Re: [At-Large] Say Whut!
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too. I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows. A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere. The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering. Someone has to. And we live in hope. -Carlton On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com> wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite? Christian Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
Hi Christian, Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise. The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate. Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas: - Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself) - surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS - analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity) Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56 On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 5:58 PM Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
------ The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with. However:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
Yes. If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs. Sivasubramanian M
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Hi Siva, Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw
mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget. But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit. If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the
DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source. - analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input
based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa. Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities. - Evan
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 7:20 PM Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Siva,
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw
mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget.
But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit.
Is ICANN spending significant sums on ALS activities to save from?
If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
Outreach is not wasteful, may be the present pattern and styles of expenditure on outreach proves wasteful?
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and
the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source.
Agreed. But social media, with professional and orchestrated use can help ALAC raise pertinent questions and gather an indication, if not scientific answers.
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input
based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa.
Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities.
So long as real research does not imply expensive contracts for Studies. Another danger is that the outcome of a Study is not always objective.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
I am wondering whether this thread suggests that time at the next summit should be dedicated to rethinking the role of ALAC, its effectiveness in the Multi-Stakeholder model, its priorities, etc. R On 10.12.2018, at 14:49, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com<mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi Siva, Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas: The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with. I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget. But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit. If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation. Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach". - surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS +1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source. - analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity) Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs. That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa. Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities. - Evan _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Roberto It's about time. And the effort should be internal (like the GNSO's PDP 2.0 strategy exercise). Instead of external reviewers and mediators.... On December 10, 2018 8:18:30 AM CST, Roberto Gaetano <roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> wrote:
I am wondering whether this thread suggests that time at the next summit should be dedicated to rethinking the role of ALAC, its effectiveness in the Multi-Stakeholder model, its priorities, etc. R
On 10.12.2018, at 14:49, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com<mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Siva,
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget.
But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit.
If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source.
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa.
Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities.
- Evan _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org<mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 7:51 PM Carlos Raul Gutierrez < carlosraul@gutierrez.se> wrote:
Roberto
It's about time. And the effort should be internal (like the GNSO's PDP 2.0 strategy exercise). Instead of external reviewers and mediators....
+1 The summit needs to be so well designed that there are productive exchanges, discussions in optimal formats, both free flowing and moderated, with less emphasis on show cases and more on policy discussions to strengthen At Large and ALAC. Irrespective of all criticism, without At Large and ALAC, ICANN Community is void of balance. Sivasubramanian M
On December 10, 2018 8:18:30 AM CST, Roberto Gaetano < roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> wrote:
I am wondering whether this thread suggests that time at the next summit should be dedicated to rethinking the role of ALAC, its effectiveness in the Multi-Stakeholder model, its priorities, etc. R
On 10.12.2018, at 14:49, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Siva,
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw
mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget.
But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit.
If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and
the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source.
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input
based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa.
Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Sivasubramanian M Please send all replies to 6.Internet@gmail.com
I have been asked directly my views on the At-Large place in the ICANN comunity and specifically, the role of the ALAC. First, my strategic and operational views - what we might do and how we ought to do that - have not changed and are outlined in the R3 Paper co-authored with Evan, Jean Jacque [Subrenat] and a few others. The principal R3 pleading is for a more strategic ALAC role and, tacking to an operational profile similar to the SSAC's; fewer and more authoritative publications/utterings. Second, I have always believed that the At-Large can exert more influence by participating in PDP WGs, that is, in the guts of the policy-setting process. This means more of us must step up ready to play the long game. Yes, some internal WGs are useful for sunshine to overarching issues and maybe, extracting consensus At-Large positions. I do not believe direct engagement in the PDP WGs are much more useful for advancing the At-Large agenda and identifying collaborators in other groups. This posture requires a lot of work for individuals but from my view, a greater At-Large's interaction in this space will do more to advance the At-Large agenda than anywhere else. With specific reference to the Applicant Support PDP, I served as Co-Chair and I know several of us, like Dev and Lance and certainly Evan included, were heavily invested in those outcomes. We did not get all we wanted and its implementation was certainly not what was anticipated. However, the results reinforced my thinking on the approach we must take for results to matter and firmed up my belief that more At-Large interests engaged could have engendered better outcomes. -Carlton ============================== *Carlton A Samuels* *Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 9:21 AM Carlos Raul Gutierrez < carlosraul@gutierrez.se> wrote:
Roberto
It's about time. And the effort should be internal (like the GNSO's PDP 2.0 strategy exercise). Instead of external reviewers and mediators....
On December 10, 2018 8:18:30 AM CST, Roberto Gaetano < roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> wrote:
I am wondering whether this thread suggests that time at the next summit should be dedicated to rethinking the role of ALAC, its effectiveness in the Multi-Stakeholder model, its priorities, etc. R
On 10.12.2018, at 14:49, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Siva,
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw
mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget.
But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit.
If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and
the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source.
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input
based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa.
Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
On Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 4:55 PM Carlton Samuels <carlton.samuels@gmail.com wrote:
I have been asked directly my views on the At-Large place in the ICANN comunity and specifically, the role of the ALAC.
First, my strategic and operational views - what we might do and how we ought to do that - have not changed and are outlined in the R3 Paper co-authored with Evan, Jean Jacque [Subrenat] and a few others. The principal R3 pleading is
a more strategic ALAC role and, tacking to an operational profile similar
to the SSAC's;
With a stature that is in no way beneath the GNSO or GAC, then there would be a balance for the good of ICANN and the DNS. fewer and more authoritative publications/utterings
Second, I have always believed that the At-Large can exert more influence by participating in PDP WGs, that is, in the guts of the policy-setting process. This means more of us must step up ready to play the long game. Yes, some internal WGs are useful for sunshine to overarching issues and maybe, extracting consensus At-Large positions. I do not believe direct engagement in the PDP WGs are much more useful for advancing the At-Large agenda and identifying collaborators in other groups. This posture requires a lot of work for individuals but from my view, a greater At-Large's interaction in this space will do more to advance the At-Large agenda than anywhere else.
With specific reference to the Applicant Support PDP, I served as Co-Chair and I know several of us, like Dev and Lance and certainly Evan included, were heavily invested in those outcomes. We did not get all we wanted and its implementation was certainly not what was anticipated. However, the results reinforced my thinking on the approach we must take for results to matter and firmed up my belief that more At-Large interests engaged could have engendered better outcomes.
-Carlton
============================== *Carlton A Samuels*
*Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* =============================
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 9:21 AM Carlos Raul Gutierrez < carlosraul@gutierrez.se> wrote:
Roberto
It's about time. And the effort should be internal (like the GNSO's PDP 2.0 strategy exercise). Instead of external reviewers and mediators....
On December 10, 2018 8:18:30 AM CST, Roberto Gaetano < roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> wrote:
I am wondering whether this thread suggests that time at the next summit should be dedicated to rethinking the role of ALAC, its effectiveness in the Multi-Stakeholder model, its priorities, etc. R
On 10.12.2018, at 14:49, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Siva,
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its
bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget.
But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit.
If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and
the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source.
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN
input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa.
Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
+1 to Roberto's. I would welcome such a move and suggest that in formulating the Summit WGs, this be taken into account. -Carlton ============================== *Carlton A Samuels* *Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 9:18 AM Roberto Gaetano <roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com> wrote:
I am wondering whether this thread suggests that time at the next summit should be dedicated to rethinking the role of ALAC, its effectiveness in the Multi-Stakeholder model, its priorities, etc. R
On 10.12.2018, at 14:49, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Siva,
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw
mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
The suggestions above sound too drastic to take sides with.
I make no apologies for this proposal's radicalism. But I also recognize that proper public education, surveys and research will be expensive. ICANN will not manufacture a significantly bigger budget.
But if ALAC is focused on the areas I propose, there is substantial savings to be realized in cutting back on facets of At-Large that have, at best, offered only cosmetic benefit.
If DNS is demystified there would be greater user participation.
Maybe. Not everyone who needs to know how the DNS works needs to be engaged in it. Nor should they. People who get the education and are interested to help will know where to find us, reducing the wasteful expenditures on "outreach".
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and
the DNS
+1. A considerable amount of R&D could happen through social media, not necessarily by votes, even by 'likes' and reactions to non-commercially promoted posts and tweets
That's not where I was headed. Proper quantitative research requires effort and expertise. I would never trust social media for this, at least as a primary source.
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input
based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Needs to go even beyond that. ALAC could become more emphatic on Cross Community PDPs.
That's way too into the details. I expect that if we engage in real research, the areas of global public concern will not lie where you may believe they are. What is of great interest inside the domain bubble is of little interest to the world outside that bubble, and vice versa.
Doing this properly, I expect, will dramatically change ALAC's policy priorities.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Evan, Is the challenge one of structure and representation institutionally or has the changes to empower an industry dependent on intermediation at ICANN and Internet as a whole over the last few years squeezed out the user stake in the DNS? Perhaps the place to start is to ask if the growth of Internet users since 1995 to today (16 million to c.4.1billion) is also reflected in those users having a domain name. I don't get that impression. But it is hard to get reliable data from ICANN or anywhere. As to the health of the current domain registration market as a system one could start by asking what is the proportion of registered domain names that are actually being used and required for personal or business, rather than for defensive reputational and brand purposes? What would happen to the registries and registrars industry model fostered by ICANN if users abandoned their defensive DNS registrations as (local) regulators take up the slack? Christian Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote: > Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of > time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too. > > I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge > too far, I retired to the shadows. > > A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in > politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant > drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against > them. Theres a lesson there somewhere. > > The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy > wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does > is margin-gathering. > > Someone has to. And we live in hope. > > -Carlton > > > > > > On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> > <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote: > > So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that > where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little > betrayed now? > > How many more times will we continue to play this futile game? > > The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with > well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at > the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with > the money. > > "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." > > I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT > and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say > I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these > efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time > on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".) > > Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to > disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I > love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and > it pains me to watch the story repeat so often. > > But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to > end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans > around who should know better. > > Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect > example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent > procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged > the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken > at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the > agendas of others rather than even try to set its own. > > Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, > and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push > against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change > it from the outside. > > I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which > awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in > desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and > ALAC ignore this trend at their danger. > > ___________________ > Evan Leibovitch, Toronto > @evanleibovitch/@el56 > > (*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but > it's a useful phrase regardless of source. > > > > > On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" > <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com> <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>>> wrote: > > https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/ > > > _______________________________________________ > At-Large mailing list > At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> > https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large > > At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net>
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
Healthy convos! Javier Rúa-Jovet +1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Dec 10, 2018, at 12:53 PM, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
Evan,
Is the challenge one of structure and representation institutionally or has the changes to empower an industry dependent on intermediation at ICANN and Internet as a whole over the last few years squeezed out the user stake in the DNS?
Perhaps the place to start is to ask if the growth of Internet users since 1995 to today (16 million to c.4.1billion) is also reflected in those users having a domain name. I don't get that impression. But it is hard to get reliable data from ICANN or anywhere.
As to the health of the current domain registration market as a system one could start by asking what is the proportion of registered domain names that are actually being used and required for personal or business, rather than for defensive reputational and brand purposes?
What would happen to the registries and registrars industry model fostered by ICANN if users abandoned their defensive DNS registrations as (local) regulators take up the slack?
Christian
Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com> <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net>
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Interesting questions, sah. Some of them are in fact accounted in the CCT RT Report, even if not stridently addressed. We spent a lot of time on the concept we called 'parking'. And we examined the contours of the DNS market pre and post current round. We noted the change in registrations in legacy domains by what has occurred in nGTLDs. I keep an eye on the 'throwbacks', that is, strings applied for and won that, for one or other reasons, are withdrawn or never delegated. Most in these categories are from the so-called 'brand' TLDs. Some say it doesn't matter much, seeing the expectation always was that these would have contributed relatively few new registrations to the overall DNS. Thusly, their contribution to domain space revenue expansion originally was, at best, mischaracterised; The few cents or so that go to ICANN's coffers are insignificant for loss calculation. I tend to think of a more supra-operational impact. Every string given up suggests that it is seeping into the consciousness that maybe more strings available do not necessarily inure to increased market health, competition or generally, [DNS] use. -Carlton ============================== *Carlton A Samuels* *Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 11:53 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
Evan,
Is the challenge one of structure and representation institutionally or has the changes to empower an industry dependent on intermediation at ICANN and Internet as a whole over the last few years squeezed out the user stake in the DNS?
Perhaps the place to start is to ask if the growth of Internet users since 1995 to today (16 million to c.4.1billion) is also reflected in those users having a domain name. I don't get that impression. But it is hard to get reliable data from ICANN or anywhere.
As to the health of the current domain registration market as a system one could start by asking what is the proportion of registered domain names that are actually being used and required for personal or business, rather than for defensive reputational and brand purposes?
What would happen to the registries and registrars industry model fostered by ICANN if users abandoned their defensive DNS registrations as (local) regulators take up the slack?
