Dear All, *Global Public Interest vrs End Users* I have changed the Subject of the thread to emphasize the apparent conflict that stems from global public interest versus end users. This has been challenging particularly for the At Large community as has been expressed by Evan and others where it comes to processes. Olivier had mentioned that the lack of definition is of concern. Karl raised an important point about context shaping meaning. There have been on multiple occasions where this dialogue has taken place. I would recommend that a Study be done by the ALAC work highlighting a list of instances within ICANN where as a community, the At Large feels that it has been marginalised. This can certainly be in the context of the gTLD Objection process or in the Auction processes but also other aspects of ICANN where we feel that global public interest has been undermined. It is in identifying all the potential conflicts and trying to understand the root of the problems that we can begin to discuss solutions. No doubt, we have people like Evan and others who have vast institutional memory and can be good resources to draw from. *Recommendation for At Large Leadership Team* It would also be useful for At Large Leadership Team to commission an In Depth Study, analysis of the issues. The discussions is also central to maintaining legitimacy so that the At Large and the ALAC are not just token participants but stewards and watchdogs of global public interest. Kind Regards, Sala On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 8:42 AM, Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com> wrote:
On 01/23/2014 09:17 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote:
I am particularly concerned with the narrow definition of "community", "Internet community", "end user community" - or in fact as their lack of definition.
Let me respond to that particular point rather than the previous focus of this thread.
There may well be not one community but rather multiple communities. And people may move between these communities from instant-to-instant depending on what they are doing at that instant.
I have observed that over the last few years that there has been a significant shift in the way that users perceive this thing we all call "the internet" (with or without a capital 'I').
For many of us who have been around for a while we see the internet as a system that moves IP packets from computer interface with an IP address to another computer interface with an IP address. We are the packet-heads.
But for many people who arrived more recently the perception of the net is of a bag of applications.
We packet heads tend to be very concerned about end-to-end principles and neutrality of packet flows.
The latter community may focus more on matters of openness, fairness, portability, and reliability of those applications without much regard to the underlying plumbing. (And one might consider that the interests of those who use applications are somewhat different than those who create and deploy applications.)
I would note that to the latter community, IP addresses and domain names may be submerging to become hidden machinery and are being replaced by URL/URI based names or application specific names [such as Facebook logins.] I believe that this shift in naming/addressing will eventually significantly alter our internet governance needs.
The interests of these groups are one of those Venn diagrams with overlapping circles - there is an area of mutual concern but also large areas where each group has its own concern.
I am far from suggesting that these groups form different "stakeholders" - that is because I abhor the concept of top-down pre-defined groups of interest called "stakeholders".
However, I do feel that we could gain a bit of clarity if we were begin to recognize that the word "internet" has different meanings to different people and that to best understand opinions we need to comprehend the context from which those opinions arose.
My sense is that we will find that as a result opinions that seem in opposition, if the context is understood, might actually be opinions that are in alignment, or at least not in conflict.
--karl--
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