Bruce, It's not just the statutory rights. It's the fundamental fact that (and I am oversimplifying here) the Members are "at the top of the totem pole" in a membership non-profit corporation (at least under US law). That said, focusing more narrowly on how to enforce an IRP is worth doing. But I don't think that using the membership concept to do it is advisable. I also don't think it makes sense to eliminate the overall concept of community-as-member. In other words, I am not discouraging discussion of a mechanism to enforce the IRP, in addition to the potential capacity of the member or members to do so. Greg On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 4:54 AM, Bruce Tonkin < Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au> wrote:
Hello Greg,
Members have a legally distinct role in a nonprofit corporation, particularly with regard to authority and decision-making vis a vis the Board.
Yes I get that. Members have a series of statutory rights under the law of where the membership organization is incorporated.
However my understanding is that we are actually explicitly enshrining the powers that the community seeks into the bylaws.
So then surely the issue is then whether ICANN is adhering to the new bylaws.
The IRP is a mechanism to adjudicate if there is a dispute about whether the Board is adhering to these bylaws. I hope that there are also some lighter weight mechanisms - reconsideration/ombudsman as a step before needing to use an IRP (which currently seems to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and that is just the panel's costs, and take years to resolve).
Then there is a need to ensure that the Board abides by the outcome of the IRP.
My proposal was how to deal with the unlikely situation where the Board goes against an IRP panel.
Regards, Bruce Tonkin
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