[NA-Discuss] Additional Budget Request

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hi Bill,

This is a bit off topic.
>

Actually, it isn't, indeed it's directly to the issue.

  But it seems to me that, if someone is demean At-Large's viewpoint, they
> should be told that they only have 3 options:
>


>
> 1) they can accept that At Large does, indeed, represent the users' point
> of view.
>

A matter of convenience. They support (or usually ignore) us when we agree
with them, ridicule when not.

2) they can propose, *and fund*, an alternative method for identifying the
> users' point of view.  On an on-going basis.
>

Oh heavens no. Most contracted parties believe that even what ICANN spends
on At-Large now is totally wasted. Because they're the channels for ICANN
per-domain fees and create demand for way more purchased domains that are
really needed, they sometimes assert that we're waiting *their* money.

 3) they can simply announce, publicly, that ICANN *does not care *about
> end users or their point of view.  Period.
>

They have no reason to announce publicly, they just let ICANN's actions
speak for themselves. IMO there is a widely-held view within many
constituencies, and I have sometimes subtly come across it in senior ICANN
staff, that ALAC exists as a necessary vestige of ICANN's discarding direct
public elections for its Board -- that it exists to give ICANN the outward
appearance of listening to domain end-users. I've heard argued that ICANN's
own end-users are registrants -- the bottom of its revenue chain -- and
nothing below that matters.

I challenge to find, in the course of its multi-decade history, in which
the ICANN Board says publicly that its decisions were significantly
influenced by ALAC input. Heck, it wasn't so long ago that the Board didn't
even acknowledge ALAC advice when it was sent.

(In my own mind, it doesn't help that ALAC has been broadly complicit in
its own irrelevance. On the whole it is sadly satisfied with a status quo
that focuses on process and appearance and ceremony rather than substance.
But the most diverse ALAC humanly possible is still just 15 middle-class
self-identified experts pretending that they know what the world wants from
ICANN, and we're not fooling anyone. Look at how ALAC disgraced itself by
waffling as it did on the .ORG sale issue when the world's eyes were on us
and global public opinion was fully in sync in opposition. No better proof
exists of how we pretend to know better than those who we are charged to
represent, and in the process render ourselves impotent. It was shameful.)

There really aren't any other options.  So ask that they pick one, for the
> record.
>

Through most of the ICANN community it's clearly option 3 and has always
been that way -- we're a harmless, wastefully-expensive,
occasionally-noisy, but bylaw-necessary PR exercise. And we do
precious little to prove them wrong. My plea to focus on education and
research -- at the expense of nearly all else -- is a radical departure
that is (IMO of course) ALAC's only real path to relevance and
effectiveness. The only metric that utimately matters is; "How many ICANN
actions and decisions are influenced towards the public interest because
ALAC exists?" Our track record here is not good.

 Sorry if that seems harsh.
>

Same here.

- Evan
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