a ton of work, much of it on  
>procedural arcana (my bandwidth has unfortunately been largely  
>absorbed with restructuring hijinks, looking forward to getting past  
>that eventually and having more to work on the substantive policy  
>issues).  But I guess ICANN should be happy that folks are just dying  
>to get in there and do it...
>
>Bill
>
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comunica-ch
phone +41 79 204 83 87
Skype: Wolf-Ludwig
www.comunica-ch.net

Digitale Allmend
http://blog.allmend.ch -

EURALO - ICANN's Regional At-Large Organisation
http://euralo.org