February 2009 - NA-Discuss - lists.icann.org

US Stimulus for Broadband in Rural America
by Glenn McKnight Feb. 16, 2009

Feb. 16, 2009

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100739283 -- Glenn McKnight 868 Corbetts Road Oshawa, Ontario L1K 2E1 905-434-6655 mcknight.glenn(a)gmail.com skype gmcknight http://newsocialmedia.wordpress.com

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A few questions for NARALO
by Dharma Dailey Feb. 16, 2009

Feb. 16, 2009

Dear NARALO colleagues, I created a brief survey to help NARALO members to collectively reflect on their ICANN related work. Findings will be presented at the Internet Users Summit in Mexico City. Responses will be aggregated and anonymized. There are no wrong answers, no trick questions. Whether you are coming to Mexico City or not, please take a few minutes to share your thoughts. I will accept survey results through Monday February 23. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fEwKsAoy8nzMbcM2M8CYCA_3d_3d Best Regards, Dharma Dailey

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13 January 2009 Board Finance Committee Minutes
by Danny Younger Feb. 16, 2009

Feb. 16, 2009

http://www.icann.org/en/minutes/minutes-bfc-13jan09.htm excerpts: Reviewed comments from community on financial considerations of the new gTLD applicant guidebook (RFP) and responses General theme of financial-related comments was a desire to lower the evaluation fee and annual registry fee Proposed staff response is to recognize the complexity of the evaluation process and to take a very conservative approach for the first round of applications, with a review of the fees for the second round. Staff recommend to hold steady on the US$185k evaluation fee. In relation to the annual registry fees, staff suggests that, if a standard contract is agreed, the recurring annual registry fees can be lowered to $25k plus $0.25 per transaction if over 50k transactions per annum. Majority of committee in favor of proposed staff approach, but Raimundo Beca disagrees – thinks that the evaluation fee should be reduced to exclude recovery of historical costs, and that the evaluation fees should be collected on a pay as you go basis instead of an up-front with refunds available basis

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Who's Joining Up for the ALS Fair and Poster Session?
by Dharma Dailey Feb. 14, 2009

Feb. 14, 2009

Dear ALS's, The poster session Sunday night is going to be an informal "speed geek" / poster session event which gives you the chance to informally interact with the rest of At-Large. As Wolf Ludwig describes it: "The Fair and Poster Session is the only opportunity when/where all the ALSes attending the Summit get the chance to present themselves with own material, the day-to-day work of the organisation they represent, focus and goals of this work, regional, political and cultural context etc. – for the common cause of the Internet users. It’s a unique chance right at the Opening of the Summit for informal get-togethers, get-to-know-each-other, exchange of views and experiences, making contacts and for networking etc. This session can be crucial for the group dynamics among attending ALSes and for the whole subsequent Summit sessions." For those of you who haven't participated in such an event, it's low pressure and interactions tend to be short. There is a chance you might even have fun and get some unexpected conversations going with like minds. So who's stepping up to participate? Will you strut your stuff at the fair? Cheers, Dharma Dailey .................... Description of the Fair from the Summit program: ALS Faire and Poster Exhibition Opening Location TBC, 18:30 – 20:30 Sunday One of the highlights of the Summit is the opportunity for each ALS to exhibit their activities through the submission of posters, written material, audio and audiovisual works and online materials to the Faire and Poster Exhibition that will be on permanent display throughout the ICANN meeting for all meeting attendees to see. The opening event will give each ALS an opportunity to speak with others about the examples of their activities on display, and to look at what other ALSes have provided and speak one-on-one about their work in an informal, interactive atmosphere. The opening will feature hosted beer, wine, and soft drinks as well as hors d’oeuvres. The attendees from the ICANN Fellowship Programme will be joining the Summit delegates at this event, giving ALSes a chance to meet and speak to this group of attendees, who are all new to the ICANN community. ..................... Wolf Ludwig's amended and accepted proposal for the Fair: Name of Segment: Fair and Poster Session Tentative Time: 19:30 - 21:30 Role: Organisers: Wolf Ludwig (wolf.ludwig(a)comunica-ch.net) and Dharma Dailey (dharma(a)ethoswireless.com) Format: As the name indicates, this is a Fair and Poster Session where all the ALSes attending the Summit have the opportunity to present themselves with flyers, brochures, booklets, posters (or whatsoever hand-outs) in an inter-active way. The room/location should be spacey enough to accommodate at least 100 up to 150 people. There should be enough tables in the room – arranged in a U-style – that all ALSes can display the material they brought along on it (I would count with the display space of a Bistro style table (50 cm2/each) and pin-boards for the posters behind the tables. Chairs are (according to me) not needed because people should/will walk around to see what ALSes from different RALOs and parts of the world are presenting, chatting, walking on ... Language Requirements: As there is only a short welcome and introduction (5 to 10 min. max.) to the session foreseen, simultaneous interpretation in English, Spanish, and French can only be provided for this. Afterwards communication among participants will be informal and F2F and people have to help themselves according to their language capacities or ask friends for translation services. Brief Description: The Fair and Poster Session is the only opportunity when/where all the ALSes attending the Summit get the chance to present themselves with own material, the day-to-day work of the organisation they represent, focus and goals of this work, regional, political and cultural context etc. – for the common cause of the Internet users. It’s a unique chance right at the Opening of the Summit for informal get-togethers, get-to-know-each-other, exchange of views and experiences, making contacts and for networking etc. This session can be crucial for the group dynamics among attending ALSes and for the whole subsequent Summit sessions. At the end of this evening, participants will have a much better and broader understanding about type, focus, concerns, particularities and variety of ALSes in different parts of the ALAC world. It will be an important element in the community building and may facilitate discussions, debates and consensus-finding at ICANN’s first user Summit. Therefore, the format and conduct must be as informal and inter-active as possible. Participants: ALL attending ALS reps from all RALOs, ALAC-members and other interested ICANN participants. Materials: What ALS reps bring along with them for this Fair and Poster Session (flyers, brochures, booklets, posters). It will be in the respective working language of ALSes (no translation needed). The only question is what further technical equipment is needed for display or demonstration of ALS materials (see below). Audio Visual: The following audio visual equipment will be provided in each room: Microphones, both wired and wireless (for the Welcome and Introduction only and may be for the closure of the session). Power to use for laptops LCD projector package (screen, projector and table) Headphones for Interpretation in English, Spanish and French (for the opening part) There should be a special announcement on all RALO lists highlighting this event/Segment: Fair and Poster Session and asking all attending ALSes to bring info-material with them. In this circular mailing we can ask what type of special technical equipment is needed for their presentations at this session (besides the standard ones provided already). Wolf Ludwig, EURALO

