[At-Large] Documents and Draft Agenda for ALAC Monthly Teleconference, 8th April 2008

Wed Apr 2 11:31:40 EDT 2008

Wendy and all,

  Again, I souldn't agree more with your conclusion.
And also again, thanks for your nicely laid out 
ALAC issues.  However I would like to suggest that
there are perhaps a few missing that deserve and
perhaps demand consideration.  DNS security, 
Tasting/warehousing/kiting, and Whois as well
as user privacy.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Wendy Seltzer <wendy at seltzer.com>
>Sent: Apr 2, 2008 7:23 AM
>To: At-Large Staff <staff at atlarge.icann.org>
>Cc: policy at icann.org, At-Large Worldwide <alac at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
>Subject: Re: [At-Large] Documents and Draft Agenda for ALAC Monthly Teleconference, 8th April 2008
>
>At-Large Staff wrote:
>> Dear All:
>> 
>> As many of you may be aware, the Staff made a commitment to post all
>> documents related to teleconferences not less than 7 days in advance of

Regards,

Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 277k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
===============================================================
Updated 1/26/04
CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS.
div. of Information Network Eng.  INEG. INC.
ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail
jwkckid1 at ix.netcom.com
My Phone: 214-244-4827
>> meetings (where this is possible), which is by way of assisting the Chair in
>> conforming with Rule 13.2 of the ALAC Rules of Procedure, as well as for the
>> advance preparation of Members for meetings.
>> 
>> We are therefore pleased to provide details, including all documents
>> presently available, for the upcoming April 8th teleconference of the
>> At-Large Advisory Committee. These details may be reviewed at:
>> https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?8_april_2008.
>
>I appreciate document creation, but the dissemination and use for
>communication leaves a lot to be desired.
>
>Now it seems that we're using the worst of all technology worlds --
>documents aren't being circulated, nor are they being posted in formats
>that lend themselves to discussion by editing.  Since I'd presume the
>goal of posting documents is to encourage At-Large community discussion
>and revision to make those documents conform to the wishes of the
>at-large community, I strongly urge that they be circulated IN TEXT
>and/or posted IN TEXT to the wiki as pages that the Committee and
>community can edit and comment upon.
>
>I've wikified the draft "Draft Statement on the FY 2008/2009 Budget and
>Operating Plan Framework" here, and edited it.  I hope others will use
><https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?draft_statement_on_the_fy_2008_2009_budget_and_operating_plan_framework>
>
>to update or comment on these edits.    I include the full text of that
>page below.  The original is there as "Revision 2," and a comparison
>showing my first round of suggested edits is
><https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?action=revision_compare&page_name=draft_statement_on_the_fy_2008_2009_budget_and_operating_plan_framework&mode=source&new_revision_id=20080331192032&old_revision_id=20080331191405&Button=Compare+Revisions>
>
>
>At-Large Advisory Committee Statement to the ICANN Board on the Draft
>Operating Plan for FY 2008/2009
>
>We welcome the opportunity to make our comments on the Draft Operating
>Plan and Budget Framerwork for FY 2008/2009.
>
>Firstly, we endorse the change to the budgeting and operational planning
>process introduced this year. It seems to us that the combination of the
>consultation on these obviously closely-related issues is eminently
>sensible. We also welcome the longer public consultation timelines that
>this allows.
>Since this is the first stage of this process, our comments are
>introductory. We provide them at this early stage so that they may be
>taken into account as the Staff prepare the Budget and Operating Plan
>for its first iteration consultation.
>Our comments, therefore, are primarily related to the various
>“Activites/Outcomes by Initiative”. We do not propose to comment on each
>of these, but on those most important to the At-Large Community.
>
>IDN Activities
>This is a very important area of work for At-Large – and also for all of
>ICANN. The extra funding and greatly increased ICANN activity in this
>area is therefore welcomed. We would like to emphasise the element of
>communications related to IDNs.
>Fundamental choices that will affect the many communities that do not
>rely upon the latin character set will be made in the next few years.
>For that reason, we believe ICANN, in partnership with other
>stakeholders of course, needs to make a substantial, sustained, greatly
>increased effort to communicate with these communities –to ensure that
>the message about the choices to be made related to IDNs in the
>forthcoming period reaches a far larger pool of potential contributors
>to the process than is currently aware and participating. This should
>not simply take the form of translated press releases but really a
>well-thought-out media campaign which ‘reaches out’ to the public. We
>know that efforts to do this work exist – we wish to emphasise that this
>is extremely important.
>
>Implement Policy for New gTLDs
>We urge the board to act quickly to approve a simple, straightforward
>procedure for addition of new gTLDs in IDNs and ASCII character sets.
>
>Compliance Activities
>We note the increase in staffing and staff work related to compliance.
>We are pleased to see that the budget framerwork proposes further
>considerable investment in this area. However we wish to note what we
>see as gaps:
>
>The public relies on ICANN to enforce its contracts with registries and
>registrars, since ICANN has apparently preempted the public's ability to
>sue on those contracts to enforce its rights. ICANN should both return
>some of these rights to the public beneficiaries of its contracts /and/
>ensure that contractual promises to ICANN are being honored.
>
>Complaints Processing. We note that there is now some information on how
>registrants can complain on the website, which is a welcome improvement.
>We also note that there is a provision as a headline activity in the
