Roberto and all, I've always believed that better it the successor to good. Good leaders know that better is superior to good. Improving is something that should be strived for. An example: IPv6 is better than IPv4! Another relevant example: Bind 9 is better than Bind 8. -----Original Message-----
From: Roberto Gaetano <roberto@icann.org> Sent: Mar 22, 2008 9:52 AM To: 'Alan Greenberg' <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>, 'At-Large' <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [At-Large] PAST DEADLINE: GNSO Review
Alan,
No question that an opportunity for individual registrant to participate is a good thing (although one wonders how they could organize mobilize support, or afford ICANN participation, but that is not the question at hand).
The concern is that the proposal does not allow for representatives of the other trillion people who are not registrants to participate. I understand that there *may* be an opportunity to participate in working groups ("may" because it will depend on how the term stakeholders is interpreted). But if there is any value in participating in Council activities (and all of the other constituencies certainly seem to think that there is), then non-registrant users should as well.
Although I do agree in principle with you, I also believe that the "better" is the enemy of the "good". ICANN is 10 years old. Since the beginning there has been an attempt (failed so far) for individual registrants to build a constituency. We now have the choice: do we use this (tiny) window, or do we drop the opportunity waiting another 10 years for the situation to be ready for extending participation also to the non-registrant individuals? Nothing prevents in the future to create a non-registrant constituency, considering that one of the principles we have adopted in the GNSO Review was the flexibility, but to delay the first step in order to make a bigger step later might be a mistake, and might be missing an opportunity.
Just my 2c.
Cheers, Roberto
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