Should be no surprise. ICANN has seats on the board for business, which is really only representing large businesses, no one for small business owners whose interest is not the same. ICANN has additional seats for ISPs, who are big business owners. ICANN has seats to represent registries, which are big business due to ICANN's policies on prohibiting small business owners from operating one. ICANN then has seats for Intellectual Property interests, which once again represents big business for the most part. Every board seat represents big business. Every vote represents the interests of big business. ICANN is structured in such a way that big business has control of everything and small business owners, individual domain name holders and individual Internet users are not represented at all. Smaller nonprofits are not even represented. And they will answer that the interests of big business are the same as for small business owners. Nothing could be further from the truth. So do not be surprised at ICANN stacking the deck, ever. It is how ICANN works. Chris McElroy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Antony Van Couvering" <avc@namesatwork.com> To: "At-Large Worldwide" <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 1:38 PM Subject: Re: [At-Large] Board appointments to fill 3 non-commercial seats onthe new Council
I find it surprising that 2 of the 3 non-commercial seats are filled by (1) an intellectual property lawyer (Debra Hughes, formerly general counsel at Wal-Mart, now Red Cross intellectual property lawyer, which is by the way a big business), and (2) the head of a trade group of international "business telecommunications users."
On Oct 1, 2009, at 1:30 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
2009/10/1 William Drake <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch>:
His assumption may have been unfounded, but it doesn't seem unreasonable.
This is probably one of those areas in which our communications gaps need the most fixing.
Presuming that something *may* follow from something else isn't helpful to any of us, even if using what appears to be sound logic. Given the current state of NCUC-ALAC relations, one would think that fact-checking would be even more required, and assumptions less welcome, than ever.
Of course, this works both ways. But we really need to lower the heat level a notch or two, and clarity is critical.
It was understood that the three appointee slots were more or less envisaged to be for people from the following categories:
Was that an explicit and published frame of reference, a hidden agenda extrapolated from private conversations, or simple wishful thinking?
Use of passive grammar makes it unclear just who had this 'understanding'....
I agree with you that a consumers constituency should easily find common cause with others in the noncommercial world, assuming that it comprises noncommercial consumer groups and advocates for noncommercial interests. Other formulations would give rise to other trajectories.
Agreed.
- Evan
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