Christian
Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote: > Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of > time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too. > > I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge > too far, I retired to the shadows. > > A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in > politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant > drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against > them. Theres a lesson there somewhere. > > The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy > wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does > is margin-gathering. > > Someone has to. And we live in hope. > > -Carlton > > > > > > On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> > <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote: > > So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that > where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little > betrayed now? > > How many more times will we continue to play this futile game? > > The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with > well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at > the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with > the money. > > "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." > > I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT > and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say > I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these > efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time > on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".) > > Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to > disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I > love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and > it pains me to watch the story repeat so often. > > But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to > end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans > around who should know better. > > Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect > example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent > procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged > the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken > at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the > agendas of others rather than even try to set its own. > > Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, > and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push > against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change > it from the outside. > > I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which > awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in > desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and > ALAC ignore this trend at their danger. > > ___________________ > Evan Leibovitch, Toronto > @evanleibovitch/@el56 > > (*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but > it's a useful phrase regardless of source. > > > > > On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" > <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com> <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>>> wrote: > > https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/ > > > _______________________________________________ > At-Large mailing list > At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> > https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large > > At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net>
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
Evan I agree with your direction. The ALS are somewhat of a joke. Mostly just vehicles for individual involvement (not itself bad). Part of their being somewhat of a “joke" is that most of what put forth for comment is of a technical character that is best worked on by those with the specific background needed. A good measure of the ALS problem is the amount of energy that is devoted to trying to make certain that ALSs (=their representatives and “members?”) are minimally engaged. There would be a benefit for an internal review of whether the ALAC can fulfill its bylaw purposes with its current structure and activities (as opposed to the broader ones you suggest). Could start with a survey, as suggested by Christian. DO NOT HIRE outside experts and consultants — major waste of money ALWAYS. More than enough talented and thoughtful people in the ALAC world. John More
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:28 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in virtual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net> wrote: Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com> <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/ <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/>
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large <https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large>
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net>
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
I agree with the participation of the individual members. We have many excellent examples. But I do not agree that ALSs are a joke. We have ALSs very, very active. Only that they are not participating in the meetings of their RALO or in webinars or working groups and for that reason we think that they are not doing anything. For example, in LACRALO I have researched their activities, and they have reached hundreds of thousands of end users in a year (I investigated it in a period of 5 years with only 15 ALSs). That arrival to the end user of the internet, which must be the leitre of ALAC, can not be achieved by individual members. Kind regards Alberto Soto El 2018-12-10 14:42, John More via At-Large escribió:
Evan
I agree with your direction. The ALS are somewhat of a joke. Mostly just vehicles for individual involvement (not itself bad). Part of their being somewhat of a “joke" is that most of what put forth for comment is of a technical character that is best worked on by those with the specific background needed.
A good measure of the ALS problem is the amount of energy that is devoted to trying to make certain that ALSs (=their representatives and “members?”) are minimally engaged.
There would be a benefit for an internal review of whether the ALAC can fulfill its bylaw purposes with its current structure and activities (as opposed to the broader ones you suggest).
Could start with a survey, as suggested by Christian. DO NOT HIRE outside experts and consultants — major waste of money ALWAYS. More than enough talented and thoughtful people in the ALAC world.
John More
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:28 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in virtual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org [1]
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Links: ------ [1] http://atlarge.icann.org/ _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
I think that it is not question of ALS or individuals, it is question of ALAC position, only ICANN based organization or independent organization. Pozdrav/regards Nenad -----Original Message----- From: At-Large [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of alberto@soto.net.ar Sent: Monday, 10 December, 2018 19:16 To: John More Cc: ICANN At-Large list Subject: Re: [At-Large] Say Whut! I agree with the participation of the individual members. We have many excellent examples. But I do not agree that ALSs are a joke. We have ALSs very, very active. Only that they are not participating in the meetings of their RALO or in webinars or working groups and for that reason we think that they are not doing anything. For example, in LACRALO I have researched their activities, and they have reached hundreds of thousands of end users in a year (I investigated it in a period of 5 years with only 15 ALSs). That arrival to the end user of the internet, which must be the leitre of ALAC, can not be achieved by individual members. Kind regards Alberto Soto El 2018-12-10 14:42, John More via At-Large escribió:
Evan
I agree with your direction. The ALS are somewhat of a joke. Mostly just vehicles for individual involvement (not itself bad). Part of their being somewhat of a “joke" is that most of what put forth for comment is of a technical character that is best worked on by those with the specific background needed.
A good measure of the ALS problem is the amount of energy that is devoted to trying to make certain that ALSs (=their representatives and “members?”) are minimally engaged.
There would be a benefit for an internal review of whether the ALAC can fulfill its bylaw purposes with its current structure and activities (as opposed to the broader ones you suggest).
Could start with a survey, as suggested by Christian. DO NOT HIRE outside experts and consultants — major waste of money ALWAYS. More than enough talented and thoughtful people in the ALAC world.
John More
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:28 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in virtual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org [1]
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Links: ------ [1] http://atlarge.icann.org/ _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
I have to agree with John. Personal initiative weights 100x more than the ALS where it is coming from. To remain relevant need a hard look into ALACs over strategic direction and effectivnes influencing DNS policies. We should be able to recognize that good fellows and good mentors could have more targeted impact, than ALACs present processes. We have to face it as an internal exercise. Again, take a look at the last year of internal discussions on the GNSOs PDP2.0. Hardly anyone outside ALAC can provide us with additional insight. --- Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez carlosraul@gutierrez.se +506 8837 7176 Aparatado 1571-1000 COSTA RICA El 2018-12-10 11:42, John More via At-Large escribió:
Evan
I agree with your direction. The ALS are somewhat of a joke. Mostly just vehicles for individual involvement (not itself bad). Part of their being somewhat of a "joke" is that most of what put forth for comment is of a technical character that is best worked on by those with the specific background needed.
A good measure of the ALS problem is the amount of energy that is devoted to trying to make certain that ALSs (=their representatives and "members?") are minimally engaged.
There would be a benefit for an internal review of whether the ALAC can fulfill its bylaw purposes with its current structure and activities (as opposed to the broader ones you suggest).
Could start with a survey, as suggested by Christian. DO NOT HIRE outside experts and consultants -- major waste of money ALWAYS. More than enough talented and thoughtful people in the ALAC world.
John More
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:28 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in virtual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net wrote: Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
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Dear John, I do not agree with your assessment that the ALS are somewhat of joke: whilst some might well be a joke, others are quite active on many points, so please let's not generalise. That said, I am urging again RALOs to clean up any ineffective, inactive ALSes and this is happening in several regions, with this potential decrease possibly replaced by a rise in the number of individual members, which is already happening. On your point regarding a survey, why don't you all work it out in the ALAC Sub-Committee on Outreach and Engagement? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/ALAC+Subcommittee+on+Outreach+an... That's where the work takes place. Kindest regards, Olivier On 10/12/2018 18:42, John More via At-Large wrote:
Evan
I agree with your direction. The ALS are somewhat of a joke. Mostly just vehicles for individual involvement (not itself bad). Part of their being somewhat of a “joke" is that most of what put forth for comment is of a technical character that is best worked on by those with the specific background needed.
A good measure of the ALS problem is the amount of energy that is devoted to trying to make certain that ALSs (=their representatives and “members?”) are minimally engaged.
There would be a benefit for an internal review of whether the ALAC can fulfill its bylaw purposes with its current structure and activities (as opposed to the broader ones you suggest).
Could start with a survey, as suggested by Christian. DO NOT HIRE outside experts and consultants — major waste of money ALWAYS. More than enough talented and thoughtful people in the ALAC world.
John More
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:28 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in virtual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote: > Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of > time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too. > > I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge > too far, I retired to the shadows. > > A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in > politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant > drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against > them. Theres a lesson there somewhere. > > The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy > wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does > is margin-gathering. > > Someone has to. And we live in hope. > > -Carlton > > > > > > On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> > <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote: > > So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that > where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little > betrayed now? > > How many more times will we continue to play this futile game? > > The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with > well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at > the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with > the money. > > "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." > > I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT > and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say > I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these > efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time > on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".) > > Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to > disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I > love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and > it pains me to watch the story repeat so often. > > But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to > end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans > around who should know better. > > Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect > example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent > procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged > the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken > at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the > agendas of others rather than even try to set its own. > > Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, > and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push > against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change > it from the outside. > > I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which > awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in > desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and > ALAC ignore this trend at their danger. > > ___________________ > Evan Leibovitch, Toronto > @evanleibovitch/@el56 > > (*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but > it's a useful phrase regardless of source. > > > > > On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" > <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com> <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>>> wrote: > > https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/ > > > _______________________________________________ > At-Large mailing list > At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> > https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large > > At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net>
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-- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
All these are healthy and timely conversations that must be had. No doubt that one hears and sometimes agrees with some of these lines of thinking. Yet after following this thread, I basically have to concur with Olivier. The Community came together to responsibly respond to an At Large Review that was riddled with half-truths and a good measure of ignorance, via a reply that was thorough and very very balanced, objective and fair. The Board saw no other way but to sign on. We do have a tough road ahead in implementing changes. Maureen has set up the ARIWG and progress is being made. And surely ATLASIII will be quite important in the birthing process of a new At-Large that better reflects our collective aspirations. Step by step we are self-evaluating, self-reforming and self-governing. We won’t change by-law realities in the foreseeable future, but we can build a better At-Large within our constraints and realities. All points of view are important. I deeply respect the points of view of all my good friends and colleagues from this thread. I’m an absolute beginner compared to many of you. If anything is evident is that there is plenty of collective acumen in our Community. That makes me very proud of being here among all of you. I think good things are and will continue happening in this process. Let’s stay engaged and keep these healthy convos going. Best, Javier On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 8:37 PM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear John,
I do not agree with your assessment that the ALS are somewhat of joke: whilst some might well be a joke, others are quite active on many points, so please let's not generalise. That said, I am urging again RALOs to clean up any ineffective, inactive ALSes and this is happening in several regions, with this potential decrease possibly replaced by a rise in the number of individual members, which is already happening.
On your point regarding a survey, why don't you all work it out in the ALAC Sub-Committee on Outreach and Engagement? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/ALAC+Subcommittee+on+Outreach+an... That's where the work takes place.
Kindest regards,
Olivier
On 10/12/2018 18:42, John More via At-Large wrote:
Evan
I agree with your direction. The ALS are somewhat of a joke. Mostly just vehicles for individual involvement (not itself bad). Part of their being somewhat of a “joke" is that most of what put forth for comment is of a technical character that is best worked on by those with the specific background needed.
A good measure of the ALS problem is the amount of energy that is devoted to trying to make certain that ALSs (=their representatives and “members?”) are minimally engaged.
There would be a benefit for an internal review of whether the ALAC can fulfill its bylaw purposes with its current structure and activities (as opposed to the broader ones you suggest).
Could start with a survey, as suggested by Christian. DO NOT HIRE outside experts and consultants — major waste of money ALWAYS. More than enough talented and thoughtful people in the ALAC world.
John More
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:28 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in virtual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing listAt-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.orghttps://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhDhttp://www.gih.com/ocl.html
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Olivier I stand corrected. What I meant is that from my observation in the ALAC space, I am more aware of individuals from the ALSes being active than the ALSes themselves being active, and the whether ALSes are engaged engaged to be considered active is a constant issue. Good suggestion about the survey. John
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:37 PM, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear John,
I do not agree with your assessment that the ALS are somewhat of joke: whilst some might well be a joke, others are quite active on many points, so please let's not generalise. That said, I am urging again RALOs to clean up any ineffective, inactive ALSes and this is happening in several regions, with this potential decrease possibly replaced by a rise in the number of individual members, which is already happening.
On your point regarding a survey, why don't you all work it out in the ALAC Sub-Committee on Outreach and Engagement? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/ALAC+Subcommittee+on+Outreach+an... <https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/ALAC+Subcommittee+on+Outreach+an...> That's where the work takes place.
Kindest regards,
Olivier
On 10/12/2018 18:42, John More via At-Large wrote:
Evan
I agree with your direction. The ALS are somewhat of a joke. Mostly just vehicles for individual involvement (not itself bad). Part of their being somewhat of a “joke" is that most of what put forth for comment is of a technical character that is best worked on by those with the specific background needed.
A good measure of the ALS problem is the amount of energy that is devoted to trying to make certain that ALSs (=their representatives and “members?”) are minimally engaged.
There would be a benefit for an internal review of whether the ALAC can fulfill its bylaw purposes with its current structure and activities (as opposed to the broader ones you suggest).
Could start with a survey, as suggested by Christian. DO NOT HIRE outside experts and consultants — major waste of money ALWAYS. More than enough talented and thoughtful people in the ALAC world.
John More
On Dec 10, 2018, at 7:28 AM, Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in virtual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net> wrote: Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com>> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com> <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/ <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/>
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large <https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large>
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>
-- Christian de Larrinaga @ FirstHand ------------------------- +44 7989 386778 cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net>
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At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/> -- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html <http://www.gih.com/ocl.html>
Dear Evan, please be so kind to find my comments inline below: On 10/12/2018 13:28, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify: - overtly politicized - appears to superficial airs of importance - designed to be utterly impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies.
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation. Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN. Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large! A reminder of the ICANN bylaws: (i) The At-Large Advisory Committee ("*At-Large Advisory Committee*" or "*ALAC*") is the primary organizational home within ICANN for individual Internet users. The role of the ALAC shall be to consider and provide advice on the activities of ICANN, insofar as they relate to the interests of individual Internet users. This includes policies created through ICANN's Supporting Organizations, as well as the many other issues for which community input and advice is appropriate. The ALAC, which plays an important role in ICANN's accountability mechanisms, also coordinates some of ICANN's outreach to individual Internet users. Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership. Kindest regards, Olivier
Hi Olivier, Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate. You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-) To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope. I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate. The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".) It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC. Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3? I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path. Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting. (As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...) I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes
to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced. This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest. As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine. Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about
reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need. (In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.) I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN? The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research. Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest. So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public. My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar. Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news
about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news. Cheers, -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56
Hi Evan Thanks for your faith in the TTF, but while we have reviewed many different web conferencing tools including Zoom and found that adobe connect is still the best tool. While zoom is great and is great for people with low bandwidth and accessibility issues it still lacks many features that the community values and relies on. Icann is planning on continuing to use zoom for small groups. Also with all its problems Adigo is a much better solution than what other constituencies are using. People within the GNSO and other groups have to rely on adobe connect voice and cannot be called but must call in. So again while adigo has problems it is better than any other alternatives. Many countries do not have call numbers and so those people are left out of the loop. Adigo goes to far more places than other solutions. So we are doing the best to engage others to work within the community. Thanks again for your thoughts Cheers Judith Sent from my iPhone Judith@jhellerstein.com Skype ID:Judithhellerstein
On Dec 10, 2018, at 10:06 PM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC. Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Cheers,
-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56 _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
+1 @Judith. We didn’t know what we had (in AdobeConnect) until we lost it. And the chorus unanimously cried “bring it back!!!” since that day. Zoom is ok, not quite AdobeConnect. Google Hangouts is dismal. Adobe’s call management tools are simply superior & the direct texting form secondary conversations is great. And I always rather not use video and be able to do calls in less than formal clothing. Javier Rúa-Jovet +1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Dec 11, 2018, at 12:10 AM, Judith Hellerstein <judith@jhellerstein.com> wrote:
Hi Evan Thanks for your faith in the TTF, but while we have reviewed many different web conferencing tools including Zoom and found that adobe connect is still the best tool. While zoom is great and is great for people with low bandwidth and accessibility issues it still lacks many features that the community values and relies on. Icann is planning on continuing to use zoom for small groups.
