All is not well in the land of GNSO reform. I attach a copy of the now Board adopted CSG transitional charter. As you may know this was changed at the last minute by staff and the following text was deleted: ------------------------------------------------------------- Art 4.2 DELETION of a clause to prevent inappropriate allocation of a new constituency by the Board: "provided that such constituency, as determined by the unanimous consent of the signatories to this charter, is representative of commercial user interests which for the purposes of definition are distinct from and exclude registry and prospective registry, registrar, re-seller or other domain name supplier interests". Note art 1.1 remains: "CSG represents the views of users and connectivity providers". ------------------------------------------------ Art 4.2 was inserted because of our concern about new constituencies with supplier interests being placed in the CSG. This concern is now made more real by the proposed staff change to the by-laws. A proposed new bylaws section 5.4 states : "Any group of individuals or entities may petition the Board for recognition as a new or separate Constituency in the Non-Contracted Parties House". That is ALL new constituencies must be in our House. --------------------------------------------------- This destroys the balance in the House concept of dividing user from supplier interests. 5.4 means there is a strong likelihood that interests associated with R&Rs will be able to dilute the effectiveness of the Users House. This is not theoretical. There are pending constituency applications from: City TLDs (registries and would be registries) IDNs (strong registry interests) And talk of a registry operator and a reseller constituency. ------------------------------------------------------ To date I have made comments to Public Comments on this issue and asked Bruce Tonkin, one of the GNSO-elected Board members, to ensure the Board at least discusses the issue this week. The by-laws are due to be voted on this Thursday Aug 27. We are also in discussion with our CSG colleagues but have not yet seen an outcome. We may yet be able to rely on art 1.1 in the CSG charter but it is somewhat thin comfort. Philip leaves us with the issue of our veto given the uncertainty over new constituencies with no home to go to (eg City TLDS, registry operators) etc. Our options are: 1. Live with the veto deletion (and rely on article 1.1 to fight any constituency allocation we dislike) and nothing more. 2. Live with the veto deletion (and rely on article 1.1 to fight any constituency allocation we dislike) and register a written protest on process. 3. Fight the veto deletion on the grounds of bottom-up and process. My instinct is option 2 (but happy with option 1 as I made a statement on process on Council last week) Comments? Philip