[EURO-Discuss] Fwd: [NCUC-DISCUSS] NCSG Proposal Version 6

"Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de
Tue Mar 17 13:18:44 EDT 2009


Thanks Adam
 
is there any idea for a NCUC budget, how it is constituted and how it will be spent?
 
 
Wolfgang

________________________________

Von: euro-discuss-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org im Auftrag von Adam Peake
Gesendet: Di 17.03.2009 17:27
An: euro-discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
Betreff: [EURO-Discuss] Fwd: [NCUC-DISCUSS] NCSG Proposal Version 6



Latest version of the NCUC's proposals for the
GNSO noncommercial stakeholder's group attached.

And a list of open public comments:

<http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/public-comment-200904.html>

Adam





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>Date:         Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:14:37 -0700
>Reply-To:     Robin Gross <robin at IPJUSTICE.ORG>
>Sender:       Non-Commercial User Constituency <NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
>From:         Robin Gross <robin at IPJUSTICE.ORG>
>Subject: [NCUC-DISCUSS] NCSG Proposal Version 6
>To:           NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
>
>Attached is the revised and latest version of
>the NCSG proposal and executive summary (based
>on discussions in and since Mexico City).
>
>Please let me know if there are any suggestions
>for further improvements to the proposal by the
>end of the business day, so it can be submitted
>to the ICANN Board by the deadline.
>
>Thank you to all of those who helped provide
>drafting and comments to the latest proposal
>(especially Mary, Carlos, and Brenden).  This
>has been a real community effort from a growing
>team of engaged members.  
>Thanks again!
>
>All best,
>Robin
>
>______________________________________
>The NCUC is pleased to submit a proposed charter
>for the new Noncommercial Stakeholders Group
>(NCSG).  This revised proposal reflects comments
>received in meetings with the Board Governance
>Committee, during a ³Users¹ House² session and a
>joint ALAC-NCUC session at the 34th ICANN Public
>Meeting, in Mexico City, and in discussions with
>ICANN staff as well as among NCUC members.
>
>This cover letter to our proposal provides: (i)
>an executive summary of its essential elements;
>(ii) an explanation on how it advances the
>principles and goals of the GNSO Improvements
>process through the adoption of innovative
>approaches to certain problems posed by the
>formation of stakeholder groups; and finally
>(iii) a summary of the specific changes made in
>comparison to our previous version of the NCSG
>proposal, as submitted to the ICANN Board on
>February 28, 2009.
>
>1. Essential Elements of the proposal:
>
>Noncommercial stakeholders join the NCSG
>directly, and the NCSG keeps track of membership
>and administers voting for Council seats by the
>membership as a whole.
>The NCSG is administered by an annually elected
>Chair and a Policy Committee. The Policy
>Committee is composed of the 6 elected GNSO
>Councilors and one representative from each
>Constituency.
>There are three classes of membership: 1) large
>organizations (which receive 4 votes), small
>organizations (which receive 2 votes) and
>individuals (who receive 1 vote)
>Constituencies are created as subunits within
>the NCSG and its formation follows some simple
>procedures, managed by the Policy Committee,
>which then submits the petition for formation of
>a new Constituency to the ICANN Board´s approval.
>We have de-linked Constituency formation from
>Council seats so that NCSG participants do not
>have artificial incentives to fragment into
>competing groups, ensuring that a voting system,
>conducted through all members of the SG, will
>result in a better and diverse representation on
>the GNSO than any other model that strings the
>formation of a Constituency to a seat the
>Council, favoring corporatism over democracy.
>Constituencies are given special rights to
>propose Working Groups and assured that their
>positions are incorporated into any and all
>public comments submitted by the NCSG into the
>policy development process.
>
>To protect the voice of minorities in the policy
>process, we require all NCSG representatives on
>the GNSO Council to vote in favor of the
>formation of a Working Group if it has the
>support of 1/3 of the constituencies or 1/5 of
>the whole membership.