Also with all its problems Adigo is a much better solution than what other constituencies are using. People within the GNSO and other groups have to rely on adobe connect voice and cannot be called but must call in. So again while adigo has problems it is better than any other alternatives. Many countries do not have call numbers and so those people are left out of the loop. Adigo goes to far more places than other solutions. So we are doing the best to engage others to work within the community.
Thanks again for your thoughts
Cheers Judith
Sent from my iPhone Judith@jhellerstein.com Skype ID:Judithhellerstein
On Dec 10, 2018, at 10:06 PM, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC. Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Cheers,
-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56 _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Dear Evan, thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind to find my comments inline: On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say, encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing. I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied, risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing". On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls, designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit, starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also had some where the candidate's expectations were completely different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the processes that we have developed over years of trial and error, that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI" that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place. I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether. Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us. In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations. Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC structure and designing something new where the end user, the community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are developing themselves. But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation is different: most of the influential parties would say that they are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable - never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you go out there campaigning with the right people, the right governments, the right contracted parties, the right private sector, the right technical community and the right civil society that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have operational experience that the current tools used are better suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and then, will fully take part in the social media working group and the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we can gain the buy-in from all parties. It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the grassroots. Kindest regards, Olivier
I love this thread, and what both Evan and OCL have to say. One point Olivier makes that needs stressing: we have TWO roles - policy AND outreach. A very few are good at both. Many more are good at one or the other. We need to value both. Holly
On Dec 16, 2018, at 1:24 AM, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Evan,
thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind to find my comments inline:
On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say, encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing. I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied, risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing". On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls, designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit, starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also had some where the candidate's expectations were completely different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the processes that we have developed over years of trial and error, that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI" that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place. I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether. Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us. In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations. Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC structure and designing something new where the end user, the community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are developing themselves. But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation is different: most of the influential parties would say that they are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable - never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you go out there campaigning with the right people, the right governments, the right contracted parties, the right private sector, the right technical community and the right civil society that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have operational experience that the current tools used are better suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group?https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... <https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr...> I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and then, will fully take part in the social media working group and the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we can gain the buy-in from all parties.
It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the grassroots.
Kindest regards,
Olivier _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
What is clear from reading these conversations is that most understand that ICANN is configured to at least give a nod to something we characterise as the "public interest" but resolved not to have too much of that. The tent is accommodating only to certain tolerable limits. And the institutional tendency then tilts relentlessly towards containment. We are severally agreed that we believe an ICANN 3.0 is good and necessary for institutionalising what we perceive as the public interest. We are severally agreed that the ALAC must become more strategic in aiding the birth of ICANN 3.0. This is shorthand for the institutional framework we deem appropriate to conserve the public interest and thereafter in advocating and defending the public interest as we conceive that to be. We are severally agreed that in these endeavours, there are natural allies and by the purely happy fortune of a shared objective. Our permanent interests demand that we, time to time, have friends for show and make common cause to advance our agenda. Money shalp always be an issue; we will never have an assured supply or enough of it. So tactical choices might require some concessions to contra forces. Seems to me there is enough there there to make a move. -Carlton. On Sat, 15 Dec 2018, 2:24 pm Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com wrote:
Dear Evan,
thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind to find my comments inline:
On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say, encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing. I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied, risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing". On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls, designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit, starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also had some where the candidate's expectations were completely different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the processes that we have developed over years of trial and error, that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI" that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place. I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether. Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us. In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations. Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC structure and designing something new where the end user, the community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are developing themselves. But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation is different: most of the influential parties would say that they are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable - never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you go out there campaigning with the right people, the right governments, the right contracted parties, the right private sector, the right technical community and the right civil society that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes
to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about
reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have operational experience that the current tools used are better suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN
fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake
news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and then, will fully take part in the social media working group and the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we can gain the buy-in from all parties.
It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the grassroots.
Kindest regards,
Olivier _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
What would ICANN 3.0 look like? What compelling forces would drive through the changes to move ICANN 2.0 to ICANN 3.0? Bearing in mind that ICANN 2.0 was created because of very strong interest in commercial exploitation of DNS resources. With a nod to how At Large is positioned to participate in such a change C Carlton Samuels wrote:
What is clear from reading these conversations is that most understand that ICANN is configured to at least give a nod to something we characterise as the "public interest" but resolved not to have too much of that.
The tent is accommodating only to certain tolerable limits. And the institutional tendency then tilts relentlessly towards containment.
We are severally agreed that we believe an ICANN 3.0 is good and necessary for institutionalising what we perceive as the public interest.
We are severally agreed that the ALAC must become more strategic in aiding the birth of ICANN 3.0. This is shorthand for the institutional framework we deem appropriate to conserve the public interest and thereafter in advocating and defending the public interest as we conceive that to be.
We are severally agreed that in these endeavours, there are natural allies and by the purely happy fortune of a shared objective. Our permanent interests demand that we, time to time, have friends for show and make common cause to advance our agenda.
Money shalp always be an issue; we will never have an assured supply or enough of it. So tactical choices might require some concessions to contra forces.
Seems to me there is enough there there to make a move.
-Carlton.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018, 2:24 pm Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com <mailto:ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Evan,
thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind to find my comments inline:
On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say, encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing. I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied, risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing". On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls, designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit, starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also had some where the candidate's expectations were completely different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the processes that we have developed over years of trial and error, that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI" that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place. I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether. Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us. In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations. Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC structure and designing something new where the end user, the community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are developing themselves. But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation is different: most of the influential parties would say that they are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable - never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you go out there campaigning with the right people, the right governments, the right contracted parties, the right private sector, the right technical community and the right civil society that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have operational experience that the current tools used are better suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and then, will fully take part in the social media working group and the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we can gain the buy-in from all parties.
It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the grassroots.
Kindest regards,
Olivier _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
-- Christian de Larrinaga
2 cents on ICANN 3.0: We all know, of course, that there’s no public international governmental organization nor international treaty, that regulates the global Internet. This governance occurs within the constant conversation between multiple players, the diversity of interest groups, individuals and countless parties deeply interested in the operation of and access to the Internet. We agree, I think, that this is a good thing. We also know there are always important forces objecting to the fundamentally nongovernmental and private character of Internet governance, and they argue that the only logical and legitimate place for these functions should be the United Nations (UN), or one of its specialized agencies, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ICANN is a dance, a ritual, to keep these to forces in balance to maintain a non-fragmented Internet, as free as possible from purely regional or national considerations, but also duly respecting these. Aware of these complexities and tensions, I think we should aspire to a strengthening of the current model: an at-least apparently “transnational”, but fundamentally non-governmental structure with a very specific and widely accepted mandate. It has to be an entity whose credibility is borne of the expert work it performs and the confidence generated by its policies; confidence that must be the result of the transparent and balanced consideration of the diversity of public, commercial and private interests involved, but without being captured by them. To further strengthen ICANN’s model and stability, all I would do is nudge it a bit to resemble the International Committee of the Red Cross: a private institution founded in generally understood neutral soil, but with some unique recognition or perhaps authority under public international law, that specifically recognizes and builds upon all of the above stated principles. Among these, I think the idea of the “individual Internet-end user” as having standing and voice in an international/supranational policy context is one of the great innovations and contributions of multistakeholderism, and as such, one that must be a founding principle of any ICANN 3.0. In my view, this is on a par with the rise of the individual person as a subject of public international law, an unthinkable idea less than century ago as it is derived from Universal Human Rights treaties and institutions and part of the necessary weakening of the State-centered Westphalian model. In this sense, ALAC or ALAC-like structures that exist to give non-state-bound Individuals a seat at the policy table must be safeguarded and strengthened in any future ICANN. Un abrazo a todos, felices fiestas y próspero año nuevo. Javier Rúa-Jovet +1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Dec 16, 2018, at 10:35 AM, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
What would ICANN 3.0 look like?
What compelling forces would drive through the changes to move ICANN 2.0 to ICANN 3.0? Bearing in mind that ICANN 2.0 was created because of very strong interest in commercial exploitation of DNS resources.
With a nod to how At Large is positioned to participate in such a change
C Carlton Samuels wrote:
What is clear from reading these conversations is that most understand that ICANN is configured to at least give a nod to something we characterise as the "public interest" but resolved not to have too much of that.
The tent is accommodating only to certain tolerable limits. And the institutional tendency then tilts relentlessly towards containment.
We are severally agreed that we believe an ICANN 3.0 is good and necessary for institutionalising what we perceive as the public interest.
We are severally agreed that the ALAC must become more strategic in aiding the birth of ICANN 3.0. This is shorthand for the institutional framework we deem appropriate to conserve the public interest and thereafter in advocating and defending the public interest as we conceive that to be.
We are severally agreed that in these endeavours, there are natural allies and by the purely happy fortune of a shared objective. Our permanent interests demand that we, time to time, have friends for show and make common cause to advance our agenda.
Money shalp always be an issue; we will never have an assured supply or enough of it. So tactical choices might require some concessions to contra forces.
Seems to me there is enough there there to make a move.
-Carlton.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018, 2:24 pm Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com <mailto:ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Evan,
thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind to find my comments inline:
On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote: Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say, encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing. I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied, risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing". On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls, designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit, starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also had some where the candidate's expectations were completely different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the processes that we have developed over years of trial and error, that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI" that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place. I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether. Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us. In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations. Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC structure and designing something new where the end user, the community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are developing themselves. But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation is different: most of the influential parties would say that they are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable - never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you go out there campaigning with the right people, the right governments, the right contracted parties, the right private sector, the right technical community and the right civil society that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have operational experience that the current tools used are better suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and then, will fully take part in the social media working group and the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we can gain the buy-in from all parties.
It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the grassroots.
Kindest regards,
Olivier _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
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On 16/12/18 9:59 PM, Javier Rua wrote:
2 cents on ICANN 3.0:
We all know, of course, that there’s no public international governmental organization nor international treaty, that regulates the global Internet. This governance occurs within the constant conversation between multiple players, the diversity of interest groups, individuals and countless parties deeply interested in the operation of and access to the Internet. We agree, I think, that this is a good thing.
We also know there are always important forces objecting to the fundamentally nongovernmental and private character of Internet governance, and they argue that the only logical and legitimate place for these functions should be the United Nations (UN), or one of its specialized agencies, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
ICANN is a dance, a ritual, to keep these to forces in balance to maintain a non-fragmented Internet, as free as possible from purely regional or national considerations, but also duly respecting these.
Aware of these complexities and tensions, I think we should aspire to a strengthening of the current model: an at-least apparently “transnational”, but fundamentally non-governmental structure with a very specific and widely accepted mandate. It has to be an entity whose credibility is borne of the expert work it performs and the confidence generated by its policies; confidence that must be the result of the transparent and balanced consideration of the diversity of public, commercial and private interests involved, but without being captured by them.
To further strengthen ICANN’s model and stability, all I would do is nudge it a bit to resemble the International Committee of the Red Cross: a private institution founded in generally understood neutral soil, but with some unique recognition or perhaps authority under public international law, that specifically recognizes and builds upon all of the above stated principles.
Does ALAC leadership really want to do so? Sorry for the cynicism, but it is not very useful to discuss and propose things when the opportune time for them has passed, in fact just passed, like the IANA transition process.... No, ICANN as it is today and ICANN with UN are not the only tw option, and you yourself speak of Red Cross like option. So, let me ask this group this simple question: When some of us were fighting in the jurisdiction sub group to just get ICANN immunity from US jurisdiction under US's own International Organisations Immunity Act, what was ALAC doing? Why did it not support such a proposal, or even discuss it here (can you believe it!!!)... That was just the - Red Cross like institution proposal, that you now mention... And indeed the US has given jurisdictional immunities to international organisational as mundane as the International Fertilizer Development Centre, and this option actually figures in a study commissioned by ICANN itself... Can ALAC leadership, or at least those engaged in this current debate, explain why ALAC/they took no stand at that time, when many of us were fighting for it, and made to look like disruptionist extremists, for merely seeking that US gives ICANN immunity under its own law, as Red Cross has from Switzerland state? In the circumstances, such navel gazing as being done in this thread, in these private times and spaces, when nothing real is done, or perhaps meant to be done, does not at all seem serious to me -- with apology again for the cynicism ... The problem with ALAC is, it simply does not understand what is it to represent the 'outsider' to an institutional structure... Which is what civil society formations do... ALAC does it by first asserting that it is not civil society, but somehow represents 'individual users' (Like Thatcher said: "there is no society", meaning there are only individuals)... This is a funny, and certainly a politically disingenuous distinction ... What does farmer organisations, or traders or women's organisations do -- they also represent individuals, right, not some special different kind of aggregate organisms..... Being civil society is to clearly put itself out of power structures, as being subject to the power of these structures and not exercising them in any meaningful way, and certainly not as is their legitimate right to do. Once a formation places itself in such a position, it then brings to bear a set of tools and weapons, which are special ones that those denied due power use against those who exercise it. This is the ideal type -- of course any instances of it vary, even varying for the sme formation across time and space. But ALAC likes work within a narrow penumbra of space and freedoms that it almost fearfully allocates to itself, constantly second guessing ICANN Board's, and behind it the US government's, comfort zones . And why it did not even discuss the proposal for jurisdictional immunity under the said US law (with ICANN staying exactly as it is, and only saved from undue US interferences which would just given us non USians a little feel of freedom and democracy) was that it would havr made ICANN board and the US government angry and unhappy with it... If someone has a better reason I am all ears.. parminder
Among these, I think the idea of the “individual Internet-end user” as having standing and voice in an international/supranational policy context is one of the great innovations and contributions of multistakeholderism, and as such, one that must be a founding principle of any ICANN 3.0. In my view, this is on a par with the rise of the individual person as a subject of public international law, an unthinkable idea less than century ago as it is derived from Universal Human Rights treaties and institutions and part of the necessary weakening of the State-centered Westphalian model. In this sense, ALAC or ALAC-like structures that exist to give non-state-bound Individuals a seat at the policy table must be safeguarded and strengthened in any future ICANN.
