Evan, By 'few unaccountable individuals' I mean some people with voting power not the ALAC members. An example could be the approval of the Verisign agreement that in fact cements the Verisign's monopoly on the .com market for a long time, which, of course, is far away from public interests. And I am just asking myself whether this all was just an objective and selfless act. Otherwise, I agree on most your counts here. I see the at-large consolidation similarly important as you do. However, it seems we both can agree upon the fact that the representative voting power is the corner stone turning the vision to reality. Hope, it is me who will need to change my mind getting me more hopeful ;-) Dominik -----Original Message----- From: Evan Leibovitch [mailto:evan@telly.org] Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2008 12:53 AM To: Dominik Filipp Cc: At-Large Worldwide Subject: Re: [At-Large] Who's ashamed? Dominik Filipp wrote:
Do you see the five points enumerated by Danny elitistic and sort of romanticized vision? No, those five points were objectives as stated by ICANN. Danny and I have obviously different paths towards accomplishing those objectives; indeed it seems we even interpret them differently.
All this effort can be spoiled in a minute by a vote of few unaccounatble individuals whose the only interest is to stuff the pockets. And this negligible detail turns the whole great vision into a fairy tail.
Please elaborate. Are you talking about corrupt (or potentially corrupt) members of ALAC? Or elsewhere? I was under the belief that there are conflict of interest protocols that, should they be breached, should have some serious consequences. I base at least part of my "trust" on the belief that At-Large should be comprised of those who may not stand to be financially rewarded as a result of ICANN policy changes (except for the indirect benefit which would accompany reduced fraud, spam, deception, crime, etc). Those with explicit interest in ICANN policy, whether for profit or non-profit goals, already have constituencies outside of At-Large (with the possible exception of personal registrants). In any case, I fully agree with you on this potential downside of having unaccountable positions of leadership within At-Large. My views on NomComm appointees to ALAC are already fairly well known, and I supported the majority view in the GNSO recommendation to eliminate voting NomComm appointees there too.
without the representative voting power the ALS is actually ICANN's best shot at accomplishing a persuasive cover-up to the outside world.
I agree that without a Board vote (and in fact I think At-Large deserves more than one), ALAC can roar all it want but is ultimately toothless. I await the ALAC review, to which I (and I am sure many others) have made this point clearly. On the other hand, I see no great harm in not having given ALAC a Board vote until now. It was only with the last year that all RALOs were fully in place. Until then, ALAC was simply a bunch of appointees charged with guessing the mood of the public -- and to me that body did not warrant a Board vote. However, things have changed... if ICANN continues to deny At-Large a Board vote, my optimism will be short-lived. As for the theory that At-Large is just a public relations exercise designed to mask the lack of a real public voice in ICANN -- I will reserve judgment until I see ICANN's willingness to make ALAC a full constituency and not just an advisory role.
Of course, ALAC doesn't have a Board vote, so this one is not really fulfilled. We can wait and see how the ALAC review group handles that one.
So far so very good. The problem is in the words "wait and see". I'll tell you how the ALAC will handle that one. Exactly the same way as it did in domain tasting. You will be persuaded of not feasibility of a stronger solution and you'll finally back off.
Don't be so sure. Remember, this is a maturing process. ALAC is still finding its footing, having realized the need to deal with internal elements who favour diplomacy over advocacy, and others with the opposite inclination. Arguably the domain tasting issue was the first piece of real policy work with which to test us in that manner. Don't judge the long-term process by the first effort...
And I hope you'll find some of my observations helpful in achieving this goal.
Indeed I do. I will be watching closely the way that the ALAC review is presented publicly, and how At-Large responds to it, and how the Board ultimately addresses our needs. The status quo works for this moment but is unacceptable for moving forward. Without significant increases in member accountability and Board representation, ALAC may indeed be revealed as the publicity stunt that you (and a number of others) have suggested that it is. At this moment I would like to believe this is not the case, but I cannot rule out that it is possible. The difference between me and Danny in this regard is that, if I come to that conclusion, I will leave the At-Large process and spend my valuable time in more productive ways. If I come to judge that At-Large is pointless, then I am being both hypocritical and irresponsible to myself if I continue to spend energy on it. I would certainly not waste my time telling the remaining people they should be ashamed of themselves. Such actions accomplish nothing positive.
I do believe too that many people are doing good job. They just perhaps do not fully realize that waiting and seeing might be sort of naïve expectations.
While there are many ICANN old timers, everyone is a newbie in the RALO-based At-Large infrastructure. Its path to maturity is (and will continue to be) filled with mistakes, bad choices and unwelcome discoveries. If the public (through its reps in ALAC) is incapable of learning from its mistakes then it will get the ICANN it deserves -- however even _that_ is prefereable to one in which the public view is represented by elitists who are really no different from a weak clone of NCUC.
Nevertheless, the litmus test is the upcoming bringing of the GNSO improvements into life. This step will no doubt be significant in revealing the further direction. Let's see what is going to happen.
And my litmus test is the ALAC review. Between the two of them, we will see how committed ICANN really is to its stated goals of _real_ public participation (and ultimately leadership) in its work. Eventually one of us will need to change our minds, with either you getting more hopeful or me getting more cynical. :-) - Evan