>
>2. How our proposal addresses Principles and
>Goals of the GNSO Improvements process:
>
>We would like to explain how this proposal
>advances the principles and goals of the GNSO
>Improvements process. As you know, the Board has
>articulated four ³vital principles² that are
>critical to the GNSO revitalization process.
>They are:
>
>§       GNSO policy development activities
>should become more visible and transparent to a
>wider range of stakeholders;
>§       Reforms should enhance the
>representativeness of the GNSO Council and its
>constituencies;
>§       Operational changes should help enhance
>the GNSO¹s ability to reach consensus on policy
>positions that enjoy wide support in the ICANN
>community; and
>§       GNSO stakeholder representation
>structures need to be flexible and adaptable.
>
>Our proposal meets these goals better than any of the proposed alternatives.
>
>Principle 1: Visibility and Transparency.
>When noncommercial stakeholders are fragmented
>into independent constituencies, each with their
>own mailing list, administrative structure and
>representatives, it is literally impossible for
>an ordinary noncommercial organization to keep
>track of them all.  
>Noncommercial stakeholders in one constituency
>would have no idea what is happening in other
>constituencies.  Our proposal integrates all
>policy deliberation and voting into a unified
>structure. This enhances the visibility and
>transparency of the SG.
>
>Principle 2: Representativeness.
>Our proposal enhances representation in several
>ways.  First, by adopting a model of flexible
>and easy-to-form constituencies as subunits
>under the NCSG, we allow a far more diverse set
>of interests and coalitions to form.  Most
>important, through unified voting for GNSO
>Council seats, our proposal ensures that whoever
>represents noncommercial stakeholders on the
>Council has support across all constituencies,
>not just a bare majority of a small subgroup of
>the SG.
>
>Principle 3: Consensus.
>We believe that the old GNSO constituency
>structure, which assigns a specific number of
>Council seats to specific constituencies, is
>inimical to the formation of consensus.  That
>approach encourages small subgroups to break
>away and form their ³own² constituencies in
>order to gain a guaranteed Council seat.  Once a
>constituency controls specific Council
>seats/votes, they have little incentive to seek
>support from other Council members for their
>views or their representatives.  We already have
>evidence from this; we note that none of the
>³new constituencies² currently being proposed
>for the Noncommercial Stakeholders actually
>represent newcomers to the ICANN space.  All of
>them are existing members of NCUC or RALOs who
>wish to gain seats on the Council without having
>to win an election among a large number of other
>noncommercial entities and individuals.
>
>Our proposal understands that policy development
>in the new GNSO will not come from a Council
>acting as a legislator, but from consensus-based
>Working Groups. Therefore, we allow relatively
>small minorities of the NCSG to bind our Council
>representatives to support the formation of a
>Working Group.  Once a Working Group is formed,
>its proponents will have to convince many other
>stakeholders to agree on a common policy. We
>think there should be a low threshold for the
>formation of a WG, so that anyone can have a
>chance to convince the rest of the GNSO of the
>need for a policy.
>
>Principle 4: Flexibility and Adaptability.
>The old constituency model is broken.  It
>rigidly assigns Council seats and representation
>to categories of users that are constantly
>changing, categories that may overlap in
>numerous ways.  Dividing the world up into
>mutually exclusive categories known as
>³constituencies² is always bound to exclude some
>people who don¹t fit the categories, and at the
>same time over-represent entities who qualify
>for two or three of the categories.  By
>detaching Constituencies from Council seats, our
>proposal can make constituencies much more
>flexible and lightweight.  We make
>constituencies more like intra-Stakeholder Group
>working groups ­ easier to form and not mutually
>exclusive.  NCSG members can join multiple
>constituencies, and constituencies can form and
>disband more easily without disrupting the
>entire representational structure of the NCSG.
