Dear Roberto,
On 14/06/2021 12:18, Roberto Gaetano
via CPWG wrote:
At today's session on "End User Participation in ICANN PDPs and their Role within the ICANN ecosystem” we had different opinions on how to deal with the situation in which At-Large does not reach a consensus position.
This has happened on many occasions in the past.
Whenever the At-Large Community and therefore the ALAC does not
reach consensus, the topic under question is either not address in
the Statement, or the Statement itself is not issued.
When it comes to positions to take in a PDP, this has also happened
on rare occasions in the past and the position was either amended to
satisfy the majority or not the ALAC took no position - or defaulted
to its default position that it had reached according to past ALAC
advice.
So I do not see the issue of "no consensus" as either new, nor
significant. The ALAC has processes to follow to reach consensus and
sometimes there is no consensus, it's just a part of life.
Now the issue which I found more significant, and mentioned by, I
think it was Jonathan Zuck, on the call, was the notion that the
ALAC position could be a "minority position". That has a deeper
consequence. As a member of the ICANN SO/AC/SG/C microcosm, the ALAC
is indeed just one of the organisations, thus if it hold a position
by itself, it is in a minority and thus holds a "minority opinion".
But it is possible to argue that the ALAC is representing the
interests of end users, which is by now several billion people, thus
the majority of people affected by the policy. We immediately land
in the contested zone of "who do you represent" and "what is your
legitimacy", "you can't represent end users", "you are a bunch of
self-selected power hungry... yadda yadda yadda....." and the rest
is history.
Kindest regards,
Olivier