eloquently put, Danny. -randy ____________________ Domain name services http://www.Psyberdomain.com Help the needy http://www.DDMF.org Help yourself http://www.AmericaAtLarge.org ------------------------- ----- Original Message ---- From: Danny Younger <dannyyounger@yahoo.com> To: jam@jacquelinemorris.com; Izumi AIZU <aizu@anr.org> Cc: alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org; Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette@wz-berlin.de> Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2007 5:48:05 AM Subject: Re: [NA-ALS] [ALAC] [EURO-ALS] [LAC-ALS] Major Milestone Coming Up 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 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/ _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org _______________________________________________ NA-ALS mailing list NA-ALS@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-als_atlarge-lists.icann.o...