It is also worth noting that membership need not have a personal cost – e.g., the ISOC individual membership is free and it seems to work well and might prove as a useful model. David McAuley From: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of Greg Shatan Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2015 2:39 PM To: Sivasubramanian M Cc: Accountability Cross Community Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] [CCWG-Accountability] Membership thoughts Siva, What's your solution? And how do you think we will be able to avoid unknown territory? I think we're going into some kind of unknown territory no matter what, since "known territory" is unsatisfactory (or else we wouldn't be here). And why do you assume that potential participants will be shut out? Any system, poorly designed, will have problems. So let's try to design this well, so it doesn't shut out potential participants. Any grouping of people or entities is in some ways "prone to be captured." But rather than shoot down the membership concept in a knee-jerk fashion, try to work toward resolution, or at least try to create some useful "stress tests." I'm not saying that a membership organization is the right solution, the only solution, or even an available solution. Fighting through the issues won't be quick or pretty, and it may be the end-result doesn't work. But it's too soon to know. The only way to avoid everything in your email is to stay in bed. Greg Shatan On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 2:08 PM, Sivasubramanian M <isolatedn@gmail.com<mailto:isolatedn@gmail.com>> wrote: I am equally concerned. The idea of moving to a membership based system takes us into an unknown territory. A membership based system shuts out a section of potential participants due to their inability to meet the requirement (money or other) for membership, the system is prone to be captured, and there would be imbalances and unknown dangers. Sivasubramanain M Sivasubramanian M<https://www.facebook.com/sivasubramanian.muthusamy> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 12:08 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com<mailto:ocl@gih.com>> wrote: Dear Jordan, thanks for your looking into this in further detail. My comment below: On 19/01/2015 16:00, Jordan Carter wrote:
It would be straightforward and possible to make e.g. SO and AC chairs effective "members" of ICANN (we define our own membership system). It would be harder to allow individuals with some standing to join stakeholder constituencies of voters and then allocate shares of total votes across these in a fair way. It would be possible but mad to have a "one member one vote" system where a ccTLD manager had the same say as an Internet user.
Isn't what you're describing ICANN version 1, with thousands of individual voters? I agree that did not work and will not work today either. However, I would also really urge caution in turning ICANN into a purely membership organisation that allocates shares of total votes according to size of organisational members. I have seen membership organisations being captured by large players buying out smaller players - the endgame being $$$ controlling the organisation and *not* the public interest. Kind regards, Olivier -- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community