Message

Randy brings up an important point here -- I think ICANN and the At-Large community need to find ways to help consumers figure out why they should know what ICANN is, and what it does (and what it doesn't do, or can't do, for that matter). This is going to be critical to ALS outreach, especially if the community is seeking participation from consumer groups, as it did with us (we got involved via an invitation from Consumers International). Consumer groups have limited time and resources and are not going to pay much attention if the concerns of the At-Large boil down to the rights and concerns of registrants.

-----Original Message-----
From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of RJGlass | America@Large
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 11:19 AM
To: John L
Cc: At-Large writ small
Subject: Re: [At-Large] Who is At-Large, anyway?

All-in-all, I think it's the end-users that At-Large is all about. However, at the current time it is very difficult to expect that 'the individual user' could care less about ICANN or its policies. Since most policy decisions ultimately effect the registrant, it is sufficient to say that they are currently the end-user of ICANN.

When talking to people, most people in the industry are still unaware of ICANN, let alone the individual Internet user with an email address. This is where the 'educating' comes into play.

I'm not sure if there ever will be a time when the 'Internet user with an email address' will ever have a concern about ICANN. However, the individual registrant is greatly effected by anything that ICANN does or says.

On 7/26/07, John L <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:

I have always found a major lack of agreement about who the at-large is
supposed to be.

One group believes it is the domain registrants who are not part of other
constituencies, which more or less means individuals (like me) who
register personal vanity domains.

The other group believes that it's all the Internet users who are not
parts of other consitutencies, all the people who have never registered a
domain and never will, but use domains every day when they use the
Internet.

In a lot of areas, the interests of these two groups are the same, e.g.,
we all would prefer that our registrars were competent and honest. But in
a lot of other areas, they aren't, with WHOIS being the most obvious
place.

Am I the only one who thinks that non-registrants count, or is ALAC a club
for vanity registrants?

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.