>Under the old model, once a constituency is
>formed, there is a strong danger that it can be
>captured or controlled by a small group,
>especially as membership and participation
>declines.  The NCSG charter proposed here solves
>this problem by situating constituencies in a
>large NCSG membership that cannot be easily
>captured, as addressed in the item below.
>
>3. Changes made to the previous (2/28/9) version of the proposal:
>
>Dealing with ³Threat² of Capture.
>
>A central concern is the ability of special
>interests or a discrete group to gain a majority
>of GNSO Councilor seats in the reformed GNSO.
>Comments suggested that existing participants
>within the NCUC might have special advantage, or
>the proposed structure might be subject to
>³gaming,² specifically capture of Councilor
>seats by a simple majority.
>
>To the first point, the current NCUC will
>dissolve completely when the charter goes into
>effect.  Existing individual and organizational
>members will be free to form new constituencies
>and participate in elections according to the
>charter rules.  They are not privileged in any
>manner, having the same rights as any new
>members that chose to join the Stakeholder
>Group.  The various interests among NCUC members
>are extremely diverse, perhaps the most varied
>of all SG¹s, and are difficult to capture by a
>single viewpoint, given the breadth of
>noncommercial interests.
>
>To the second point, the threat of ³gaming²
>exists under any proposed structure.  It should
>be recognized that concerns about some
>coordinated push to ³capture² the Noncommercial
>Constituency have been made since 1999.
>However, there is no factual basis to suggest
>this has occurred.  Instead, and as the Board
>realized in reviewing the BGC recommendations,
>the issue has always been under-representation
>of noncommercial interests.  It has always been
>the case for noncommercial interests that there
>are not enough people willing and able to get
>deeply involved and do the work required to
>participate effectively in the GNSO.  Despite
>this ongoing difficulty, NCUC¹s membership has
>increased by more than 40% within the last six
>months, partially due to the membership being
>opened for individuals to join.
>
>Nonetheless, in response to this perceived
>threat of capture, we have extended the minimum
>voting eligibility period for new Members to 90
>days (Section 3.4.3).  Such an adjustment should
>allow opportunity for countervailing interests
>to form, preventing the flooding of new members¹
>right before an election with the specific
>purpose of winning it, without any actual
>engagement of such members in the discussions
>and activities pertaining to the Stakeholders
>Group.
>
>The current constituency-based model actually
>aggravates problems of capture because it
>potentially institutionalizes special
>interests.  
>Once a constituency has formed and been
>allocated seats, there is no reasonable
>mechanism to remove a constituency¹s
>representatives from the Council, no matter how
>the broader membership base may change.  
>We partially address this concern by now
>requiring final approval of Constituencies by
>the ICANN Board (Section 2.3.1).
>
>Dealing with the demand for diversity in representation on the GNSO Council:
>
>Attempting to categorize individuals and
>organizations according to constituencies is
>inimical to growing diverse participation in the
>stakeholder group.  A constituency-based model
>of allocating seats is neither flexible nor
>adaptable to a growing noncommercial membership.
>
>
>In this regard, the discussions in which we
>engaged during the Mexico meeting featured a
>wide range of comments on the issue of
>representation, and providing adequate solutions
>for a long-term perspective, as well as creating
>complex voting methods that would end up
>decreasing the broader representation we seek.
>
>
>One approach suggested that an interim system in
>which each Constituency would be granted an
>automatic seat at the GNSO Council could be
>created as long as no more than six
>Constituencies exist within the NCSG structure.
>This suggestion not only fails to provide a
>long-term solution for the issue, it also
>creates artificial incentives for the formation
>of groups that have little concern for the wider
>range of the membership who the NCSG Council
>must serve.
>
>
>The outcome of an interim decision like that
>would encourage the election of NCSG Councilors
>who have little or no incentive to reach out to
>other views and constituencies that naturally
>constitute the non-commercial interest in ICANN.
>
>
>The other proposal ties up non-commercial energy
>and resources with in-fighting between competing
>constituencies and dispute mechanisms.  
