Bill, you wrote:

Lots of people don't recognize a singular holy obligation to get involved in RAA issues. But if you can patiently lay out the case for why people should care, sans the dripping sarcasm, I would certainly pass it along again and encourage people to consider it alongside all the other issues they're working on.

I prefer the term satire. But actually: If you don't see the connection between the RAA and consumers and the public interest, that concerns me, because you should, and so should any group claiming to represent the public interest. You shouldn't need me to lay out a case. You ought to consider reviewing some of the user comments to ICANN over the past year or two, and it should be obvious. I've seen your work on the IRT, but: There's no one on the NCUC representing the public interest on the registrant abuse policy working group, for instance. When the WHOIS study issue came around, the NCUC chose to register a meaningless protest rather than contributing anything of meaning, putting you right there with the RyC and ISP constituencies. Is that really where all your new, diverse membership is at? You've got all these great public interest groups interested in ICANN participation but they don't really care about the issues except for how civil society is appropriately represented in the GNSO? Here's where some bridges can be built. You wrote:

If ALAC folk want to get together with NCUC folk to explore areas of common concern and think about how we can move forward more productively, great, I/we reached out and tried to create a space for that. If you don't want to, ok, don't, but then please no complaints about NCUCers not working with you on RAA or anything else. Your call. I'll be at the reception Monday night, people will go out afterwards, come along or don't, as you like.

Thank you for doing that. Your effort is to be commended, you're a likable, intelligent person, and you were the most articulate voice at the OECD meeting last year. However, you're not the chairman of the NCUC, nor are you the former and obviously still influential chairman of the NCUC, and we have heard nothing, zip nada zilch, from them on any of the topics still of mutual concern to your group and the ALAC. And whether I show up for a drink or not, or complain or not, shouldn't be influencing anyone in your group about participating in ICANN policy activity of importance to the public interest. -----Original Message-----

From: William Drake <william.drake@graduateinstitute.ch> Sent: Oct 22, 2009 7:51 PM To: At-Large Worldwide <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?

Hi Beau

On Oct 23, 2009, at 12:26 AM, Beau Brendler wrote:

...

Bill, I'm surprised by this note. You wrote:

...

I exchanged a number of messages with Beau, Alan and the NCUC in March- June trying to encourage cooperation on the registrants' rights charter, and I wrote to you saying please get involved and help take a lead if you have issues---no response. And after you flamed us for voting in MC to allow the process to move forward and then other stuff happened around the charter, it became hard to get anyone interested. I don't know all the history, but apparently there are people who would rather hari kari than try to work with you. I don't think that's an indictment of NCUC.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the RAA work seems to have come full circle, and I now find myself asked to co-chair another RAA working group, half of which is supposed to write up the registrants' rights charter, the other half, with Steve Metalitz chair, to talk content and amendments. When asked, I sort of scratched my head, as I thought that was all done and the NCUC/NCSG and its hundreds of international organizations representing la creme du societe civile had stepped up to do it, but apparently they have done absolutely rien de tout, or Jacques du Merde, since I dropped the ball in March -- as Milton, Robin, and, sigh, now you, repeatedly remind the public. If I am wrong about this, please point me to the definitive body of work the steadily swelling, enlightened ranks of Kansalaisjärjestöjen has left in its wake, so it may enlighten me as I go forward to carry the dropped torch.

I said nothing about you dropping any balls, zip nada nothing. I said only that I'd written to you back when I was trying to get NCUC interested. I understand you're sensitive about various past interactions with certain NCUC personas but please leave me out of it and don't process every communication from anyone in NCUC through the same filter, it serves no more purpose than me taking a message from one ALACer as indicative of how everyone in ALAC thinks. Danny was saying NCUC's not done anything on RAA and I was simply saying here's what I did (not all that much, just tried to get the conversation going) and here's what happened (nobody was too interested, for various reasons).

...

Danny is correct when he points out there is not a single representative of Shoqërisë Civile on either of the current groups, to my knowledge, though there are representatives from the contracted parties. Actually, on the registrants' rights document group there is not a single representative other than me. We are supposed to generate results 30 days after Seoul, so there's lots of work to do. Most of what I am using is based, by the way, on what ALAC did (with Danny's leading contribution) more than two years ago, along with what AUDA (an industry group) did five years ago (http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2004-04/ ).

I do recognize this is an important issue and I wish noncommercial people were more interested in engaging on it. I even tried reaching beyond the cloistered world of ICANN to the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles in IGF and the CSISAC in OECD and said hey there's this charter effort it's important let me know if you want to get involved---nothing. I can't force anyone to be committed to a topic (in truth, unless one is pretty into registrant contract conditions and such, the issues may seem rather obscure) or desirous of entering into a particular collaboration. Maybe if we have some effective bridge building people will start to come around. If instead what they get is assaults and snarkiness probably they will remain uninterested. I know I am, at this moment.

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Perhaps the PhD-exclusive GigaNet think tank (I caught your presentation at the OECD meeting in Seoul a year or so ago, where you and I first met) would like to dispatch a handful of PhDs to give us some recommendations on this important matter of Internet governance? Or the NCUC might be able to contribute one or two lawyers? I am neither. The Internet user community needs your help.

I don't see the point of being snarky about it, Beau. Lots of people don't recognize a singular holy obligation to get involved in RAA issues. But if you can patiently lay out the case for why people should care, sans the dripping sarcasm, I would certainly pass it along again and encourage people to consider it alongside all the other issues they're working on.

...

You also wrote:

...

I don't know all the history, but apparently there are people who would rather hari kari than try to work with you [Danny].<

Danny has been bitingly critical of ALAC, and there have been many occasions when I have taken his comments personally and walked away from the keyboard in anger. However, in my three years' experience, he usually refrains from personal attacks, and usually strives to be factually accurate, at least in his ALAC criticisms. He's also a volunteer with a full-time job that's not paid through some sort of professional internet governance concern, which is to say, like most people who use the Internet. This part of your note is alarmingly personal, reminiscent of the tactics of NCUC leadership over the last six months, and I'm disappointed to see it.

Sorry, but I don't take it all that well when someone I've never met and have only exchanged a couple of lines with basically calls me a liar and propagates paranoid fantasies about me and people I know, especially when I am trying to overcome that sort of thinking and say hey let's just get together and talk. His message was alarmingly personal, his comments on NCUC were not remotely factually accurate, and he was clearly telling ALAC people they should not want to work with NCUC (and in the same breath, NCUC's a bunch of jerks because they haven't wanted to collaborate on this!). And we are all volunteers, I don't get paid dime one for this and it has zip to do with my day job, so I'm not inclined to spend cycles being pissed on in public by a stranger based on his past conflicts with other people before I came around. Sorry.

If ALAC folk want to get together with NCUC folk to explore areas of common concern and think about how we can move forward more productively, great, I/we reached out and tried to create a space for that. If you don't want to, ok, don't, but then please no complaints about NCUCers not working with you on RAA or anything else. Your call. I'll be at the reception Monday night, people will go out afterwards, come along or don't, as you like.

Best,

Bill _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann...

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