On 09/24/2009 10:46 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
I would simply recall the actual Board resolution:
'IT IS RESOLVED THAT the recommendation of the BRWG (Board Review Working Group) to add one voting director appointed from the At-Large Community to the ICANN Board of Directors, and removing the present ALAC Liaison to the Board, is approved in principle for implementation.[...]'
Standard rules of interpretation when applied indicate that the resolution specifically excludes the ALAC as "The At-Large Community" to which resolution refers. ICANN's board knows how to spell "ALAC" or "At Large Advisory Committee" - and yet the board chose not to use those words when describing the appointive mechanism. And when the board did mean to specify the ALAC it did so by explicitly using the term "ALAC" in the clause that removed the "ALAC Liaison". Moreover, the resolution refers to the board review working group's recommendation - which, as a member of that working group, I helped to author - as providing the context for the phrase "At-Large Community". In that report we took care to express a very expansive view of who constitutes the community of internet users. --karl--