A document entitled "Top Ten Myths About Civil Society Participation in ICANN" has been distributed very widely in the last week or so. An example is http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/08/21/top-ten-myths-about-civil-society-part.... According to that post, the documents originates with the NCUC. Myth 6 is about the ALAC and I believe is both inaccurate and misleading. It reads: ----------------- Myth 6 "ALAC prefers the ICANN staff drafted charter over the civil society drafted charter." False. One ALAC leader said that she prefers the staff drafted charter. ICANN staff ran away with this comment and falsely told the ICANN Board of Directors that ALAC prefers the staff drafted charter. In fact, the formal statement actually approved by ALAC said that many members of ALAC supported the NCUC proposal and that "the de-linking of Council seats from Constituencies is a very good move in the right direction." ----------------- This implies that many ALAC members supported the NCUC proposal (verbatim quote of above) and it implies that the ALAC said that the de-linking of seats was a good thing. In fact, the statement that they were quoting (http://forum.icann.org/lists/sg-petitions-charters/msg00020.html) said: "Some members feel that although there are some problems with the proposal, it generally addresses their concerns, and in particular, the de-linking of Council seats from Constituencies is a very good move in the right direction. Problems notwithstanding, the proposal should receive Board approval." "Some" is not "Many" and the original statement made it clear that the statement about de-linking was made by these "some members" and not the ALAC in general. I do not know what we can do to counter this widely distributed inaccuracy, but I do not believe that we can say nothing. Alan