Dear Evan,

I led the team that reviewed and drafted the Pacific Digital Framework that reports to the Regional ICT Ministerial under the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific region. We held extensive consultations on issues in the Pacific related to the internet ecosystem for member states.

The issues that Maureen raised are consistent with findings on the ground. Maureen has also in the past been chair of an ALS that has extensive membership of a wide "sample of end users" and alot of what she is raising is the consensus view of the Pacific region and these have been taken through past consultative methods through surveys etc.

Maureen, together with Tracey Hackshaw is co-chair of the Dynamic Coalition of Small Islands Developing States. 

In other hats, we also work closely with both Government and UN agencies in running national consultations in Asia Pacific countries and a recent one this year was to launch a project where Nepal, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Fiji and Samoa are pilot countries. This of course is in the are of ICT (ecosystem), gender, access to finance. The issues within Asia Pacific are immensely different from Canada and North America.

In fact, Asia Pacific contributes the largest volume to global e commerce and it has the largest end users. Within our region, we have well established protocols for gauging and gathering our positions and these are diverse and varied.

The views espoused by our elected representative Ms Maureen Hilyard, Ms Justine Chew, Mr Tijani Benjamaa, Mr Olivier Crepin Le Blond are consistent with the region's views. 

I would suggest that you focus on your consultations within your ALS and region which is NARALO and let us within APRALO focus on ours.

Best Wishes,
Sala



On Thu, 8 Aug 2019, 4:51 pm Evan Leibovitch, <evan@telly.org> wrote:


On Thu, 8 Aug 2019 at 03:16, Justine Chew <justine.chew@gmail.com> wrote:

On "... imploring ALAC to concentrate its comments on those issues with demonstrable effect on end users (abuse, confusion, stability, etc)"

1. I try to be mindful of that what applies to me may not, whether in part or in full, applies to other end-users and vice versa;

We're in agreement here. The difference is that IMO ALAC is not at all mindful of global end users because it really doesn't know what they want. It's making up positions based on guesses and faith and wishful thinking.

I want nothing more than for At-Large to survey the landscape of end users to determine what is important, rather than self-righteously guessing at it. The self-interested, self-selected, time-available people involved in ALAC mostly do not at all understand the needs of those who use the Internet yet will never register a domain and never want to. I fully agree that we need to be aware of what applies to other end-users; however ALAC and ICANN are grotesquely out of touch with what is outside the bubble. Inside we are intimately exposed to all the little politics of who-owns-what or who-deserves-what, issues that outside the bubble are completely irrelevant.

For myself, I have gone out of my way to talk to non-tech-savvy Internet users, including family members, refugees, the generation above me, about what is important for Internet use.  Everyone in ALAC needs to do this, you may be surprised by the results.

Yes, ALAC is one of the most geographically diverse parts of ICANN and least conflicted, which is why I still have hope for it. But populated as it is with governance wonks and people experienced in the DNS, it is so massively out of touch with "the billions" as to be incapable of fulfilling its bylaw mandate.

Many people here have asserted that issues such as Applicant Support and geo names affect end users, but those assertions are based on faith, nearly a religion. They have yet to provide a single shred of evidence of end-user relevance beyond gut instinct. Old arguments that suggest that domains can protect necssary privacy, or bring together communities, have proven to be absolute nonsense through the realities of the last decade. Despite a dozen years passing and hundreds of new domains out there, not a single success story exists of how a culture was preserved or a whistleblower was protected because of new TLDs (or because of domains at all).

ALAC needs to be driven by evidence and facts rather than instinctive dogma. Challenge assumptions, most of them are wrong.

- Evan

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