Un abrazo a todos, felices fiestas y próspero año nuevo.
Javier Rúa-Jovet
+1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Dec 16, 2018, at 10:35 AM, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net <mailto:cdel@firsthand.net>> wrote:
What would ICANN 3.0 look like?
What compelling forces would drive through the changes to move ICANN 2.0 to ICANN 3.0? Bearing in mind that ICANN 2.0 was created because of very strong interest in commercial exploitation of DNS resources.
With a nod to how At Large is positioned to participate in such a change
C Carlton Samuels wrote:
What is clear from reading these conversations is that most understand that ICANN is configured to at least give a nod to something we characterise as the "public interest" but resolved not to have too much of that.
The tent is accommodating only to certain tolerable limits. And the institutional tendency then tilts relentlessly towards containment.
We are severally agreed that we believe an ICANN 3.0 is good and necessary for institutionalising what we perceive as the public interest.
We are severally agreed that the ALAC must become more strategic in aiding the birth of ICANN 3.0. This is shorthand for the institutional framework we deem appropriate to conserve the public interest and thereafter in advocating and defending the public interest as we conceive that to be.
We are severally agreed that in these endeavours, there are natural allies and by the purely happy fortune of a shared objective. Our permanent interests demand that we, time to time, have friends for show and make common cause to advance our agenda.
Money shalp always be an issue; we will never have an assured supply or enough of it. So tactical choices might require some concessions to contra forces.
Seems to me there is enough there there to make a move.
-Carlton.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018, 2:24 pm Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com <mailto:ocl@gih.com> <mailto:ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Evan,
thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind to find my comments inline:
On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say, encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing. I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied, risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing". On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls, designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit, starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also had some where the candidate's expectations were completely different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the processes that we have developed over years of trial and error, that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI" that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place. I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether. Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us. In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations. Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC structure and designing something new where the end user, the community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are developing themselves. But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation is different: most of the influential parties would say that they are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable - never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you go out there campaigning with the right people, the right governments, the right contracted parties, the right private sector, the right technical community and the right civil society that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have operational experience that the current tools used are better suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and then, will fully take part in the social media working group and the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we can gain the buy-in from all parties.
It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the grassroots.
Kindest regards,
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Parninder, Thank you for your comments and thank you for your work. I, of course, cannot speak for the rest of ALAC leadership. My opinions are just my own, and this particular opinion on ICANN 3.0, I have come to espouse rather recently. Best, Javier Rúa-Jovet +1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Dec 16, 2018, at 12:59 PM, parminder <parminder@itforchange.net> wrote:
On 16/12/18 9:59 PM, Javier Rua wrote: 2 cents on ICANN 3.0:
We all know, of course, that there’s no public international governmental organization nor international treaty, that regulates the global Internet. This governance occurs within the constant conversation between multiple players, the diversity of interest groups, individuals and countless parties deeply interested in the operation of and access to the Internet. We agree, I think, that this is a good thing.
We also know there are always important forces objecting to the fundamentally nongovernmental and private character of Internet governance, and they argue that the only logical and legitimate place for these functions should be the United Nations (UN), or one of its specialized agencies, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
ICANN is a dance, a ritual, to keep these to forces in balance to maintain a non-fragmented Internet, as free as possible from purely regional or national considerations, but also duly respecting these.
Aware of these complexities and tensions, I think we should aspire to a strengthening of the current model: an at-least apparently “transnational”, but fundamentally non-governmental structure with a very specific and widely accepted mandate. It has to be an entity whose credibility is borne of the expert work it performs and the confidence generated by its policies; confidence that must be the result of the transparent and balanced consideration of the diversity of public, commercial and private interests involved, but without being captured by them.
To further strengthen ICANN’s model and stability, all I would do is nudge it a bit to resemble the International Committee of the Red Cross: a private institution founded in generally understood neutral soil, but with some unique recognition or perhaps authority under public international law, that specifically recognizes and builds upon all of the above stated principles.
Does ALAC leadership really want to do so? Sorry for the cynicism, but it is not very useful to discuss and propose things when the opportune time for them has passed, in fact just passed, like the IANA transition process....
No, ICANN as it is today and ICANN with UN are not the only tw option, and you yourself speak of Red Cross like option. So, let me ask this group this simple question: When some of us were fighting in the jurisdiction sub group to just get ICANN immunity from US jurisdiction under US's own International Organisations Immunity Act, what was ALAC doing? Why did it not support such a proposal, or even discuss it here (can you believe it!!!)... That was just the - Red Cross like institution proposal, that you now mention... And indeed the US has given jurisdictional immunities to international organisational as mundane as the International Fertilizer Development Centre, and this option actually figures in a study commissioned by ICANN itself... Can ALAC leadership, or at least those engaged in this current debate, explain why ALAC/they took no stand at that time, when many of us were fighting for it, and made to look like disruptionist extremists, for merely seeking that US gives ICANN immunity under its own law, as Red Cross has from Switzerland state? In the circumstances, such navel gazing as being done in this thread, in these private times and spaces, when nothing real is done, or perhaps meant to be done, does not at all seem serious to me -- with apology again for the cynicism ...
The problem with ALAC is, it simply does not understand what is it to represent the 'outsider' to an institutional structure... Which is what civil society formations do... ALAC does it by first asserting that it is not civil society, but somehow represents 'individual users' (Like Thatcher said: "there is no society", meaning there are only individuals)... This is a funny, and certainly a politically disingenuous distinction ... What does farmer organisations, or traders or women's organisations do -- they also represent individuals, right, not some special different kind of aggregate organisms..... Being civil society is to clearly put itself out of power structures, as being subject to the power of these structures and not exercising them in any meaningful way, and certainly not as is their legitimate right to do. Once a formation places itself in such a position, it then brings to bear a set of tools and weapons, which are special ones that those denied due power use against those who exercise it. This is the ideal type -- of course any instances of it vary, even varying for the sme formation across time and space. But ALAC likes work within a narrow penumbra of space and freedoms that it almost fearfully allocates to itself, constantly second guessing ICANN Board's, and behind it the US government's, comfort zones . And why it did not even discuss the proposal for jurisdictional immunity under the said US law (with ICANN staying exactly as it is, and only saved from undue US interferences which would just given us non USians a little feel of freedom and democracy) was that it would havr made ICANN board and the US government angry and unhappy with it... If someone has a better reason I am all ears..
parminder
Among these, I think the idea of the “individual Internet-end user” as having standing and voice in an international/supranational policy context is one of the great innovations and contributions of multistakeholderism, and as such, one that must be a founding principle of any ICANN 3.0. In my view, this is on a par with the rise of the individual person as a subject of public international law, an unthinkable idea less than century ago as it is derived from Universal Human Rights treaties and institutions and part of the necessary weakening of the State-centered Westphalian model. In this sense, ALAC or ALAC-like structures that exist to give non-state-bound Individuals a seat at the policy table must be safeguarded and strengthened in any future ICANN.
Un abrazo a todos, felices fiestas y próspero año nuevo.
Javier Rúa-Jovet
+1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Dec 16, 2018, at 10:35 AM, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
What would ICANN 3.0 look like?
What compelling forces would drive through the changes to move ICANN 2.0 to ICANN 3.0? Bearing in mind that ICANN 2.0 was created because of very strong interest in commercial exploitation of DNS resources.
With a nod to how At Large is positioned to participate in such a change
C Carlton Samuels wrote:
What is clear from reading these conversations is that most understand that ICANN is configured to at least give a nod to something we characterise as the "public interest" but resolved not to have too much of that.
The tent is accommodating only to certain tolerable limits. And the institutional tendency then tilts relentlessly towards containment.
We are severally agreed that we believe an ICANN 3.0 is good and necessary for institutionalising what we perceive as the public interest.
We are severally agreed that the ALAC must become more strategic in aiding the birth of ICANN 3.0. This is shorthand for the institutional framework we deem appropriate to conserve the public interest and thereafter in advocating and defending the public interest as we conceive that to be.
We are severally agreed that in these endeavours, there are natural allies and by the purely happy fortune of a shared objective. Our permanent interests demand that we, time to time, have friends for show and make common cause to advance our agenda.
Money shalp always be an issue; we will never have an assured supply or enough of it. So tactical choices might require some concessions to contra forces.
Seems to me there is enough there there to make a move.
-Carlton.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018, 2:24 pm Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com <mailto:ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Evan,
thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind to find my comments inline:
On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote: Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter. The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say, encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I would be even happier if others of like mind would like to collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing. I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied, risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing". On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls, designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit, starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also had some where the candidate's expectations were completely different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the "CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the processes that we have developed over years of trial and error, that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI" that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place. I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum: If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding? If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board member? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2? If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11 years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear, and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether. Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us. In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations. Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC structure and designing something new where the end user, the community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are developing themselves. But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation is different: most of the influential parties would say that they are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable - never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you go out there campaigning with the right people, the right governments, the right contracted parties, the right private sector, the right technical community and the right civil society that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We *could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy) are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have operational experience that the current tools used are better suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days, ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as "there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I would not participate in any communications activity that could not truthfully and independently protect the public against the consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and then, will fully take part in the social media working group and the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we can gain the buy-in from all parties.
It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the grassroots.
Kindest regards,
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The World Trade Organization might be another model which isn't ICANN (a bag of contracts) but isn't the UN either. No doubt other analogues could be dredged up. Granted the WTO is a system of multinational nation-state treaties but nonetheless it exhibits parallels to what some are expressing in a supranational governance body. In particular dispute resolution mechanisms. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*
On 17/12/18 3:08 AM, bzs@TheWorld.com wrote:
The World Trade Organization might be another model which isn't ICANN (a bag of contracts) but isn't the UN either.
No doubt other analogues could be dredged up.
Granted the WTO is a system of multinational nation-state treaties but nonetheless it exhibits parallels to what some are expressing in a supranational governance body. In particular dispute resolution mechanisms.
For WTO to be the primary body to arbitrate Internet/ digital issues would be first to declare the Internet, and the digital arena generally, to be primarily a commercial space and issue, which would be suicidal... We already suffer greatly from the fact that the first policy framework ever around the Internet -- back in 1997 -- was the US's 'Framework for electronic global commerce <https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/Commerce/index.html>' ... Apart from declaring the Internet as primarily a commercial space, t ordained that the 'private sector shall lead' and governments should stay as far away as possible, and also, in consonance, called for the Internet and electronic commerce to be a tariff free zone. In short, the Internet was declared as essentially neo-liberal, and as the Internet and digital has permeated every sphere and arena, it indeed has become an exceptionally strong no-liberalising force over the last two decades. It should be no coincidence that this period has also seen the steepest rise in equalities ever across the world, which underlies much of the social and political unrest that we witness today... We do not want to further aggravate the original sin that US policy makers did to take Internet/ digital governance to the WTO.... Internet should primarily be recognised as a collaborative social space, which inter alia also allows commercial interactions and economic reorganisation. Its rules and regimes should be informed with this first principle. And that would require a very different kind of international governance of the Internet/ digital, which, if there is appetite here for that, we can discuss.. best, parminder
BTW, ICANN basic nature and structure also proceeds from this 'original sin' of casting the Internet as it was in the US's mentioned policy framework, and its sequels ... On 17/12/18 12:40 PM, parminder wrote:
On 17/12/18 3:08 AM, bzs@TheWorld.com wrote:
The World Trade Organization might be another model which isn't ICANN (a bag of contracts) but isn't the UN either.
No doubt other analogues could be dredged up.
Granted the WTO is a system of multinational nation-state treaties but nonetheless it exhibits parallels to what some are expressing in a supranational governance body. In particular dispute resolution mechanisms.
For WTO to be the primary body to arbitrate Internet/ digital issues would be first to declare the Internet, and the digital arena generally, to be primarily a commercial space and issue, which would be suicidal... We already suffer greatly from the fact that the first policy framework ever around the Internet -- back in 1997 -- was the US's 'Framework for electronic global commerce <https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/Commerce/index.html>' ... Apart from declaring the Internet as primarily a commercial space, t ordained that the 'private sector shall lead' and governments should stay as far away as possible, and also, in consonance, called for the Internet and electronic commerce to be a tariff free zone.
In short, the Internet was declared as essentially neo-liberal, and as the Internet and digital has permeated every sphere and arena, it indeed has become an exceptionally strong no-liberalising force over the last two decades. It should be no coincidence that this period has also seen the steepest rise in equalities ever across the world, which underlies much of the social and political unrest that we witness today...
We do not want to further aggravate the original sin that US policy makers did to take Internet/ digital governance to the WTO....
Internet should primarily be recognised as a collaborative social space, which inter alia also allows commercial interactions and economic reorganisation. Its rules and regimes should be informed with this first principle. And that would require a very different kind of international governance of the Internet/ digital, which, if there is appetite here for that, we can discuss..
best, parminder
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On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 at 11:59, parminder <parminder@itforchange.net> wrote:
Does ALAC leadership really want to do so? Sorry for the cynicism, but it is not very useful to discuss and propose things when the opportune time for them has passed, in fact just passed, like the IANA transition process....
Not everyone on this thread speaks for ALAC leadership. In fact even those who are don't likely speak here under any representative capacity, which is fine with me. So, let me ask this group this simple question: When some of us were
fighting in the jurisdiction sub group to just get ICANN immunity from US jurisdiction under US's own International Organisations Immunity Act, what was ALAC doing?
I certainly don't speak for ALAC, most days I can barely speak for myself. One would think that ALAC, by mandate never being more than one-fifth North American, has no special affinity to ICANN's being solely accountable to the US government. Had the case been sufficiently made to it that immunity was an issue about which to get passionate, you might have had some takers. But I don't recall the issue being raised at length. Out of sight, out of mind. Can ALAC leadership, or at least those engaged in this current debate,
explain why ALAC/they took no stand at that time, when many of us were fighting for it, and made to look like disruptionist extremists, for merely seeking that US gives ICANN immunity under its own law, as Red Cross has from Switzerland state?
