[At-Large] [Gnso-liaison] Is Staff in bed with NetSol?

[Evan Leibovitch]

Danny Younger wrote:
> The organizations that manage to survive in the ICANN
> ambit are the ones that make the defense of the
> interests of their constituents their number one
> priority, like the IPC.  The ALAC has not done that.
>   
Technically, the last regional ALS organization didn't officially join
in until last week.

This means that, with some validity, ALAC going forward is not the same
as the ALAC of the past. ALACv1 was all appointed and had neither a
mandate nor _any_ sense of grassroots priorities.

Now there are well over 100 ALSs representing memberships in the
hundreds of thousands. While this is certainly no guarantee that the
composition of these groups -- or the views of their ICANN reps --
completely reflects the public POV, it's much closer than when ALAC had
nobody but its own appointees to churn policy. I would not dispute that
much of the last six years of ALAC appear to have been wrapped up with
process-obsessed navel gazing.

Maybe ALACv2 will not turn out as well as was hoped. Events of the past
week give me significantly more optimism than I had in the past, though
heaven knows there are massive opportunities for improvement. I
certainly know that many people -- present company included -- were
generous when interviewed by the consultants engaging in the ALAC review.

While you are not the only one who has had issues with ALAC's historic
tendency to over-process things, I suspect you will find that a greater
diversity of public voices will probably make the group's tasks more
challenging than they have been. We've already found that out while
canvassing constituent opinions on the JPA. It may (or may not) matter
to you that the Registerfly issue is not considered a big deal (let
alone disaster) outside of the US. But ALAC is a global body, and the
fact that its prioroties are not the same as yours does not render it
useless.

> When registrants pounded at ICANN's door in the wake
> of the RegisterFly disaster, did we see the ALAC do
> anything?  When registrants can no longer successfully
> transfer their domains owing to the behaviors of rogue
> registrars, does the ALAC do anything?
Danny, as a part of this mailing list -- as part of this At-Large
mechanism -- you share part of the blame for this inaction. Whining from
the sidelines, without offering how to be part of the solution, isn't
constructive.

> The ALAC after six years is now nothing more than a monolithic single point of failure that plays at
> process, does nothing more than suck travel dollars out of ICANN and helps to swell an already bloated budget.
>   
Given your history with ICANN the sour grapes are understandable. But
please, as we go forward, make a choice. Either help fix the problems
you describe, or get out of the way and let the rest of us do our best
to fix it without the utterly unhelpful sniping.

We know how you feel. Repeating your complaint endlessly has no value
other than to demoralize people and help realize the failure you bemoan.
Indeed, one could easily surmise that you _want_ ALAC to fail, which is
good reason to simply ignore anything you contribute.

> this is a body that has become less than useless.
>   
And yet... here you still are amongst us, part of this collective. That
makes you either
a) a masochist
b) part of the reason why ALAC is in this sorry state
c) one who derives pleasure from making others miserable
d) all of the above


- Evan