Dear Council colleagues,
Below for your information is a copy of a
letter sent on behalf of the NCSG to the Board of
Directors, which was received by the Board (via
Bruce Tonkin's kind intercession) on 19 June.
Bruce says the Board would be interested to
meet and discuss the broad concerns about the
multistakeholder model raised in the
reconsideration request, and also confirms that
the request itself will be discussed at the BGC
meeting of 25 June.
If and when we have any scheduling information
about a meeting with the Board, we will share it
so that others may be aware.
All the best,
Maria
Dear ICANN Board of Directors:
I am writing to you on behalf of the
Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) and other
concerned members of the ICANN community regarding
the harmful implications to the community-led
multi-stakeholder policy development model if the
ICANN Board decides to adopt the rationale
provided in the recommendation of the Board
Governance Committee (BGC) in response to the
NCSG's Request for Reconsideration (13-3). The
rationale provided in the BGC's recommendation,
which appears to be drafted by over-reaching
lawyers, attempts to set a precedent that ICANN
staff can over-rule the GNSO Council on policy
decisions at its own discretion. This decision
has alarmed community members beyond the NCSG and
beyond those who were originally concerned with
the underlying issue that NCSG was initially
probing of staff's adoption of the "TM+50" policy
for the Trademark Clearinghouse.
The GNSO Council expressed concern about the
BGC decision rationale at length during council's
13 June meeting; and I encourage all Board Members
to listen to
audio
recording of the GNSO Council discussion or
read the attached transcript to get a better
understanding the concerns of members of several
different GNSO stakeholder groups.
The rationale provided in the BGC decision, if
adopted by the entire board, would cement the
change in ICANN's policy development model away
from the bottom-up community-led governance model
to a top-down staff-driven model with no checks on
abuses or poor staff decisions. If the rationale
provided in this BGC decision is adopted by the
Board, which goes well beyond the narrow issue
presented to it, ICANN threatens to undermine its
own legitimacy as a global governance institution,
and it loses the ability to label itself as a
community-led bottom-up model for Internet
governance.
We understand the BGC's recommendation is on
the agenda to be adopted on 25 June 2013 by the
Board's New gTLD Program Committee (NGPC). Given
the Board's record of adopting all 15 BGC
decisions that have come before it in the last ten
years, there is concern that this BGC
recommendation will be similarly adopted by the
Board with little understanding or discussion of
the harm to ICANN's legitimacy and the
multi-stakeholder model that this precedent
threatens. The handling of this reconsideration
request has also raised concerns about ICANN's
"accountability" mechanism, which appears to allow
the same legal team that created and adopted a
policy to later evaluate the legitimacy of that
policy's adoption.
We therefore respectfully request
that the Board meet with concerned members of
the community including NCSG to permit a more
complete discussion and understanding of the
concerns raised by the rationale provided in
the BGC decision and to allow for appropriate
adjustments to the decision before it is
adopted by the Board. We would
gladly meet with the Members of the ICANN Board
during the Durban Meeting or before, at the
Board's convenience, to discuss this decision and
welcome all members of the community to join in
the discussion. Please let us know if the Board
is available to meet with NCSG and others in the
community on this crucial issue at your earliest
convenience. Thank you for your consideration.
We look forward to fruitful discussions going into
Durban and stand ready to provide whatever
assistance is needed.
Truly,
Robin Gross
NCSG Chair