>Operational Plan Framework to “Implement Compaints Process System to
>address complaints and forward them to correct parties as approved”.
>This is a start but is not nearly enough – such a system needs to also
>verify whether or not the forwarded complaints were addressed, and
>provide options so that the complainant can easily report whether or not
>they are satisfied with the result. The underlying philosophy should be
>that, as the contractor, ICANN should ensure that the contractees are
>living up to their side of the ‘deal’ and completely offloading
>complaints to the contractee – or anyone else – is the wrong approach.
>
>Global Outreach
>This is a particularly important area to us. The various communities in
>ICANN are not nearly representative enough of the worldwide
>Internet-using community. We note the initial provision of a substantial
>increase in funds allocated to Global Outreach – we will look forward to
>seeing more detail about precisely what this consists of when the draft
>budget is posted. However, we note that on page 23 of the Draft
>Framework, under Global Outreach, there is a major area of work listed
>as ‘Implement business engagement outreach’. If this is intended to be
>outreach only to business communities, this is far too narrow – outreach
>efforts and recruitment efforts need to be even-handed, global – and to
>all communities and potential participant communities, not just
>business. We draw the attention of the board to the many comments about
>the importance of dramatically increasing the outreach and recruitment
>of stakeholders that was such a common theme of the respondents to the
>JPA review recently held; clearly, there is broad support for greatly
>increased work by ICANN in these respects.
>Of course we welcome the continued support for participation by our
>community from ICANN. Without it the Internet end-user’s voice will
>simply not be adequately represented. We draw your attention to our
>statement to you in relation to the development of a volunteer travel
>and expense support policy, in document AL.ALAC/BUD.SC/0308/2 accessible
>at <insert url here> for elaboration on our views on this subject.
>
>Policy Development Support
>We welcome the major theme associated with this area of work on page 25,
>that ICANN will “provide additional secretariat support to SOs,
>constituencies and ACs to make volunteer efforts more effective.” We are
>beneficiaries of this, in the addition of two members of staff on the
>At-Large team. The filling of these long-open positions is already
>beginning to increase our capacity for working effectively. We hope that
>the kind of support our community receives of this kind will become
>generally available across the constituencies and communities and look
>forward to seeing the detailed plans for how the objective listed in
>this area is to be achieved.
>
>Registrant Protections
>Whilst we welcome the increased activity in this area, we wish the board
>to be seized of the fact that the RAA review process appears to have
>ceased operation. We hear anecdotally that there is current work in this
>area inside ICANN, but it is not visible to us (or anyone else from what
>we can tell). This is a very important area of work for ICANN and to our
>community. We believe that there should be deadlines set for concluding
>work on the RAA.
>
>Transcription and Translation
>Our community has been calling for ICANN to become a truly multilingual
>organisation for years now. We are glad to see the increased budget
>commitment, draft translation framework, and other moves in this
>direction but we wish to remind you that ICANN has a very, very long way
>to go to reach the mission that the translation programme proposes.
>In our opinion, this area of work is of absolutely central importance to
>the organisation’s credibility, as we do not believe that any
>consultation or policy development process conducted entirely in English
>is globally legitimate. This is especially true with subjects like IDNs
>that – incredibly –continue to be largely english-only, with multiligual
>documents provided only in some cases, often far later than the original
>English versions, and only as an afterthought.
>Ensuring that the work of ICANN becomes truly multilingual is a core,
>critical objective. It must not be sidelined, or de-emphasised by other
>objectives like new gTLDs.
>
>Broaden Participation
>
>This area is of great importance – not just to our community but to all
>communities. In particular, whilst the provisions for teleconferences
>for our community have improved marginally by changing vendors, we do
>not believe that it makes sense to continue to outsource this core
>communications function and so we welcome the news that ICANN proposes
>to purchase a truly fit-for-purpose system to facilitate telephonic
>interactions. We hope that in doing so choices will be made which truly
>facilitate equal access and quality for all participants, regardless of
>where they might be.
>In particular, the new system must provide for the technical operation
>of simultaneous interpretation on teleconferences. This is an absolutely
>essential function, not something that is “nice to have”.
>We would also like to emphasise to broadening participation of effective
>remote participation in meetings, of which telephonic two-way
>participation is only one element. We believe that the current remote
>participation modalities for ICANN meetings are not fit for purpose. We
>draw your attention to our statement to you in relation to the
>development of a volunteer travel and expense support policy, in
>document AL.ALAC/BUD.SC/0308/2 accessible at <insert url here> for
>elaboration on our views on the subject of remote participation, and
>meetings.
>In closing, we thank the board in advance for its consideration of our
>views. We look forward to a response to our concerns and recommendations
>in due course.
>
>
>-- 
>Wendy Seltzer -- wendy at seltzer.org
>Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law
>Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
>http://www.chillingeffects.org/
>https://www.torproject.org/
>
>_______________________________________________
>ALAC mailing list
>ALAC at atlarge-lists.icann.org
>http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
>
>At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org