>It presents complex systems for voting and/or
>for the allocation of members inside the specter
>of six forced Constituencies.  And its voting
>mechanism seems to create a difficult method for
>measuring the will of the members that integrate
>the NCSG.
>
>
>There have been even some suggestions for
>fragmented voting.  We deem that no other system
>is simpler and direct than allowing each member
>to vote and that representation results from the
>election of the ones to whom the majority of
>votes has been casted.
>
>
>In short, the other NCSG proposal allocates GNSO
>Council seats by constituencies competing with
>one another, while our proposal allocates
>Council seats via constituencies cooperating
>with one another to find a consensus.
>
>
>The recently submitted charters of the
>Registries and Registrars provide for GNSO
>Councilors to be elected by Stakeholder
>Group-wide membership rather than individual
>constituencies.  In this matter, each of these
>charters (ours, the Registries, and the
>Registrars) seem to present the same solution
>for the issue of representation.
>
>The reason for this in the non-commercial
>stakeholder group is simple: There are no
>concentrated benefits for noncommercial
>participants to counter their costs of
>participating in a global policy making
>institution.  A simple solution to this is to
>lower structural barriers to participation, as
>the NCSG charter does by providing for direct
>representation and easy participation within
>constituencies.
>
>Our proposed NCSG Charter tackles the issue of
>representation, avoids interim suggestions, and
>puts forth a system that allows the broadest and
>most democratic representation of noncommercial
>interests.
>
>Conclusion
>
>Although it has transformed significantly along
>the way, our proposal is not new.  We have been
>working on this charter since June of 2008, and
>have entered into extensive consultations with
>ICANN staff members, ALAC, At Large
>representatives, board members, and our own
>constituency members on its development.  We
>feel that much has been improved to guarantee
>diversity in representation, to secure a space
>for minority views to be heard, and to address
>the concern over capture.
>
>We thank ICANN for allowing us an opportunity to
>provide this revised proposal that reflects the
>comments and suggestions received from all
>interested parties who have joined in the effort
>to present the best charter possible for the
>NCSG structure, built upon consensus and the
>principles that guide the GNSO Improvements
>process.  We stand ready to continue to work
>with the ICANN community to improve this NCSG
>proposal eve  further.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Robin Gross,
>Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency
>
>
>
>? ?
>
>
>IP JUSTICE
>Robin Gross, Executive Director
>1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
>p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
>w: http://www.ipjustice.org <http://www.ipjustice.org/>      e: robin at ipjustice.org
>
>
>
>
>Attached is the revised and latest version of
>the NCSG proposal and executive summary (based
>on discussions in and since Mexico City).
>
>Please let me know if there are any suggestions
>for further improvements to the proposal by the
>end of the business day, so it can be submitted
>to the ICANN Board by the deadline.
>
>Thank you to all of those who helped provide
>drafting and comments to the latest proposal
>(especially Mary, Carlos, and Brenden). This has
>been a real community effort from a growing team
>of engaged members. Thanks again!
>
>All best,
>Robin
>
>______________________________________
>
>The NCUC is pleased to submit a proposed charter
>for the new Noncommercial Stakeholders Group
>(NCSG). This revised proposal reflects comments
>received in meetings with the Board Governance
>Committee, during a ³Users¹ House² session and a
>joint ALAC-NCUC session at the 34th ICANN Public
>Meeting, in Mexico City, and in discussions with
>ICANN staff as well as among NCUC members.
>
>This cover letter to our proposal provides: (i)
>an executive summary of its essential elements;
>(ii) an explanation on how it advances the
>principles and goals of the GNSO Improvements
>process through the adoption of innovative
>approaches to certain problems posed by the
>formation of stakeholder groups; and finally
>(iii) a summary of the specific changes made in
>comparison to our previous version of the NCSG
>proposal, as submitted to the ICANN Board on
>February 28, 2009.