I personally didn't participate much in the ICANN reformation, which was IMO little more than an exercise in retrenching industry capture to the increasing exclusion of governmental or other public accountability. The "community" to which ICANN is now accountable is dominated by its financially-vested interests, even more than when it was tethered to the US. In that light, I remain ambiguous on whether immunity is desirable: for the Red Cross analogy to work for me, the ICRC would be governed by health-tech, pharma and insurance companies, and I'm not so convinced that immunity from governmental accountability would be desirable in that case either. It remains still true that, without an international treaty behind it (the Geneva Convention, in continuance of the analogy), there is nothing compelling other states to respect or follow what ICANN does (thus the need for its fretful "universal acceptance" campaigns). It is only inertia and goodwill and fear of chaos that keeps states invested in ICANN. That the current ITU alternatives seem worse does not preclude some other model coming forward; I had hoped that such innovation would be the main product of the IGF, but ... no. The problem with ALAC is, it simply does not understand what is it to
represent the 'outsider' to an institutional structure... Which is what civil society formations do...
My experience with civil society does not match yours. Often in my experience it is the home of self-appointed experts in what represents the public good that within ICANN at least have proven no better founded than ALAC's own educated guesses. Being consciously on the outside offers a convenient shield of its own form of unaccountability, if we're lucky backed up by academic research that exists serves as a form of confirmation bias. In regard to ICANN, civil society is caught up in a different bubble, but it's still a bubble nonetheless that also merely divines the public interest.
ALAC does it by first asserting that it is not civil society, but somehow represents 'individual users'
Do your homework. It's not ALAC that asserts this, it's ICANN bylaw 12.2(d). To comment that ALAC is not outside ICANN but a part of it ... that it must work within its confines ... that it performs specific objectives in service to the Corporation ... is not to critique but state fact. ALAC is not civil society and doesn't try to be. Indeed I had at times been involved in instances in which ALAC's sense of the public interest -- based on its communities' feedback -- coincided more with the positions of governments (ie, the GAC) than with ICANN's own civil society presence (ie, the NCUC). I don't even recall what the issues were any more, but I recall the political entertainment that ensued. And I had the sense at the time that civil society's representatives had no more of a basis for righteousness or broad support than we did. Most of what I have attempted to do in this thread is to offer a path through which ICANN can better achieve its mandate. I am neither trying to change the mandate, nor to engage in wishful thinking about how or why ALAC should operate outside that mandate. I can't speak for the intent of anyone else's contribution. Cheers, Evan
On 17-12-18 08:36, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
ALAC is not civil society and doesn't try to be. Indeed I had at times been involved in instances in which ALAC's sense of the public interest -- based on its communities' feedback -- coincided more with the positions of governments (ie, the GAC) than with ICANN's own civil society presence (ie, the NCUC).
I think a good current example is the EPDP (on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data) that has been characterized as a battle between the "Surveillance Caucus" (IPC, BC, GAC, SSAC and ALAC) and the "Privacy Caucus" (RySG, RrSG, ISPCP and NCSG), both sides claiming to represent the interests of users/consumers. Julf
First...
Un abrazo a todos, felices fiestas y próspero año nuevo.
Y tu Javier, gracias! I like your summary, it's short and to the point and covers the general issue. But it still leaves open the question of "how"? At its core ICANN is a complex network of contracts, other than a few MoUs and similar that's pretty much the source of their "jurisdiction" in a phrase. Those contracts are basically business contracts not treaties or anything like treaties. So the core question is what is it about ICANN which could even address something more than a network of business contracts, short of just inventing something within it out of almost whole cloth? OTOH as I often say (content regulation/mediation/mitigation also) the choice is either something is done within their structure or they (ICANN) can watch as someone else does it for/to them. On December 16, 2018 at 12:29 javrua@gmail.com (Javier Rua) wrote:
2 cents on ICANN 3.0:
We all know, of course, that there’s no public international governmental organization nor international treaty, that regulates the global Internet. This governance occurs within the constant conversation between multiple players, the diversity of interest groups, individuals and countless parties deeply interested in the operation of and access to the Internet. We agree, I think, that this is a good thing.
We also know there are always important forces objecting to the fundamentally nongovernmental and private character of Internet governance, and they argue that the only logical and legitimate place for these functions should be the United Nations (UN), or one of its specialized agencies, such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
ICANN is a dance, a ritual, to keep these to forces in balance to maintain a non-fragmented Internet, as free as possible from purely regional or national considerations, but also duly respecting these.
Aware of these complexities and tensions, I think we should aspire to a strengthening of the current model: an at-least apparently “transnational”, but fundamentally non-governmental structure with a very specific and widely accepted mandate. It has to be an entity whose credibility is borne of the expert work it performs and the confidence generated by its policies; confidence that must be the result of the transparent and balanced consideration of the diversity of public, commercial and private interests involved, but without being captured by them.
To further strengthen ICANN’s model and stability, all I would do is nudge it a bit to resemble the International Committee of the Red Cross: a private institution founded in generally understood neutral soil, but with some unique recognition or perhaps authority under public international law, that specifically recognizes and builds upon all of the above stated principles.
Among these, I think the idea of the “individual Internet-end user” as having standing and voice in an international/supranational policy context is one of the great innovations and contributions of multistakeholderism, and as such, one that must be a founding principle of any ICANN 3.0. In my view, this is on a par with the rise of the individual person as a subject of public international law, an unthinkable idea less than century ago as it is derived from Universal Human Rights treaties and institutions and part of the necessary weakening of the State-centered Westphalian model. In this sense, ALAC or ALAC-like structures that exist to give non-state-bound Individuals a seat at the policy table must be safeguarded and strengthened in any future ICANN.
Un abrazo a todos, felices fiestas y próspero año nuevo.
Javier Rúa-Jovet
+1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Dec 16, 2018, at 10:35 AM, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net> wrote:
What would ICANN 3.0 look like?
What compelling forces would drive through the changes to move ICANN 2.0 to ICANN 3.0? Bearing in mind that ICANN 2.0 was created because of very strong interest in commercial exploitation of DNS resources.
With a nod to how At Large is positioned to participate in such a change
C Carlton Samuels wrote:
What is clear from reading these conversations is that most understand
that ICANN is configured to at least give a nod to something we
characterise as the "public interest" but resolved not to have too
much of that.
The tent is accommodating only to certain tolerable limits. And the
institutional tendency then tilts relentlessly towards containment.
We are severally agreed that we believe an ICANN 3.0 is good and
necessary for institutionalising what we perceive as the public interest.
We are severally agreed that the ALAC must become more strategic in
aiding the birth of ICANN 3.0. This is shorthand for the institutional
framework we deem appropriate to conserve the public interest and
thereafter in advocating and defending the public interest as we
conceive that to be.
We are severally agreed that in these endeavours, there are natural
allies and by the purely happy fortune of a shared objective. Our
permanent interests demand that we, time to time, have friends for
show and make common cause to advance our agenda.
Money shalp always be an issue; we will never have an assured supply
or enough of it. So tactical choices might require some concessions
to contra forces.
Seems to me there is enough there there to make a move.
-Carlton.
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018, 2:24 pm Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com
<mailto:ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Evan,
thank you for your kind answer to my comments. Please be so kind
to find my comments inline:
On 11/12/2018 04:06, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Hi Olivier,
Before I answer your question, I want to remind others in this
thread that I do not consider ALSs a joke. I consider the
structure of ALAC that depends on ALSs to be wasteful, needlessly
cumbersome, and a practical obstacle to ALAC's ability to
credibly fulfill its bylaw mandate.
You make several allegations. Please clarify:
One person's observations are another's allegations :-)
To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised at the level of
engagement in this thread and the interest in the subject matter.
The exercise of exposing my views such that may be suitably
evaluated -- even if ultimately rejected -- is a source of hope.
Everyone is free to expose their views - in fact I would say,
encouraged to expose their view. I do not think that anyone has
been stopped doing this.
I did not expect the thread to go long enough to require me to
provide a detailed rationale or plan based on my high-level
comments. I will offer brief answers below which I expect will
not satisfy. Should interest exist, I would be happy to produce a
paper -- a manifesto, if you would -- providing further detail. I
would be even happier if others of like mind would like to
collaborate.
The opportunity to raise my issues and those of others at the
Montreal mini-Summit sounds intriguing. However, I find it quite
ironic -- and supporting my position -- that ICANN will not fund
every ALS to attend, and that At-Large volunteers are expected
sit in judgment of which fraction of At-Large is worthy to
attend. I also would not want to wait until then to start this
engagement. I would propose a series of webinars at which various
views can be aired and discussed in open chat or email.
I do not think that any of us actually like the fact that we won't
be able to invite all interested participants to Montréal, but
that's what is currently on the table. In the current cost-cutting
climate of ICANN, given the stagnation in income and growing
operations costs, it was either this restricted summit or nothing.
I know that some have argued that we should go back to ICANN and
ask for more, so be able to bring more people to ATLAS III - yet I
can assure you that there are parts of ICANN that have significant
influence and that would oppose this - if only because the ICANN
budget now has to be ratified by the community (a "great" idea
that came from the community at CCWG IANA), which means that
whilst the Board could have exercised its executive powers in the
past to support At-Large, it now has its hands and feet tied,
risking a budget veto. So the summit is "this or nothing".
On the preparation towards ATLAS III, there are plans that a
programme of e-learning plus some Webinars and conference calls,
designed by the community, will pave the way to the Summit,
starting from January 2019.
- overtly politicized
As a democratic process, it has been my observation that a
notable proportion of ALAC members achieve their position because
they are good campaigners or are well-liked, not because they are
best suited to serve ALAC's obligation to ICANN. I will not give
specifics beyond that in a public forum and others are welcome to
disagree. I will simply state at this point that when I first
came into ALAC I detested the idea that the NomComm would choose
one-third of ALAC; I have fully changed my mind on that, though I
would make some changes to that process.
Welcome to democracy. You either run a (s)election process within
the community for it to appoints its representatives, or you get
an outside body to do this for you. Doing things internally might
indeed end up as a beauty contest. The risk of the outside body is
that their appointments are a hit and miss: we've had some
excellent appointments made through NomCom, just like we've also
had some where the candidate's expectations were completely
different than the reality of their tasks on the ALAC - which has
led to disappointment on all sides.
- appears to superficial airs of importance
Anyone who has read my writings or heard me speak, knows that I
feel ALAC is far far too wrapped up in its processes and
structures. How many iterations and rebirths and renames and
wasted person-hours have been attributed to (re-)forming ALAC's
policy working group. (I believe the most recent edition is the
"CPWG".)
People come and go and processes remain. In my opinion, it is the
processes that we have developed over years of trial and error,
that make-up the fabric of the multistakeholder model both within
At-Large but also within ICANN. Improving these processes
unfortunately takes time.
It is IMO an embarrassment that ALAC even has a separate policy
committee, ALAC should *be* the policy committee and anyone who
is not interested in policy activity shouldn't be on ALAC.
The fact is that not all volunteers participating in At-Large are
interested in, or good at, or have the knowledge to participate
effectively in Policy. The ALAC's two roles are policy & outreach
and some people both have the skills, the interest and the energy
to exclusively do outreach - and I do not see this as being a
problem at all. In fact, I find it derogatory that the only "ROI"
that is applied towards ALAC often is "how much policy work have
you done? How have you been influential in At-Large?" Many of the
people doing outreach on behalf of At-Large have done an amazing
job at demonstrating to their community that ICANN is a viable
multi-stakeholder system that can assume its missions and should
not be replaced by a UN-led initiative. So we all have our place.
I just wish that other parts of ICANN stopped their condescending
view that At-Large should only be judged on policy only. This
opens the door to failure on all counts, as ICANN's work is shared
between its technical mandate, policy definition mandate and
diplomatic efforts to keep the Internet ecosystem being run in a
multistakeholder way.
Then there's ALAC's traditional utter terror of being assertive
with an opinion contrary to the rest of the ICANN momentum:
If we rock the boat, will they cut travel funding?
If we rock the boat, will they enable an At-Large-elected Board
member?
If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS ?
If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS2?
If we rock the boat, will they refuse to fund ATLAS3?
I cannot think of one point of time since I joined At-Large 11
years ago where there was not one form or another of this fear,
and its associated chilling effect on ALAC's ability to truly
assert the public interest.y path.
To assert that we never rocked the boat is incorrect - but there
are ways to rock the boat. If it means blocking things by
obstructing processes in a non diplomatic way, the only thing that
will happen is that we'll be completely ignored altogether.
Nothing in the ICANN bylaws says that anyone has to listen to us.
In the second accountability and transparency review (ATRT2) we
fought to at least receive an acknowledgement from the Board for
our advice - something which we seldom had in the past and which
is now in the ICANN bylaws. If you are unhappy with the level of
influence the ALAC has in ICANN then complain about the ICANN
structure, where the GNSO makes policy and the ALAC produces
non-binding advice. In the past, ICANN went from ICANN 1.0 to
ICANN 2.0 when the open election process showed its limits. That
was triggered by very strong external forces across and outside
ICANN, including a number of senior people and organisations.
Perhaps is it time to look at ICANN again and turn the tables
around again, recognising the limited of the current SOAC
structure and designing something new where the end user, the
community, is again at the centre of ICANN and the decisions are
not made by parties that are deeply conflicted in that they have a
direct financial benefit from some of the policies they are
developing themselves.
But that sort of exercise would require the support of more than
just our ALAC or a sprinkling of Board members. The shift from
ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0 was triggered by a feeling that ICANN was
unstable and needed some stability - and had the support of the
then CEO, some Board members, and some significant governments and
organisations that had significant influence. Today the situation
is different: most of the influential parties would say that they
are satisfied with the current structure and that it is stable -
never mind the lack of public interest, which some allege is
actually just a perception since there is no such thing as the
public interest in their eyes - it's just a set of tick-box
scenarios. So if you want to do this, then may I suggest that you
go out there campaigning with the right people, the right
governments, the right contracted parties, the right private
sector, the right technical community and the right civil society
that will accompany you in this cause. I am not saying it is
impossible - all I am saying is that this road is challenging to
follow and requires a lot of work and a lot of allies.
