As usual, NCUC and ALAC members are having the same conversations in their respective silos, e.g. on .hn, the AoC, etc. Since I replied to David on the NCUC list where he'd posted but he was forwarding from here, I should share my reply here as well. So FWIW... Bill Begin forwarded message:

From: William Drake <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> Date: October 1, 2009 10:46:43 AM GMT+02:00 To: NCUC Members List <NCUC-DISCUSS@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> Subject: Re: [At-Large] Fwd: Board appointments to fill 3 non- commercial seats on the new Council

Hi

On Oct 1, 2009, at 7:21 AM, David Cake wrote:

...

At 11:31 AM +0900 1/10/09, Adam Peake wrote:

...

...

From: Denise Michel <denise.michel@icann.org> To: Cheryl Langdon-Orr <cheryl@hovtek.com.au>, At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: [At-Large] Fwd: Board appointments to fill 3 non- commercial seats on the new Council

Dear Community Members,

The Board has appointed the following individuals to serve as Non- Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) representatives on the new GNSO Council:

Mohammed Rafik Dammak - Tunisia Rosemary Sinclair - Australia Debra Hughes - United States

It is my recollection that Rosemary was at the NCUC meeting in Sydney, and seemed very sympathetic to NCUC at the time. While I would assume she has been lobbied by Consumer Constituency folk, it is my hope that she will be sympathetic to NCUC arguments.

Hope so too. I suppose it may depend on the argument we're making...?

In the event anyone's not familiar, a wee bit of background on the group of which she is the Chair of the Board, the International Telecommunications Users Group. INTUG was established by a bunch of large transnational corporations back in 1974 to advocate the liberalization of global telecom markets. They were, in effect, a sort of issue-specific International Chamber of Commerce. In parallel with other big business associations, they lobbied governments at both the national and multilateral level; I dealt with some of their folks in the 80s to mid-90s in the ITU context, and still have some of the docs they submitted to ITU and OECD from those days. They were especially active in advocating the loosening of regulations on the international private leased circuits used by financial and other corporate users to construct closed private networks bypassing public switched networks for global voice and data transmission (pre-commercial Internet), but also pushed for the reduction of international calling rates (fixed and mobile) under the accounting and settlements system. Thereafter, if I recall correctly, a lot of their early members bled off into other industry lobbying groups; the current membership http://intug.org/members/our-members/ seems to comprise national associations, some of which are not entirely big business, e.g. the membership of ATUG (which she also heads) "consists of 1/3 from the Top 1000 trading companies in Australia, 1/3 from the Small to Medium Enterprise sector and 1/3 coming from small business, consultants, educational organisations such as TAFE and local government."

In the Internet era INTUG's been less visible (at least to me) relative to other industry lobbying groups so I'm not aware of its positions on most ICANN issues, but it's a founding member of the Alliance for Global Business, which has taken stands on some relevant topics. For example, you can read the AGB's Global Action Plan for Electronic Business here http://www.witsa.org/papers/3rdEd-GlobalActionPlan.pdf . Some quotes of interest:

*WTO members should recognize that specific WTO agreements governing trade in goods, trade in services, or trade-related intellectual property apply to electronic transmissions...Business will work to encourage all countries to implement effectively the TRIPS agreement. Business will also continue to develop and deploy technologies that prevent IP infringements in the online environment.

*Business should have a significant role in the formation of policy for technical management of the domain name system and the development of policy. Through the various Supporting Organizations of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and in particular the Business Constituency of the Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO), business will continue to work to ensure continued stability and security of the Internet, as well as appropriate protection of intellectual property. The protection of intellectual property (especially famous names) and efficient ways of dealing with cybersquatting remain priority issues for business.

*Governments should recognize that the Internet is a new medium providing new opportunities and challenges. Existing regulatory systems must provide consumers with useful protection of their personal data and at the same time guarantee the free flow of information needed for the information society to produce the anticipated benefits. Governments should also recognize that self regulation may be a more flexible method of achieving data protection than government regulation. To that end, governments should: • work with the private sector to adopt interpretation of existing regulatory solutions based on the criteria in the paragraph above; • recognize the validity and adequacy of effective selfregulation augmented by the use of privacy-enhancing technologies; and • educate the public to use such privacy-enhancing technologies properly.

And so on...

I look forward to working on issues of common concern with the INTUG Chair and the other board appointees in the new SG for noncommercial users.

Best,

Bill

*********************************************************** William J. Drake Senior Associate Centre for International Governance Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Switzerland william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html ***********************************************************