>
>1. Essential Elements of the proposal:
>
>1.     Noncommercial stakeholders join the NCSG
>directly, and the NCSG keeps track of membership
>and administers voting for Council seats by the
>membership as a whole.
>2.     The NCSG is administered by an annually
>elected Chair and a Policy Committee. The Policy
>Committee is composed of the 6 elected GNSO
>Councilors and one representative from each
>Constituency.
>3.     There are three classes of membership: 1)
>large organizations (which receive 4 votes),
>small organizations (which receive 2 votes) and
>individuals (who receive 1 vote)
>4.     Constituencies are created as subunits
>within the NCSG and its formation follows some
>simple procedures, managed by the Policy
>Committee, which then submits the petition for
>formation of a new Constituency to the ICANN
>BoardZs approval.
>5.     We have de-linked Constituency formation
>from Council seats so that NCSG participants do
>not have artificial incentives to fragment into
>competing groups, ensuring that a voting system,
>conducted through all members of the SG, will
>result in a better and diverse representation on
>the GNSO than any other model that strings the
>formation of a Constituency to a seat the
>Council, favoring corporatism over democracy.
>6.     Constituencies are given special rights
>to propose Working Groups and assured that their
>positions are incorporated into any and all
>public comments submitted by the NCSG into the
>policy development process.
>
>To protect the voice of minorities in the policy
>process, we require all NCSG representatives on
>the GNSO Council to vote in favor of the
>formation of a Working Group if it has the
>support of 1/3 of the constituencies or 1/5 of
>the whole membership.
>
>2. How our proposal addresses Principles and
>Goals of the GNSO Improvements process:
>
>We would like to explain how this proposal
>advances the principles and goals of the GNSO
>Improvements process. As you know, the Board has
>articulated four ³vital principles² that are
>critical to the GNSO revitalization process.
>They are:
>
>§ GNSO policy development activities should
>become more visible and transparent to a wider
>range of stakeholders;
>
>§ Reforms should enhance the representativeness
>of the GNSO Council and its constituencies;
>
>§ Operational changes should help enhance the
>GNSO¹s ability to reach consensus on policy
>positions that enjoy wide support in the ICANN
>community; and
>
>§ GNSO stakeholder representation structures
>need to be flexible and adaptable.
>
>Our proposal meets these goals better than any of the proposed alternatives.
>Principle 1: Visibility and Transparency.
>When noncommercial stakeholders are fragmented
>into independent constituencies, each with their
>own mailing list, administrative structure and
>representatives, it is literally impossible for
>an ordinary noncommercial organization to keep
>track of them all. Noncommercial stakeholders in
>one constituency would have no idea what is
>happening in other constituencies. Our proposal
>integrates all policy deliberation and voting
>into a unified structure. This enhances the
>visibility and transparency of the SG.
>Principle 2: Representativeness.
>Our proposal enhances representation in several
>ways. First, by adopting a model of flexible and
>easy-to-form constituencies as subunits under
>the NCSG, we allow a far more diverse set of
>interests and coalitions to form. Most
>important, through unified voting for GNSO
>Council seats, our proposal ensures that whoever
>represents noncommercial stakeholders on the
>Council has support across all constituencies,
>not just a bare majority of a small subgroup of
>the SG.
>Principle 3: Consensus.
>We believe that the old GNSO constituency
>structure, which assigns a specific number of
>Council seats to specific constituencies, is
>inimical to the formation of consensus. That
>approach encourages small subgroups to break
>away and form their ³own² constituencies in
>order to gain a guaranteed Council seat. Once a
>constituency controls specific Council
>seats/votes, they have little incentive to seek
>support from other Council members for their
>views or their representatives. We already have
>evidence from this; we note that none of the
>³new constituencies² currently being proposed
>for the Noncommercial Stakeholders actually
>represent newcomers to the ICANN space. All of
>them are existing members of NCUC or RALOs who
>wish to gain seats on the Council without having
>to win an election among a large number of other
>noncommercial entities and individuals.