Would I sacrifice ATLAS3 if ALAC could honestly and vocally
change ICANN to follow the public interest? In a heartbeat. But I
suspect that is a very unpopular PoV; boy do we we love our
U-shaped tables and "for the transcript record" assertions and
the Board actually sharing a room with us for an hour of
uselessness at each ICANN meeting.
(As if anyone gives a damn about the transcripts, wherever they
are...)
C'mon Evan - some meetings of the ALAC with the Board have indeed
been terrible, and I have probably led several of these back in
the day, whereas I might have to take some blame about the
failures. But since then, the relationship with the Board has
improved a lot. However, there is this systemic hurdle which I
allude to in the above paragraphs, which means that since Board
members cannot push for things now, for fear of having a budget
rejected, or worse still, being kicked out of the Board by the
community. Wonderful community powers.
I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and
when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are
missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is
impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the
ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an
advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard
and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except
taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating
the sending out of comments.
I am specifically addressing what I call the "who the hell are
you" phenomenon that occurs any time that ALAC expresses an
opinion that goes against the corporate inertia. "You don't speak
for anyone but yourselves, why should we listen to you?". This
objection successfully stymies what little activist ALAC
commentary actually gets produced.
This is by design of ICANN with the acquiescence of ALAC. We
*could* should we choose actually ask the whole world what it
thinks is important about the DNS; instead we play futile
diversity games that gloss over the fact that the 25 At-Largers
in the room at ICANN meets (well, the ones that engage in policy)
are only doing their collective best guess at the public interest.
If you want to kill your dog, declare that it has rabies. The "who
the hell are you" argument is a cheap way, used to weaken our
arguments and is a blow below the belt. Who the hell are they to
point the finger?
Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point
above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just
repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these
were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was
proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going
into implementation.
I don't see the current ALAC acknowledging the weakness of the
ALS infrastructure, the lack of emphasis on public education, or
any attempt to take ALAC beyond continuing to guess at the public
interest.
As others have said, the outside reviewers were ham-handed and
ignorant of what ALAC really is or needs to be. That doesn't mean
they couldn't accidentally be right on occasion. I don't know the
rationale behind what they proposed but am happy to make mine.
The At-Large Review implementation document has recognised that
the reviewers were right and solutions have been proposed for
implementation - and approved by the ICANN Board.
Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make
about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting
technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible
and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing
countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of
developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world.
Hardly. Tech has advanced by leaps and bounds, yet ICANN
continues to saddle us with generations-old crap like Adobe
Connect and Adigo. Let ALAC have more control over its choice of
tools; give the TTF a budget to pick the best tools and have
ICANN implement them based on the criteria we need.
(In my own org, new generations of tools such as WebRTC and Zoom
are particularly good with nodes of poor connectivity. Don't
knock it till you've tried it... I have. We have other proofs of
concept such as the ISOC InterConnect teleconference that seem
pretty inclusive to me. And I note that at least one RALO has
abandoned Skype in favour of WhatsApp for its internal chats.)
Judith has responded to this and she is 100% right. We now have
operational experience that the current tools used are better
suited for our purpose than alternative tools.
I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically
transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency
for ICANN.
Doing public education on the dangers of DNS abuse, or the
differences between gTLDs and ccTLDs, whether to buy defensive
domains, or the ways to address phishing or report abuse to law
enforcement ... constitutes marketing for ICANN?
The main issue that ALAC needs total independence in the content
of the education campaigns (so long as it's in scope), the
crafting of questions on the surveys and R&D, and the analysis of
the results of said research.
Without such total independence you are right, it's a propaganda
machine. But properly used it can alert the public to dangers and
problems that ICANN might want hidden.
OK - thanks for the explanation. How do you propose this is
funded? ICANN has slashed the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE)
budgets. Our own additional budget request envelope has been
slashed. CROP has been slashed. Where do you propose we find the
money to do this properly?
Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system
in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the
input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the
primary role of At-Large!
Domain names subtract value from the Internet, speculation and
abuse and shakedowns are rampant, the Board has claimed
unilateral rights to the auction proceeds (the issue that started
this tread), gaming of every process is rampant, ICANN refuses to
play regulator, and we're headed inevitably for a new round
before we know if the last one served the public interest.
So actually, yeah my expectations are that low. To me these days,
ICANN's approach to multi-stakeholderism is best described as
"there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you
declare". The inmates are running the asylum and only money
talks. ALAC is usually too timid to assert real change, and when
we do we get shut down for not being able to prove we speak for
the public.
My proposals offer an alternative path to fulfilling ICANN's
bylaw mandate, with which I am quite familiar.
See above - I am glad to see we are starting to agree that what we
need to focus on is ICANN, not At-Large or ALAC.
Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to
correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the
multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social
Media working group?
https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/ At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Group
I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership.
That's because someone may have volunteered me for the job but
obviously I haven't taken it. And as I have indicated about, I
would not participate in any communications activity that could
not truthfully and independently protect the public against the
consequences of ICANN policies. This WELL beyond countering fake
news.
Welcome back, Evan! I hope you and others who are lurking on the
At-Large mailing list, including influential old timers that used
to be very active and now feel jaded... and who post every now and
then, will fully take part in the social media working group and
the consolidate policy working group - where some real work takes
place to improve our influence and defend the interests of end
users. As for ICANN 3.0 - it's only by speaking about it that we
can gain the buy-in from all parties.
It's a constant struggle to make something out of mud at the
grassroots.
Kindest regards,
Olivier
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I am in a rather intense meeting and have not had the time to contribute to this thread, but will try a quick intervention here. The discussion of individuals vs ALSes is crucial. As Olivier pointed out, the recent At-Large Review judged them to not be worth the effort, a conclusion that we largely supported with a different conclusion on how to proceed. The concept of an ALS was a source of interested At-Large workers focusing on ICANN issues. That to a very large degree, never happened. But that is largely because we have NEVER tried to really get the ALS members involved, being content to deal with those few people designated as ALS Reps. Our current plan going forward is to use those ALSes as a conduit to their members. If it works, great. If it oesn't then it may well be the time to focus on phasing ALSes out. But I am optimistic. Bottom line is that except in a few relatively rare cases, work is done by people - wee need to find those people willing and interested to work, regardless of whether they are unaffiliated or hear about us through their ALS. Alan At 10/12/2018 07:30 PM, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond wrote: Dear Evan, please be so kind to find my comments inline below: On 10/12/2018 13:28, Evan Leibovitch wrote: Hi Christian, Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise. The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate. You make several allegations. Please clarify: - overtly politicized - appears to superficial airs of importance - designed to be utterly impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate I would disagree with the first two of your allegations and when it comes to the third point, I would say that you are missing the actual target: it is not the ALAC that is impotent in regard to service its bylaw mandate, it is the ICANN structure that puts the ALAC in a weak position as an advisory role that the ICANN Board can completely disregard and with no power whatsoever over policy processes, except taking part in discussions as individuals and coordinating the sending out of comments. Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. Have you read the At-Large review? I see from your point above that you have not. I am sorry but you are just repeating the very words of the At-Large review. And these were rejected by the community, an alternative wording was proposed and this was accepted by the Board and now going into implementation. Second, I am utterly flabbergasted to read the point you make about reducing travel and investing more into virtual meeting technologies. You are the first person to know how terrible and expensive Internet connectivity is in many developing countries and your point is basically to promote the voice of developed countries at the expense of the rest of the world. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas: - Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself) - surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS - analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity) Again, exact wordings given in the At-Large review, basically transforming the ALAC into a free, volunteer marketing agency for ICANN. Evan, have your expectations of the multistakeholder system in ICANN fallen so low that you are giving up bringing the input of end users into the ICANN processes? This is the primary role of At-Large! A reminder of the ICANN bylaws: (i) The At-Large Advisory Committee ("At-Large Advisory Committee" or "ALAC") is the primary organizational home within ICANN for individual Internet users. The role of the ALAC shall be to consider and provide advice on the activities of ICANN, insofar as they relate to the interests of individual Internet users. This includes policies created through ICANN's Supporting Organizations, as well as the many other issues for which community input and advice is appropriate. The ALAC, which plays an important role in ICANN's accountability mechanisms, also coordinates some of ICANN's outreach to individual Internet users. Now if you are looking at having a group that is there to correct fake news about ICANN, end users and the multistakeholder model, then why not join the At-Large Social Media working group? https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Social+Media+Working+Gr... I see you are listed, but have not confirmed your membership. Kindest regards, Olivier _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org<http://atlarge.icann.org/>
On Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 9:07 AM Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca wrote: Our current plan going forward is to use those ALSes as a conduit to their
members.
That's not the current plan, that's been the always plan since the ALS concept was invented. What has changed now? If it works, great. If it oesn't then it may well be the time to focus on
phasing ALSes out. But I am optimistic.
It's now been a dozen years or so. How much longer will it take to prove or disprove? Bottom line is that except in a few relatively rare cases, work is done by
people - wee need to find those people willing and interested to work, regardless of whether they are unaffiliated or hear about us through their ALS.
There are yet other ways of attracting them. - Evan
Hi Evan, Surveys and R&D into users' needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS, that you suggest, would indeed be very useful for the ALAC to base its policy advice upon, but I don't understand how this would facilitated by "eliminating" the ALS´es. Quite the contrary, ALS'es could be used by RALO's as instruments of such grassroot level survey work. As far as the policy role of ALS'es is concerned, at least some RALO's are making the effort - and getting results - in reaching experts in various policy areas within ALS'es and benefiting from their input into the process of drafting advice and comment. Best, Yrjö ________________________________ From: At-Large <at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 10:27 AM To: Alan Greenberg Cc: ICANN At-Large list Subject: Re: [At-Large] Say Whut! On Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 9:07 AM Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca<mailto:alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote: Our current plan going forward is to use those ALSes as a conduit to their members. That's not the current plan, that's been the always plan since the ALS concept was invented. What has changed now? If it works, great. If it oesn't then it may well be the time to focus on phasing ALSes out. But I am optimistic. It's now been a dozen years or so. How much longer will it take to prove or disprove? Bottom line is that except in a few relatively rare cases, work is done by people - wee need to find those people willing and interested to work, regardless of whether they are unaffiliated or hear about us through their ALS. There are yet other ways of attracting them. - Evan
Hi Evan Just wading in here because while what you are saying is true in that ALSes have not delivered for At-Large what was originally envisaged, but my view is that the real reason was because our (ALAC's) approach and expectations of them were flawed. We weren't seeing individuals within the ALSes to their best advantage. There was too much focus on just because only a few individuals were participating from within an ALS, it was of lesser value to us. Yet, having those few active and participating individuals has been really important to our work, and at the same time they have been active promoters of the work of At-Large and ICANN in the local communities of their respective countries. At RALO level, we are now encouraging these active ALS members to send us the evidence of this outreach to our RALO newsletters, to demonstrate how they are impacting the grassroots level, small steps at a time. As you say it has taken the ALAC and At-Large a long time to recognise that we need to value our individual members from among our ALSes and as they grow in their knowledge of our work and their confidence in their own participation, to encourage them to educate others and hopefully also engage them with us. But we must do more to help them with this education and training process, and we are already working on a plan with the GAC to try to get ICANN Org support for more appropriate resources that can help both governments and end-users to enhance their understanding of the issues that are important to ICANN. Although we may not have liked to hear what the Review contained, it was a wake-up call for At-Large. I therefore found it really encouraging that those who actively participated in the development of our Review Implementation Plan, were not just addressing the quick fixes of the At-Large proposal document, but were also focused on continuous improvement in all areas of the work of At-Large. We have now been given an opportunity to address what the underlying issues are for our communities, and one of the things we will be able to do at ATLASIII is to use those in our At-Large community who are already active in our working groups and discussions at both the RALO and ALAC levels and who have experienced the difficulties of engagement, to help us develop improvements in the way we do things with an aim of gaining more individual participants who are better informed, enthusiastic and active in the work we have to do in At-Large. Maureen On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 10:27 PM Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Dec 11, 2018, 9:07 AM Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca wrote:
Our current plan going forward is to use those ALSes as a conduit to their
members.
That's not the current plan, that's been the always plan since the ALS concept was invented. What has changed now?
If it works, great. If it oesn't then it may well be the time to focus on
phasing ALSes out. But I am optimistic.
It's now been a dozen years or so. How much longer will it take to prove or disprove?
Bottom line is that except in a few relatively rare cases, work is done by
people - wee need to find those people willing and interested to work, regardless of whether they are unaffiliated or hear about us through their ALS.
There are yet other ways of attracting them.
- Evan
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ALSes as a conduit to their members
Slowly but surely, at least here in NYC, the Readout program appears fruitful in this aspect. j -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast ---------------------------------------------------------------
On 13/12/2018 00:51, Joly MacFie wrote:
ALSes as a conduit to their members
Slowly but surely, at least here in NYC, the Readout program appears fruitful in this aspect.
- And in San Francisco. As an ALS (San Francisco Bay Area ISOC Chapter) we keep our members informed through the Readouts and through updates about key ICANN issues on our website/in the Chapter newsletters. However getting our members to actually participate is a tough call, mainly because it's quite hard to 'sell' At-Large and even harder for those with little background knowledge of ICANN to get up to speed quickly enough to be able to participate effectively. Cheers, Susannah — Susannah Gray President San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society Chapter www.sfbayisoc.org
j
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast ---------------------------------------------------------------
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I would certainly echo Suzannah's point. Here in Ottawa we are also trying to build our community on the ground. It is happening but slowly -- one person/group at a time. One just has to keep at it. But the ability to broaden our reach with technology is crucial. We don't have the funds to do a traveling road show. Not everyone is an ISOC chapter -- so ICANN needs to make tools like Livestream available to all groups and individuals in At Large who are doing outreach. Marita On 12/13/2018 12:27 PM, Susannah Gray wrote:
On 13/12/2018 00:51, Joly MacFie wrote:
ALSes as a conduit to their members
Slowly but surely, at least here in NYC, the Readout program appears fruitful in this aspect.
