I am forwarding this Memo sent by Sidley Austin and Adler and Colvin in which they address the following question:

“Under ICANN’s current structure, do SOs and ACs have legal rights to select directors in line with designator rights under the California statute?

The summary conclusion is that yes. Also it is interesting to read the Memo as it concludes that ICANN could be considered, already, a designator organization but it warns, however, that the current bylaws lack detail in many aspects and that in order to avoid instability arising from such ambiguity, bylaws should be amended in order to address these areas subject to interpretation.

It also states that, as things stand today, the Board could be able to modify the bylaws and take away any SOs and ACs designator powers and incumbent SO/ACs wouldn’t have any recourse to that action.

My personal take after reading this memo is:

a) We seem to be closer to empowering  the community as proposed because we seem to already be a Designator organization;

b) SO/ACs already have statutory powers but these could be taken away by a bylaw amendment;

c) This could put us in a position in which we should only need to fill in the gaps that could bring instability (arising form ambiguity in current bylaws) in order to provide the proposed powers to the community while avoiding instability.