>Our proposal understands that policy development
>in the new GNSO will not come from a Council
>acting as a legislator, but from consensus-based
>Working Groups. Therefore, we allow relatively
>small minorities of the NCSG to bind our Council
>representatives to support the formation of a
>Working Group. Once a Working Group is formed,
>its proponents will have to convince many other
>stakeholders to agree on a common policy. We
>think there should be a low threshold for the
>formation of a WG, so that anyone can have a
>chance to convince the rest of the GNSO of the
>need for a policy.
>Principle 4: Flexibility and Adaptability.
>The old constituency model is broken. It rigidly
>assigns Council seats and representation to
>categories of users that are constantly
>changing, categories that may overlap in
>numerous ways. Dividing the world up into
>mutually exclusive categories known as
>³constituencies² is always bound to exclude some
>people who don¹t fit the categories, and at the
>same time over-represent entities who qualify
>for two or three of the categories. By detaching
>Constituencies from Council seats, our proposal
>can make constituencies much more flexible and
>lightweight. We make constituencies more like
>intra-Stakeholder Group working groups ­ easier
>to form and not mutually exclusive. NCSG members
>can join multiple constituencies, and
>constituencies can form and disband more easily
>without disrupting the entire representational
>structure of the NCSG.
>
>Under the old model, once a constituency is
>formed, there is a strong danger that it can be
>captured or controlled by a small group,
>especially as membership and participation
>declines. The NCSG charter proposed here solves
>this problem by situating constituencies in a
>large NCSG membership that cannot be easily
>captured, as addressed in the item below.
>
>3. Changes made to the previous (2/28/9) version of the proposal:
>
>Dealing with ³Threat² of Capture.
>
>A central concern is the ability of special
>interests or a discrete group to gain a majority
>of GNSO Councilor seats in the reformed GNSO.
>Comments suggested that existing participants
>within the NCUC might have special advantage, or
>the proposed structure might be subject to
>³gaming,² specifically capture of Councilor
>seats by a simple majority.
>
>To the first point, the current NCUC will
>dissolve completely when the charter goes into
>effect. Existing individual and organizational
>members will be free to form new constituencies
>and participate in elections according to the
>charter rules. They are not privileged in any
>manner, having the same rights as any new
>members that chose to join the Stakeholder
>Group. The various interests among NCUC members
>are extremely diverse, perhaps the most varied
>of all SG¹s, and are difficult to capture by a
>single viewpoint, given the breadth of
>noncommercial interests.
>
>To the second point, the threat of ³gaming²
>exists under any proposed structure. It should
>be recognized that concerns about some
>coordinated push to ³capture² the Noncommercial
>Constituency have been made since 1999. However,
>there is no factual basis to suggest this has
>occurred. Instead, and as the Board realized in
>reviewing the BGC recommendations, the issue has
>always been under-representation of
>noncommercial interests. It has always been the
>case for noncommercial interests that there are
>not enough people willing and able to get deeply
>involved and do the work required to participate
>effectively in the GNSO. Despite this ongoing
>difficulty, NCUC¹s membership has increased by
>more than 40% within the last six months,
>partially due to the membership being opened for
>individuals to join.
>
>Nonetheless, in response to this perceived
>threat of capture, we have extended the minimum
>voting eligibility period for new Members to 90
>days (Section 3.4.3). Such an adjustment should
>allow opportunity for countervailing interests
>to form, preventing the flooding of new members¹
>right before an election with the specific
>purpose of winning it, without any actual
>engagement of such members in the discussions
>and activities pertaining to the Stakeholders
>Group.
>
>The current constituency-based model actually
>aggravates problems of capture because it
>potentially institutionalizes special interests.
>Once a constituency has formed and been
>allocated seats, there is no reasonable
>mechanism to remove a constituency¹s
>representatives from the Council, no matter how
>the broader membership base may change. We
>partially address this concern by now requiring
>final approval of Constituencies by the ICANN
>Board (Section 2.3.1).
