[At-Large] FW: Respectful Online Communication and Behavior

[Karl Auerbach]

Roberto Gaetano wrote:

> My only point was that by design the Ombudsman has latitude in the use of
> his/her budget, once this budget is decided. In simple words, control by the
> Board of the way the Ombudsman spends money would be limiting the
> independence of the Ombudsman's Office.

Suppose, by way of hypothetical example, that the ombudsman were to 
publish a document that says that men are more deserving of top level 
domains than women.  I believe that you would agree that such a 
publication would be far beyond the purview of the ombudsman, that it 
suggests an impermissible bias, and that the board would be be strongly 
motivated to apply corrective measures.

What the ombudsman has done though his publication of an ICANN rule of 
political correctness is to indicate a bias in favor of those who speak 
with flowers over those who use hard words.  That suggests a bias in his 
office against those who use direct terms and eschew diplomatic 
indirection.  His document also suggests a bias against those who argue 
for their own interests or who miss meetings.

The board has every reason to repudiate that kind of appearance of bias 
and to refuse to pay for the creation and publication of what amounts to 
a book of etiquette, particularly when that book is published by one who 
is likely to base decisions on whether that etiquette is followed.

The current office of the ombudsman has done little to fill the gap that 
was created when ICANN erased elected directors, positions that are far 
better equipped and more solidly legally empowered to redress ICANN 
errors than any ombudsman.

Over the last few years the number of ICANN errors that have been 
redressed through board member intervention has vastly outnumbered the 
instances of the ombudsman doing anything at all.  Witness, for example 
the RegisterFly disaster.

What I am getting at is this - we, the community of internet users, paid 
dearly when elected board seats were lost.  We received scant 
compensating value in the emasculated office of the ombudsman.

In the old US system of equity there was a maxim: "For every wrong there 
is a remedy."  Under the ICANN ombudsman that maxim seems to have been 
corrupted into "For every wrong there is a verbose excuse."

I would recommend the following as an apt and rather humorous text that 
describes a fictional English body that seems to have the same 
institutional goal as ICANN's ombudsman:

http://www.cavebear.com/archive/cavebear/containing_the_whole_science_of_government.html

		--karl--