Re: (1) why are new orgnaisations joining the current flawed model Probably because no one within ICANN has made an effort to make it clear to these organizations that their natural home should be the NCUC. Re: (2) why haven't the many people who feel the current model is unworkable done what you suggest and vote with thier feet? They have voted. Over a thousand individuals joined icannatlarge instead of supporting the ALAC initiative. Further, within LAC 50 new organizations have been added to the NCUC roster within the last month (a check from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee for $2500 to cover 50 applications was forwarded to Milton Mueller by Marcelo Fernandes Costa). Jacqueline, At issue is the very definition of at-large membership. ICANN's Membership Advisory Committee posed this question: Who should be included in the at-large membership? MAC consensus: All individuals and organizations that are not represented by Supporting Organizations are eligible to become at-large members without regard to the nature of their interest as long as they have e-mail contact. The organizations that you are trying to turn into at-large units already have representation within ICANN via a Supporting Organization constituency established for that purpose. The real At-Large will always be those that are not otherwise represented. Your ALAC model is not aggregating individual at-large members, instead it is serving to do no more than to divert organizational resources away from the NCUC. This is not constructive -- it divides resources. It's a very bad mistake that hurts your peers. best wishes, Danny --- jam@jacquelinemorris.com wrote:
Hi Danny
I have questions - if the current model is flawed and many people consider it so, then why are new orgnaisations joining the current flawed model and why haven't the many people who feel the current model is unworkable done what you suggest and vote with thier feet? This isn't the first time I've heard about the SO initiative, but I haven't seen any movement forward on it, but I have seen a lot of activity in LAC (my region).
I've also seen a lot of desire in LAC for policy discussion. Maybe we should do an experiment - start a good policy discussion on a topic of interest, and see how much traffic we get, compared to admin issues. The LAC email listing hasn't been so big on admin issues, but more a lot of questions about issues and how we could find out more about them, and how they might affect us. The regional model allows us to interact and network as well, which is very valuable to us in LAC, I think.
Jacqueline
Quoting Danny Younger <dannyyounger@yahoo.com>:
Re: "Maybe if a policy issue disucssion were started, we'd get this sort of participation now that we have so many more ALSes?"
Jacqueline,
Just speaking from my experience, having witnessed the formational efforts of the IDNO (Individual Domain Name Owners Constituency) and those of the icannatlarge group, I can tell you that most participants will choose to focus on administrative considerations rather than on policy matters.
They would rather argue the merits of weighted voting moreso than discuss the lack of competitive choice offered under current Redemption Grace Period policy. They would rather pontificate on the topic of Internet Governance than deal with the hard issues associated with UDRP reform. They would rather debate the nuances of membership criteria and the relative fairness of proposed membership fee structures than discuss registrar circumvention of the Consensus Deletes Policy.
They will spend years building an institution that devotes 100% of its time to administrative minutia and will forever continue to postpone policy discussions because they never seem to finish their higher priority organizational work... and then the institution collapses as little by little the players realize that nothing of consequence is getting done. I've seen it happen. Twice. and this will surely be round three if we remain on the same track.
In the meantime, others within the GNSO are formulating policy (while the at-large remains excluded from this venue as well as from from the ICANN Board itself).
There was a time when the country code managers realized that the construct that they were forced to work within (the DNSO) was not serving their needs. They left an unworkable model and created their own Supporting Organization...
The construct that ICANN has forced upon the at-large clearly does not meet our needs. We too should vote with our feet and put together that which is right for us -- a Supporting Organization effort wherein policy issues can properly be debated. That model already exists and has worked reasonably well. We don't need to reinvent the wheel and get locked into administrative and process-related debates; further, we don't need to accept the flawed ALAC/RALO construct just because it is the only option on the table.
We should be pursuing that which is right for us, a Supporting Organization that allows for Board-level representation, rather than blithely accepting what amounts to an incredibly lousy deal.
We have gone from the promise of directors on half of the Board to no directors on the Board whatsoever. This is not acceptable. It will never be acceptable and I will never buy into a plan such as the ALAC/RALO/ALS diversion that makes permanent our disenfranchisement.
best wishes, Danny
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