[At-Large] [NA-Discuss] Got an Aspirin?

[Vittorio Bertola]

Evan Leibovitch ha scritto:
> When Jacob 'recruited'  our group last year, attendees at the meeting
>  were asked about issues that were important. Things such as domain 
> kiting and the triple-x TLD were at the top of the list. And yet... 
> while the rejection of XXX has been all over the news, the issue
> never came up on these lists. I'd told my group's constitutents last
> year that we were part of the advisory process, yet I can't even say
> that we were informed of the decision before the media was, on an
> issue of widespread public interest.

[out of lurk mode]
Hello - for those who do not know me yet, I am one of the European ALAC 
members, and the current Board liaison for the At Large. I do not want 
to interfere with your discussions, as - being one of the people who 
came up with the regional subdivision idea almost five years ago - I 
strongly believe that each Region should feel free to work as it likes. 
However, being your liaison to the ICANN Board, I wanted to clarify 
about the above.

No one was informed of the decision on .xxx before it was taken publicly 
at the Lisbon meeting, first of all because - while of course the Board, 
after the long and extensive discussions, had a sense of where the 
majority was going - everyone could still change their vote until the 
very moment that it was cast; and we knew that it was going to be a 
tight call. And secondly, because Board members, especially on such a 
delicate and lawsuit-prone matter, have a duty of confidentiality.

On the other hand, what was possible and actually happened is that the 
At Large could provide input to the Board as a constituency (of course 
each of us is free to also provide input to the Board directly, using 
the public comment opportunities). I solicited several times the ALAC to 
prepare a public statement, but in the end we realized that there was no 
real consensus, so what I said instead (see the transcript of the public 
Board session) is that there were different opinions (which is a 
perfectly reasonable advice to the Board). However, some of the North 
American ALAC members were the staunchest speakers in favour of 
approving .xxx, and so this was also part of my statement.

In the RALO model, the role of the ALAC members is to act as a channel 
between the Region and the ALAC: they should speak on behalf of the 
group, and possibly solicit agreed positions (even if sometimes there is 
the need for almost immediate reaction, which might not make it possible 
to go through a full consultation cycle). IMHO you should finalize the 
RALO structure as soon as possible, and work out proper procedures to 
make that channel work.

On the other hand, my "job" (unpaid, of course...) is to bring views 
from the global At Large community to the ICANN Board. So if you ever 
felt like there is something being discussed at the Board level and on 
which you want to provide an opinion or get more information, feel free 
to drop me an email. I try to keep up with my inbox, it's not always 
easy but I promise I'll do my best. I also try to ask for views to the 
global At Large list (I hope you're on that as well) whenever this is 
possible, given that, as I said, part of what I get to know as a 
non-voting Board member is confidential.

Specifically, after the Registerfly case, I've been working both on the 
ALAC resolution on that matter (again, I hope it was circulated here as 
well) and to get a commitment from the Board to revise the RAA including 
more consumer-protection-oriented clauses. Thanks to some Board members 
who shared this view, we had a specific resolution that binds ICANN's 
CEO to come up with a process for that. This, IMHO, is a very hot issue 
in which the NA ALSes should play a major role. There are other 
important ones as well, such as Whois or "domain tasting", and Alan 
might have others from the GNSO. Feel free to bug me, Jacqueline or your 
ALAC representatives to ensure that you are in the loop on policy 
matters, if for any reason (time constraints, usually - we are all 
volunteers with other daytime jobs) we fail to solicit input.

> MEANWHILE... we haven't made the EXISTING structure work -- yet
> people are talking about creating additional, non-geographic RALOs?
> Does anyone else here understand how absolutely insane this appears
> to those without the historical baggage?

...but also to many of those with the historical baggage :-) IMHO, 
without all this resistence, we could have had RALOs in place two years 
ago, and perhaps we'd already have voting Board representatives by now.

Regards,

[now back to lurk mode]
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------