- And in San Francisco. As an ALS (San Francisco Bay Area ISOC Chapter) we keep our members informed through the Readouts and through updates about key ICANN issues on our website/in the Chapter newsletters.
However getting our members to actually participate is a tough call, mainly because it's quite hard to 'sell' At-Large and even harder for those with little background knowledge of ICANN to get up to speed quickly enough to be able to participate effectively.
Cheers,
Susannah
— Susannah Gray President San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society Chapter www.sfbayisoc.org
j
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast ---------------------------------------------------------------
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At-Large Official Site:http://atlarge.icann.org
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We are trying in Belgrade/Serbia to push IG dialog. Our experience is that academic discussion is not interested for users, they prefer practical issues, hot topics like e-payment, bitcoins, on line protection, while business users are interested for their part of business (intellectual property rights , illegal trading on line) and they like live multi-stakeholder discussion. Recently, two or three weeks ago we managed to organize 2h IG session, first hour we had people who are experienced with IG capable to explain what is ICANN, IGF, EuroDIG, topics etc. In second hour we talked about digital gap, education, on line trading, ethic and on line behavior and 2 hours were short, almost nobody of thirty visitor did not leave event and all of them signed initiative for establishing regular IG dialogue. Now we are planning to send this initiative to all stakeholders etc. I want to say that ICANN and At Large have to decide if experts are target or users, or both. Strategies or tactics are different and of course we have to come closer to users. It seems to me that most of people involved in ICANN and At Large stay to far from users , reasons are different and I don’t want to elaborate about this. Answer is simple, every stakeholder has its own interests and view. ICANN and At Large have to keep global view and help to all stake holders to participate, specially to users and to adopt discussion to that level. Through this entry level, lot of users will find useful answers and some of them will continue to participate in ICANN. Maybe I do not understand well what IG is, but for me it is the life governance and life is theory and practice, background and front. I understand that user experience all around the world is not the same, so topics will be different or discussion level will be different. Or maybe ICANN is corporation… just like registries and registrars. In that case there is no difference if we are on line or off line. Pozdrav/regards/поздрав Nenad From: At-Large [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Marita Moll Sent: Thursday, 13 December, 2018 18:47 To: at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [At-Large] Say Whut! I would certainly echo Suzannah's point. Here in Ottawa we are also trying to build our community on the ground. It is happening but slowly -- one person/group at a time. One just has to keep at it. But the ability to broaden our reach with technology is crucial. We don't have the funds to do a traveling road show. Not everyone is an ISOC chapter -- so ICANN needs to make tools like Livestream available to all groups and individuals in At Large who are doing outreach. Marita On 12/13/2018 12:27 PM, Susannah Gray wrote: On 13/12/2018 00:51, Joly MacFie wrote:
ALSes as a conduit to their members
Slowly but surely, at least here in NYC, the Readout program appears fruitful in this aspect. - And in San Francisco. As an ALS (San Francisco Bay Area ISOC Chapter) we keep our members informed through the Readouts and through updates about key ICANN issues on our website/in the Chapter newsletters. However getting our members to actually participate is a tough call, mainly because it's quite hard to 'sell' At-Large and even harder for those with little background knowledge of ICANN to get up to speed quickly enough to be able to participate effectively. Cheers, Susannah — Susannah Gray President San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society Chapter www.sfbayisoc.org j -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast --------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Interesting comments: In Kenya the Kenya ICT Action Network (www.kictanet.or.ke) has in the last two years been deliberate and intentional in bringing new voices into the Internet Governance conversation. The end result has been nomination of a Youth representative to the African IGF MAG (alumni of the Kenya School of Internet Governance. And participation of many youth in Internet Governance through the Digital Grass roots program. The Internet Society Kenya Chapter (an accredited ALS) www.internetsociety.or.ke has also been organizing webinars focused on the Internet Governance Forum and hosted a Youth convening on the Internet Governance Forum for the Digital Grassroots Ambassadors in the course of 2018. The ICANN 63 readout for the community was also organized by the Nairobi Engagement Centre for ICANN. In Kenya engagement with Internet Users are at the heart of the Internet Governance debate. In short ALs's are very active on the ground. Regards On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 9:39 PM Nenad Marinkovic <nenad@marinkovic.rs> wrote:
We are trying in Belgrade/Serbia to push IG dialog. Our experience is that academic discussion is not interested for users, they prefer practical issues, hot topics like e-payment, bitcoins, on line protection, while business users are interested for their part of business (intellectual property rights , illegal trading on line) and they like live multi-stakeholder discussion. Recently, two or three weeks ago we managed to organize 2h IG session, first hour we had people who are experienced with IG capable to explain what is ICANN, IGF, EuroDIG, topics etc. In second hour we talked about digital gap, education, on line trading, ethic and on line behavior and 2 hours were short, almost nobody of thirty visitor did not leave event and all of them signed initiative for establishing regular IG dialogue. Now we are planning to send this initiative to all stakeholders etc.
I want to say that ICANN and At Large have to decide if experts are target or users, or both. Strategies or tactics are different and of course we have to come closer to users. It seems to me that most of people involved in ICANN and At Large stay to far from users , reasons are different and I don’t want to elaborate about this. Answer is simple, every stakeholder has its own interests and view. ICANN and At Large have to keep global view and help to all stake holders to participate, specially to users and to adopt discussion to that level. Through this entry level, lot of users will find useful answers and some of them will continue to participate in ICANN.
Maybe I do not understand well what IG is, but for me it is the life governance and life is theory and practice, background and front. I understand that user experience all around the world is not the same, so topics will be different or discussion level will be different.
Or maybe ICANN is corporation… just like registries and registrars. In that case there is no difference if we are on line or off line.
Pozdrav/regards/поздрав
Nenad
*From:* At-Large [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] *On Behalf Of *Marita Moll *Sent:* Thursday, 13 December, 2018 18:47 *To:* at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org *Subject:* Re: [At-Large] Say Whut!
I would certainly echo Suzannah's point. Here in Ottawa we are also trying to build our community on the ground. It is happening but slowly -- one person/group at a time. One just has to keep at it. But the ability to broaden our reach with technology is crucial. We don't have the funds to do a traveling road show. Not everyone is an ISOC chapter -- so ICANN needs to make tools like Livestream available to all groups and individuals in At Large who are doing outreach.
Marita
On 12/13/2018 12:27 PM, Susannah Gray wrote:
On 13/12/2018 00:51, Joly MacFie wrote:
ALSes as a conduit to their members
Slowly but surely, at least here in NYC, the Readout program appears fruitful in this aspect.
- And in San Francisco. As an ALS (San Francisco Bay Area ISOC Chapter) we keep our members informed through the Readouts and through updates about key ICANN issues on our website/in the Chapter newsletters.
However getting our members to actually participate is a tough call, mainly because it's quite hard to 'sell' At-Large and even harder for those with little background knowledge of ICANN to get up to speed quickly enough to be able to participate effectively.
Cheers,
Susannah
— Susannah Gray President San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society Chapter www.sfbayisoc.org
j
--
--------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
---------------------------------------------------------------
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At-Large mailing list
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https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
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-- Barrack O. Otieno +254721325277 +254733206359 Skype: barrack.otieno PGP ID: 0x2611D86A
A lot of this conversation has devolved into a defence of ALSs, and I am hoping that that is not the sole focus on comment (positive or negative) on my larger point. The organizations that are ALSs can and should play a great role in Internet governance, and can produce some of our best policymakers and advocates. It is not a coincidence that so many of them are ISOC chapters, a fact that provides another nexus of participation in IG. However, I am asserting that dependence on the RALO/ALS infrastructure by ICANN as the source and destination for ALAC interaction with the world's end users is absolutely futile. Let's do the math. By ICANN's own count <https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Structures>, only one third of the world's countries have at least one ALS. But do the numbers even deeper. Assume an average membership of 5,000 for each of the 130 ALSs, which based on my observation is REALLY generous. The means a current MAXIMUM reach of 650,000 people, assuming that all of them are engaged in their ALS's ICANN activity. ITU estimates the number of Internet users at 3.2 billion, meaning that assuming 100% ALS engagement (which, let's face it, we are nowhere near) ALAC could be speaking to and hearing from AT MOST 0.02% of the Internet's users. Not only is that number really small, but that 0.02% is not the mainstream of users. ALSs are self-selected as having an interest in ICANN and/or Internet governance. These groups already have something of a clue about the issues by virtue of their interest. The *MASSIVE* challenge is to reach people who are significantly impacted by the tech and the policy *yet neither are nor should be involved in IG directly*. I am asserting that ALAC's challenge is to get the this *uninvolved world's* *informed opinion*. The "*informed*" part means that we need to get useful information out there, and by that I don't mean just being another channel for ICANN propaganda, I mean the information WE determine that the public needs to know even if that knowledge is ignored, hidden by or embarrassing to ICANN (and there's lots of that). ICANN has a broad communications and PR network and that's a good place to start. The "*opinion*" part means going WELL beyond canvassing ALSs, by that I mean occasional big scale Nielson/Ipsos type global surveys of the public mood, within the general public that day to day doesn't (and shouldn't need to) give a damn about ICANN or the DNS. One can have useful and necessary opinions about what's wrong with the local highway system without being a road planner, traffic police or auto mechanic. Looking at this as a RALO/ALS project is thinking WAY too small for ALAC to be effective in truly representing the public interest to ICANN. We need to reach out to a global audience of Internet users who will never even think of owning a domain yet is impacted every day by the decisions made at ICANN meetings. Abuse, confusion, speculation, the difference between gTLDs and ccTLDs, how to complain, user's rights, etc. There is plenty of information that ALAC may determine is useful to the public good that ICANN -- with its emphasis on the domain-name money path -- may not deem important. Then ALAC can determine the questions for the surveys, even if honest answers will be embarrassing. In the interest of transparency this is a huge missing piece of ICANN's pretence of multi-stakeholderism, and this feedback gives ALAC huge insight regarding what really matters to the public and where ALAC's focus should lie. Does the PUBLIC feel that a new round gTLDs are in its interest? Would it help or hurt their use of the Internet? Wouldn't that actually be really useful to know? Wouldn't this input give ALAC the gravitas needed when we wants to intervene in ICANN in a way that counters the industry inertia? Even the GAC doesn't have that. It's not that ALSs (and even RALOs) don't serve a useful purpose. They don't serve THIS purpose as they are too inside the Internet Governance bubble. We haven't done nearly enough to reach the opinions of the rest of the world, and "outreach" efforts attract at best a slightly more-diverse self-selected elite to the table. That's nowhere near enough and we need to stop thinking within our little IG bubble. ALAC desperately needs to escape that bubble for it to be relevant to ICANN, IMO. Cheers, - Evan On Thu, 13 Dec 2018 at 12:47, Marita Moll <mmoll@ca.inter.net> wrote:
I would certainly echo Suzannah's point. Here in Ottawa we are also trying to build our community on the ground. It is happening but slowly -- one person/group at a time. One just has to keep at it. But the ability to broaden our reach with technology is crucial. We don't have the funds to do a traveling road show. Not everyone is an ISOC chapter -- so ICANN needs to make tools like Livestream available to all groups and individuals in At Large who are doing outreach.
Marita On 12/13/2018 12:27 PM, Susannah Gray wrote:
On 13/12/2018 00:51, Joly MacFie wrote:
ALSes as a conduit to their members
Slowly but surely, at least here in NYC, the Readout program appears fruitful in this aspect.
- And in San Francisco. As an ALS (San Francisco Bay Area ISOC Chapter) we keep our members informed through the Readouts and through updates about key ICANN issues on our website/in the Chapter newsletters.
However getting our members to actually participate is a tough call, mainly because it's quite hard to 'sell' At-Large and even harder for those with little background knowledge of ICANN to get up to speed quickly enough to be able to participate effectively.
Cheers,
Susannah
— Susannah Gray President San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society Chapter www.sfbayisoc.org
j
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast ---------------------------------------------------------------
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At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
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-- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56
+1 Evan. What one would need, however, is a value proposition even if just good assurance it would be more than jaw (or finger) exercise. Perhaps, if I May, binding referendums, they've worked so well elsewhere. But that sort of thing, humor aside. On December 14, 2018 at 07:24 evan@telly.org (Evan Leibovitch) wrote:
A lot of this conversation has devolved into a defence of ALSs, and I am hoping that that is not the sole focus on comment (positive or negative) on my larger point. The organizations that are ALSs can and should play a great role in Internet governance, and can produce some of our best policymakers and advocates. It is not a coincidence that so many of them are ISOC chapters, a fact that provides another nexus of participation in IG.
However, I am asserting that dependence on the RALO/ALS infrastructure by ICANN as the source and destination for ALAC interaction with the world's end users is absolutely futile.
Let's do the math.
By ICANN's own count, only one third of the world's countries have at least one ALS. But do the numbers even deeper. Assume an average membership of 5,000 for each of the 130 ALSs, which based on my observation is REALLY generous. The means a current MAXIMUM reach of 650,000 people, assuming that all of them are engaged in their ALS's ICANN activity.
ITU estimates the number of Internet users at 3.2 billion, meaning that assuming 100% ALS engagement (which, let's face it, we are nowhere near) ALAC could be speaking to and hearing from AT MOST 0.02% of the Internet's users.
Not only is that number really small, but that 0.02% is not the mainstream of users. ALSs are self-selected as having an interest in ICANN and/or Internet governance. These groups already have something of a clue about the issues by virtue of their interest. The MASSIVE challenge is to reach people who are significantly impacted by the tech and the policy yet neither are nor should be involved in IG directly. I am asserting that ALAC's challenge is to get the this uninvolved world's informed opinion.
The "informed" part means that we need to get useful information out there, and by that I don't mean just being another channel for ICANN propaganda, I mean the information WE determine that the public needs to know even if that knowledge is ignored, hidden by or embarrassing to ICANN (and there's lots of that). ICANN has a broad communications and PR network and that's a good place to start.
