Hi folks, Before I comment on the charter, I'd like to know why it was posted on an "internal" mailing list. This is contrary to our past vote. "The BC Officers have agreed it is time for the current membership to vote to EITHER continue this service OR move to an open un-moderated list with archiving. " (the words "EITHER" and "OR" were in bold text in the original .doc file sent on March 23, 2009) Thus, the majority of the BC members explicitly voted to DISCONTINUE the private list --- it was a clear mandate. The BC membership rejected the option of the continuation of any moderated and private list, as per the words we voted upon. The draft charter should have been posted to the public list, as no other list is legitimate. I find many of the new terms of the draft charter to be contrary to the goals of transparency and accountability. They tend towards explicit censorship and/or self-censorship. They discourage debate on important ICANN and BC topics. They continue to be anti-democratic and unaccountable as to how BC fees and expenditures are set, with no elected Secretary and no elected Treasurer. Members would not be able to see the general ledger of the constituency's spending, as is possible elsewhere (and indeed ICANN's budget process is public). A false sense of "civility" is chosen over "truth." However, I shall comment further in a future post, once it's clear that it's fine to post on the public mailing list, instead of some hidden "internal" list. Sincerely, George Kirikos 416-588-0269 http://www.leap.com/