Dear Evan,

I must admit that I really do not understand what you are trying to achieve by huffing and puffing on the CPWG mailing list. You appear to be engaged in a venture to question the ALAC's legitimacy in anything it does - but this debate was past after the second At-Large review and it's too late to keep on going back to the stone age and remember the Wars of Religion. As for the ALAC being a laughing stock, if they can do better, I invite these people rather than laughing in their armchair, to come in and help us draft comments that have an impact, just like the incredibly talented people that have done so recently in this Working Group and that are spending a considerable amount of time contributing to the ICANN multi-stakeholder policy processes.

When it comes to NCUC, NPOC, At-Large, the BC, the IPC and other constituencies, there are many people who are active in more than one of these constituencies. Unless you are aiming to run a system that is a totalitarian regime, I would suggest that you allow that to happen. The world is not just black or white, left or right, hot or cold, nice or nasty. Let people be free to help where they can and not put them in a box/jail.

Now let's please get back to discussing policy rather than whipping ourselves into a frenzy.

Kindest regards,

Olivier

On 10/08/2019 03:49, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
On Fri, 9 Aug 2019 at 20:55, Jonathan Zuck <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org> wrote:
I think it's not about who we are but what interests we endeavor to represent. The NCUC only concerns themselves with registrants.

That was my original point -- That there is a body already within ICANN representing the interests of individual registrants, in theory leaving ALAC as the body uniquely positioned to speak for non-registrant end-users. That the body charged with representing registrants is remiss in its duty should not be ALAC's problem, yet the resulting spillover also causes ALAC to be remiss in ITS duty.

The logic should be easy because there are more than 4 billion Internet users and about 350 million domains in play total. So even assuming only three domains per registrant (and we know that is very far from reality), registrants are outnumbered by non-registrants by more than 30 to 1. Yet ALAC has a problem because of its high proportion of self-selectred Internet experts and insiders, most of whom either own a domain or have evaluated the need to have one. Our own makeup is heavily skewed against the non-registrant 95% because most in At-Large simply don't share their experience. The original theory was that the ALSs were going to be the way through which non-registrants would be able to participate in large numbers, but that intent has absolutely failed as most ALSs have turned out to be self-interested bodies such as ISOC and Internauta chapters or tech-focused NGOs. (Isn't that what the Review concluded?) Such participation brings people with needed skill and passion, but without the perspective of the 95% of the world who will likely never own a domain. And without a credible plan for speaking on behalf of the non-registrant 95%, ALAC's own credibility is at risk (arguably it's already shot and needs a reboot).

A few immediate remedies are possible while things are sorted out:
  • The NomCom is directed to make its ALAC selections non-registrants as at least a token effort at balance.
  • ALAC outreach needs to find people who are interested in end user issues who have no interest in buying domains.
  • ALAC itself must commit to understand its issues through a non-registrant lens before choosing to comment on them.
Longer term ALAC needs to engage in public surveys and research to guide its actions (and reactions) rather than its own elitist sense of what is right for end users. I daresay that the priorities of the billions wrt what is needed from ICANN differs widly from ALAC's current guesses.

- Evan

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