FYI: Omsbud is aware and in fact apparently been doing a lot of firefighting. I'll be talking with him in Panama at his request. On Mon, May 28, 2018, 11:05 PM John Laprise <jlaprise@gmail.com> wrote:
I just sent Herb at Ombuds a heads up msg. I'm growing concerned by the level of vitriol.
John
On Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:40 PM Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:
From what is now a convenient and safe distance I want to express my appreciation, sympathy and solidarity to Alan and the others who have been dealing with the review.
The whole review process -- I was involved in previous iterations but not at all this one -- is by its nature self-defeating. Rather than encourage self-reflection and improvements from within from the people who know most intimately what works and what doesn't, it blesses ignorance while inviting everyone with a grudge to take a swing. And obviously some have.
In the case of the CPH, At-Large -- despite our struggles to be accounted for in ICANN high-level objectives -- has been one of the sole voices within ICANN challenging the capture of ICANN by the compact of domain buyers and sellers. We have uniquely doubted the bedrock of ICANN expansionism that everyone on earth is just a registrant that hasn't made up their mind "which TLD?". Long before it became a catchphrase, we were on the ground floor to witness the consumer-hostile excesses of "permissionless innovation". And we tried to push back, warning ICANN that industry abuse of the DNS would just hasten the rise of the search engine.
Our often having opposing views to industry fed a belief common to many (based on conversations and observation too numerous to count) that the industry is subsidising ALAC to oppose them -- in our first-class champagne junkets to ICANN meetings masquerading as policy work. To them At-Large comprises ICANN's welfare recipients, and no indignity or cost-cutting is too extreme. How DARE we oppose their march to put a domain in every corner regardless of need, or express concern at adding more gTLDs while old ones are failing, or worry at bad rules enforcement leading to real harm.
The NCSG shares the travel jealousy but its core animus has a different source. ICANN is uniquely a realm of international governance in which what is broadly known as "civil society" does not have monopoly claim on the public interest. Here it has to contend with ALAC and the GAC (which from what I recall the NCSG hates even worse than us). Again, we run into "how dare you" scenarios when we sometimes agree with governments, or actually stop to ponder a balance between privacy and accountability for misuse. (For instance, what is the contribution of ICANN policy to the global phenomenon of 'fake news'?)
In both cases there is a broad sense of "who the hell are *THEY* to fulfil ICANN's so-called public interest mandate?" Neither NCSG nor the CPH wants us here at all; they'd be happy with the diminished opposition and the travel slots re-allotted to those for whom governance is a career. The damn bylaws don't allow ICANN to eliminate us, so the next best thing is to render us even less effective and waste more volunteer time on process.
So this is their shot, couched in ICANN-speak. At very least, waste our precious human resources and distract us. Burn out people just a little faster.
I'm not sure I have an answer but there's no doubt where the question comes from. Maybe my experience is dated and things aren't the same since I've pulled back. but nothing I have seen or heard on the mailing lists or elsewhere has indicated any change. The very existence of -- and process taken by -- these two interventions suggests that it's still the same old 💩.
I'd be far more concerned about all this if I wasn't convinced that ICANN's decline is well underway, the only questions left are 'how fast' and 'what will replace it'. No change in At-Large will make its "we tried to tell you" message any more palatable.
-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56