The "opinion" part means going WELL beyond canvassing ALSs, by that I mean occasional big scale Nielson/Ipsos type global surveys of the public mood, within the general public that day to day doesn't (and shouldn't need to) give a damn about ICANN or the DNS. One can have useful and necessary opinions about what's wrong with the local highway system without being a road planner, traffic police or auto mechanic.
Looking at this as a RALO/ALS project is thinking WAY too small for ALAC to be effective in truly representing the public interest to ICANN. We need to reach out to a global audience of Internet users who will never even think of owning a domain yet is impacted every day by the decisions made at ICANN meetings. Abuse, confusion, speculation, the difference between gTLDs and ccTLDs, how to complain, user's rights, etc. There is plenty of information that ALAC may determine is useful to the public good that ICANN -- with its emphasis on the domain-name money path -- may not deem important. Then ALAC can determine the questions for the surveys, even if honest answers will be embarrassing. In the interest of transparency this is a huge missing piece of ICANN's pretence of multi-stakeholderism, and this feedback gives ALAC huge insight regarding what really matters to the public and where ALAC's focus should lie.
Does the PUBLIC feel that a new round gTLDs are in its interest? Would it help or hurt their use of the Internet? Wouldn't that actually be really useful to know? Wouldn't this input give ALAC the gravitas needed when we wants to intervene in ICANN in a way that counters the industry inertia? Even the GAC doesn't have that.
It's not that ALSs (and even RALOs) don't serve a useful purpose. They don't serve THIS purpose as they are too inside the Internet Governance bubble. We haven't done nearly enough to reach the opinions of the rest of the world, and "outreach" efforts attract at best a slightly more-diverse self-selected elite to the table. That's nowhere near enough and we need to stop thinking within our little IG bubble.
ALAC desperately needs to escape that bubble for it to be relevant to ICANN, IMO.
Cheers,
- Evan
On Thu, 13 Dec 2018 at 12:47, Marita Moll <mmoll@ca.inter.net> wrote:
I would certainly echo Suzannah's point. Here in Ottawa we are also trying to build our community on the ground. It is happening but slowly -- one person/group at a time. One just has to keep at it. But the ability to broaden our reach with technology is crucial. We don't have the funds to do a traveling road show. Not everyone is an ISOC chapter -- so ICANN needs to make tools like Livestream available to all groups and individuals in At Large who are doing outreach.
Marita
On 12/13/2018 12:27 PM, Susannah Gray wrote:
On 13/12/2018 00:51, Joly MacFie wrote:
> ALSes as a conduit to their members
Slowly but surely, at least here in NYC, the Readout program appears fruitful in this aspect.
- And in San Francisco. As an ALS (San Francisco Bay Area ISOC Chapter) we keep our members informed through the Readouts and through updates about key ICANN issues on our website/in the Chapter newsletters.
However getting our members to actually participate is a tough call, mainly because it's quite hard to 'sell' At-Large and even harder for those with little background knowledge of ICANN to get up to speed quickly enough to be able to participate effectively.
Cheers,
Susannah
— Susannah Gray President San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society Chapter www.sfbayisoc.org
j
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Hi Barry, On Fri, 14 Dec 2018 at 23:38, <bzs@theworld.com> wrote:
+1 Evan.
Thanks for the confidence. What one would need, however, is a value proposition even if just good assurance
it would be more than jaw (or finger) exercise.
That would be a necessary but future step, as the need will eventually come for ICANN to endorse such a major change in how money is spent on At-Large. I also anticipate that the potentially significant expense of activities such as global public surveys and information distribution will require a rethinking of ALAC's financing. Auction revenue? Outside fundraising? (Traditionally I -- and many others -- justifiably scoffed at the idea of an ICANN constituency soliciting outside philanthropic or developmental funding. But since this is intended as an information dissemination and gathering activity independent from ICANN's usual machine, it might fare better at fundraising from a public interest PoV.) As for providing a value prop.... the main rationale for doing this would be the actual realization of the ICANN bylaw pertaining to ALAC. Under the status quo, ALAC is wholly unable to actually provide the views of global end users to ICANN since its current base is minuscule, self-selected and tech-aware. What I propose would actually fulfil what the ICANN's bylaws demand of its ALAC.... what's that worth? I could expand at considerable length on the rationale, but first the idea needs buy-in, which is hardly assured from what I can tell. Status-quo inertia is strong indeed. Cheers, - Evan
ICAN is not neither world nor internet, so there are lot of structures doing IG business without ICANN, ICANN should reach them, not to wait like good old administrator in the post office waiting on client. And I do not know why we should talk who is more efficient , individuals or ALS, we should be on the same side, don’t we? So, fight with ICANN for getting better position, not within ALAC Pozdrav/regards Nenad From: At-Large [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch Sent: Saturday, 15 December, 2018 10:59 To: bzs@theworld.com Cc: ICANN At-Large list Subject: Re: [At-Large] Say Whut! Hi Barry, On Fri, 14 Dec 2018 at 23:38, <bzs@theworld.com> wrote: +1 Evan. Thanks for the confidence. What one would need, however, is a value proposition even if just good assurance it would be more than jaw (or finger) exercise. That would be a necessary but future step, as the need will eventually come for ICANN to endorse such a major change in how money is spent on At-Large. I also anticipate that the potentially significant expense of activities such as global public surveys and information distribution will require a rethinking of ALAC's financing. Auction revenue? Outside fundraising? (Traditionally I -- and many others -- justifiably scoffed at the idea of an ICANN constituency soliciting outside philanthropic or developmental funding. But since this is intended as an information dissemination and gathering activity independent from ICANN's usual machine, it might fare better at fundraising from a public interest PoV.) As for providing a value prop.... the main rationale for doing this would be the actual realization of the ICANN bylaw pertaining to ALAC. Under the status quo, ALAC is wholly unable to actually provide the views of global end users to ICANN since its current base is minuscule, self-selected and tech-aware. What I propose would actually fulfil what the ICANN's bylaws demand of its ALAC.... what's that worth? I could expand at considerable length on the rationale, but first the idea needs buy-in, which is hardly assured from what I can tell. Status-quo inertia is strong indeed. Cheers, - Evan
Dear Nenad, On 15/12/2018 13:01, Nenad Marinkovic wrote:
And I do not know why we should talk who is more efficient , individuals or ALS, we should be on the same side, don’t we? So, fight with ICANN for getting better position, not within ALAC
Exactly! One decision that came out of the At-Large Review is that all ALSes should accept individual members, and indeed they now do, and this is growing fast. The other message we are sharing in EURALO is that we do not only wish involvement from the official ALS representative, but from any other interested individuals in the ALS - thus the focus is much more on individuals. Same for the forthcoming third At-Large Summit: it is the individuals that are busy in At-Large that will be invited to apply to attend - whether they are from an ALS or independent of an ALS. The debate about At-Large's short term future is past. This has taken place during the At-Large Review. Now what we need to do is to work together to strengthen our community and get more influence in ICANN, whether in PDPs, CCWG and at Board level - and, dare I say, by also joining forces with like-minded other sub-communities in ICANN. Sometimes we might align with some of our friends on some topics and be on opposite sides of the argument for other topics. What matters is that our policy processes need to function and produce tangible outputs that reflect the view of end users out there, even if these views might on occasion be unpopular with some other parts of ICANN. Kindest regards, Olivier
On Sat, Dec 15, 2018 at 6:54 PM Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
Dear Nenad,
On 15/12/2018 13:01, Nenad Marinkovic wrote:
And I do not know why we should talk who is more efficient , individuals or ALS, we should be on the same side, don’t we? So, fight with ICANN for getting better position, not within ALAC
Exactly! One decision that came out of the At-Large Review is that all ALSes should accept individual members, and indeed they now do, and this is growing fast. The other message we are sharing in EURALO is that we do not only wish involvement from the official ALS representative, but from any other interested individuals in the ALS - thus the focus is much more on individuals. Same for the forthcoming third At-Large Summit: it is the individuals that are busy in At-Large that will be invited to apply to attend - whether they are from an ALS or independent of an ALS.
The debate about At-Large's short term future is past. This has taken place during the At-Large Review. Now what we need to do is to work together to strengthen our community and get more influence in ICANN, whether in PDPs, CCWG and at Board level - and, dare I say, by also joining forces with like-minded other sub-communities in ICANN. Sometimes we might align with some of our friends on some topics and be on opposite sides of the argument for other topics. What matters is that our policy processes need to function and produce tangible outputs that reflect the view of end users out there
As usually defined, "to act in the best interests of the average Internet Users" leaving aside Statistics about the number of Internet Users and any rationale or the absence of it on how many ALSs it would take to represent them; At Large Leadership and ALAC have responsible Members and Leaders who have done their work with a sense of purpose and will continue to do. At Large would evolve to be of much greater value than as perceived now. Sivasubramanian M
, even if these views might on occasion be unpopular with some other parts of ICANN.
Kindest regards,
Olivier _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
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I differ with Evan here in a few small but critical ways. I see a continuing role for ALS within the At-Large context. This aside, I have always supported the inclusion of individuals in the At-Large membership structure because I fully recognize that even as an ALS provides an institutional framework for aggregating lots of users and their views, it is the individual who turns up ready for work in review teams and PDPs.
From where I sit, I support reviews of all kinds, operational and structural. I have personally participated in them and their charters considered, strongly support them in exercise and intent. Given the opportunity for a continuing engagement of the review team in implementation, I'm even more hopeful that the opportunity to valorize work is possible.
I tend to subscribe to the view that results do matter. And for them to continue so to do, reflection is always important for effective organisation and governance. There is another added personal value to participating in reviews; is the surest way for one to get a deep understanding of what matters in ICANN. -Carlton ============================== *Carlton A Samuels* *Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 7:28 AM Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Christian,
Given my experiences and observations... While I have totally stayed away from the last At-Large review, I did one myself as a personal mental exercise.
The conclusion I came to is that the current structure underneath ALAC is overly politicized, appeals to superficial airs of importance, and is at its core designed to be utterly impotent in regard to serving its bylaw mandate.
Were I to be engaged in a real exercise to enable ALAC to serve its bylaw mandate, I would wish to eliminate ALSs and move to fully individual membership in RALOs. I would reduce travel and invest more in vitual meeting technologies. I would also concentrate ALAC activity in ONLY three areas:
- Creation and distribution of plain language public education on the DNS and how it affects public use of the internet (written independently of ICANN itself)
- surveys and R&D into public needs and opinions about domain names and the DNS
- analysis of the result of such research, and development of ICANN input based on that (both in original policy initiatives and response to existing activity)
Any takers? I'm happy to engage if any interest exists. My rationale behind this is quite deep and I'm happy to expand if interest exists. ___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018, 11:45 AM Christian de Larrinaga <cdel@firsthand.net wrote:
Given the clarity of these two comments. Maybe it is time to consider a straw poll over what future role and activity At Large participants feel is viable? Given the experience of the continuous perilous undermining of the Internet edge by every digital miner with a pickaxe, shovel or stick of dynamite?
Christian
Carlton Samuels wrote:
Yessir, I can recall your exact words to me so long ago; waste of time, decision already made. The reasoning you offered was bold, too.
I was interested at one point. Then when it was too clearly a bridge too far, I retired to the shadows.
A congressman from Texas once told a writer I truly loved that in politics you have no right to call yourself a politician if you cant drink their whiskey, take their women and money and still vote against them. Theres a lesson there somewhere.
The arguments you hear on this or that are stimulating for a policy wonk. But quite frankly at this point much of what the At-Large does is margin-gathering.
Someone has to. And we live in hope.
-Carlton
On Mon, 10 Dec 2018, 1:07 am Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com <mailto:evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:
So... Do all of you who sank your valuable time into that where-do-the-auction-funds-go sham of a process feel a little betrayed now?
How many more times will we continue to play this futile game?
The fix is always in. Let the "community" thrash about with well-meaning but big-picture-pointless debate, then swoop in at the end to remind where the ultimate decision lies. It lies with the money.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I got fooled enough with the Applicant Support process, the CCT and a few others. Yeah, it's more than one but at least I can say I know the experience intimately. But the aftermath of these efforts (or lack thereof) is why you don't see me wasting my time on subsequent ones. (Cue the theme music from "CSI:Miami".)
Countless of my colleagues continue the good-faith attempt to disprove Einstein's definition of insanity(*), unsuccessfully. I love my ALAC friends (I've literally invited you to my home) and it pains me to watch the story repeat so often.
But sooner or later the collective massochism and denial has to end. Turnover in ALAC is low enough to have plenty of veterans around who should know better.
Stop playing the game. Challenge the rules instead. Perfect example: why is ALAC involved in the minutiae of "subsequent procedures" for new rounds of gTLDs without having even challenged the rationale for new rounds at all? Also, I've previously spoken at length about ALAC's sad longtime choice to respond to the agendas of others rather than even try to set its own.
Monied interests overpower us politically by orders of magnitude, and without a regulatory role ICANN has no incentive to push against the money. This needs to be changed, or others will change it from the outside.
I remind that we are now living through a period of time in which awful political choices are being made, all over the world, in desperate moves to disrupt deaf and corrupt status quo. ICANN and ALAC ignore this trend at their danger.
___________________ Evan Leibovitch, Toronto @evanleibovitch/@el56
(*) that may not have ever actually been said by Einstein, but it's a useful phrase regardless of source.
On Dec 9, 2018 12:34 AM, "Carlton Samuels" <carlton.samuels@gmail.com <mailto:carlton.samuels@gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/07/dot_web_review/
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participants (25)
-
Alan Greenberg -
alberto＠soto.net.ar -
Barrack Otieno -
bzs＠theworld.com -
Carlos Raul Gutierrez -
Carlton Samuels -
Christian de Larrinaga -
Evan Leibovitch -
Evan Leibovitch -
Holly Raiche -
Javier Rua -
Johan Helsingius -
John More -
Joly MacFie -
Judith Hellerstein -
Marita Moll -
Maureen Hilyard -
Nenad Marinkovic -
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond -
parminder -
Roberto Gaetano -
Sivasubramanian M -
sivasubramanian muthusamy
-
Susannah Gray -
Yrjö Länsipuro