Don't think I can post to the GNSO Council list, so will an NCUC Councilor please pass along this message. Thank you! Robin ---- Dear GNSO Councilors: It is completely unacceptable for the structure of the new NCSG to be defined and shaped by commercial users and contracting parties. Noncommercial stakeholders can and will define their own structure suitable to themselves and not be manipulated by other stakeholder groups who might seek to undermine its effectiveness. It is naïve and disingenuous to pretend that the different SGs don't have competing and often conflicting interests. We note that no one has invited NCUC or ALAC to participate in defining a new structure for the Commercial SG, or the Registrar and Registry SGs. This kind of discrimination among SGs will discourage additional noncommercial entities from participating in ICANN's GNSO. Please note that NCUC has already proposed a structure for the NCSG that has the overwhelming support of the noncommercial stakeholders currently active in ICANN. We have conveyed it to At Large, discussed its principles in public meetings in Cairo, and are in conversations with staff about it now. While we welcome efforts to amend it from new constituency proponents and relevant members of At Large, that proposal will serve as the basis for any NCSG proposals that go to the Board. We have no objection in principle to working with At large members and RALOs in this process, and as noted before we have already tried to include them in our ongoing process. But we also note that individual or organizational At Large members may also be commercial users and thus ineligible to join a future noncommercial SG, and thus have no legitimate role to play in the definition of our structure. The Board Governance Committee has made it clear on numerous occasions that Stakeholder Groups themselves should play a leading role in defining their structure. Explicit statements to that effect have been made by Roberto Gaetano, former Board members and BGC member Susan Crawford, and Harald Alvestrand. This is, quite obviously, the right approach. Best, Robin Gross Chair of Non-Commercial Users Constituency IP JUSTICE Robin Gross, Executive Director 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 USA p: +1-415-553-6261 f: +1-415-462-6451 w: http://www.ipjustice.org e: robin@ipjustice.org