>
>Dealing with the demand for diversity in representation on the GNSO Council:
>
>Attempting to categorize individuals and
>organizations according to constituencies is
>inimical to growing diverse participation in the
>stakeholder group. A constituency-based model of
>allocating seats is neither flexible nor
>adaptable to a growing noncommercial membership.
>
>In this regard, the discussions in which we
>engaged during the Mexico meeting featured a
>wide range of comments on the issue of
>representation, and providing adequate solutions
>for a long-term perspective, as well as creating
>complex voting methods that would end up
>decreasing the broader representation we seek.
>
>One approach suggested that an interim system in
>which each Constituency would be granted an
>automatic seat at the GNSO Council could be
>created as long as no more than six
>Constituencies exist within the NCSG structure.
>This suggestion not only fails to provide a
>long-term solution for the issue, it also
>creates artificial incentives for the formation
>of groups that have little concern for the wider
>range of the membership who the NCSG Council
>must serve.
>
>The outcome of an interim decision like that
>would encourage the election of NCSG Councilors
>who have little or no incentive to reach out to
>other views and constituencies that naturally
>constitute the non-commercial interest in ICANN.
>
>The other proposal ties up non-commercial energy
>and resources with in-fighting between competing
>constituencies and dispute mechanisms. It
>presents complex systems for voting and/or for
>the allocation of members inside the specter of
>six forced Constituencies. And its voting
>mechanism seems to create a difficult method for
>measuring the will of the members that integrate
>the NCSG.
>
>There have been even some suggestions for
>fragmented voting. We deem that no other system
>is simpler and direct than allowing each member
>to vote and that representation results from the
>election of the ones to whom the majority of
>votes has been casted.
>
>In short, the other NCSG proposal allocates GNSO
>Council seats by constituencies competing with
>one another, while our proposal allocates
>Council seats via constituencies cooperating
>with one another to find a consensus.
>
>The recently submitted charters of the
>Registries and Registrars provide for GNSO
>Councilors to be elected by Stakeholder
>Group-wide membership rather than individual
>constituencies. In this matter, each of these
>charters (ours, the Registries, and the
>Registrars) seem to present the same solution
>for the issue of representation.
>
>The reason for this in the non-commercial
>stakeholder group is simple: There are no
>concentrated benefits for noncommercial
>participants to counter their costs of
>participating in a global policy making
>institution. A simple solution to this is to
>lower structural barriers to participation, as
>the NCSG charter does by providing for direct
>representation and easy participation within
>constituencies.
>
>Our proposed NCSG Charter tackles the issue of
>representation, avoids interim suggestions, and
>puts forth a system that allows the broadest and
>most democratic representation of noncommercial
>interests.
>
>Conclusion
>
>Although it has transformed significantly along
>the way, our proposal is not new. We have been
>working on this charter since June of 2008, and
>have entered into extensive consultations with
>ICANN staff members, ALAC, At Large
>representatives, board members, and our own
>constituency members on its development. We feel
>that much has been improved to guarantee
>diversity in representation, to secure a space
>for minority views to be heard, and to address
>the concern over capture.
>
>We thank ICANN for allowing us an opportunity to
>provide this revised proposal that reflects the
>comments and suggestions received from all
>interested parties who have joined in the effort
>to present the best charter possible for the
>NCSG structure, built upon consensus and the
>principles that guide the GNSO Improvements
>process. We stand ready to continue to work with
>the ICANN community to improve this NCSG
>proposal eve further.
>
>Best regards,
>Robin Gross,
>
>Chair, Noncommercial Users Constituency
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>IP JUSTICE
>Robin Gross, Executive Director
>1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
>p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
>w:
><http://www.ipjustice.org <http://www.ipjustice.org/> >http://www.ipjustice.org <http://www.ipjustice.org/> 
> e: <mailto:robin at ipjustice.org>robin at ipjustice.org
>





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