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New York City plans to raise cash selling .nyc domains
by Danny Younger Feb. 14, 2009

Feb. 14, 2009

[excerpt] During a Thursday address, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said the ".nyc" domain will start generating a fresh stream of revenue for the city next summer. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced during her state-of-the-city address Thursday that the “.nyc” domain will start generating a fresh stream of revenue for the city next summer. dotNYC, a private group, has asked the city to let it sell Web addresses such as www.GrimaldisPizza.nyc or www.EmpireStateBuilding.nyc for about $10 a pop to people, corporations and small businesses. In return, the company would give the city one-third of the domain's profits. However, a city spokesman says officials have not yet chosen a partner for the project. The city may decide to send out a request for proposals. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20090212/SMALLBIZ/902129975

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Re: [NA-Discuss] [ga] ICANN opens up Question Box for Mexico City meeting
by Danny Younger Feb. 13, 2009

Feb. 13, 2009

George, These are the questions that I sent through today: Twomey (two years ago): “What has happened to registrants with RegisterFly.com has made it clear there must be comprehensive review of the registrar accreditation process”. Where’s the review? The IANA’s .int registry serves the IGO population without fees. Will the Board direct the IANA to provide registry services without fees to other small populations? How does the Board intend to resolve the current impasse over the proposed amendments to the RAA? Will fees for new IDN ccTLDs also be predicated on a cost-recovery basis? Will the final set of PSC accountability recommendations be in place and adopted prior to the expiration of the JPA? When can we expect to see representatives from the at-large community seated on the ICANN Board as directors? The ICANN Compliance Department together with the National Opinion Research Center organized a Whois Accuracy Study. When can we expect to see the results of this study? Recent Breach Notices illustrate that registrar violations can span more than a year before a Breach Notice is finally sent. Will the Board recommend a more timely approach? The bylaws require constituent bodies to operate to the maximum extent feasible in a transparent manner. Will the Board refuse to re-certify constituencies that don’t publicly archive member discussions? A $60million budget is currently insufficient to fully fund GNSO Council travel expenses. How high does the budget need to be before full travel funding becomes available? --- On Wed, 2/11/09, George Kirikos <gkirikos(a)yahoo.com> wrote: From: George Kirikos <gkirikos(a)yahoo.com> Subject: [ga] ICANN opens up Question Box for Mexico City meeting To: ga(a)gnso.icann.org Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 8:25 PM Hi folks, ICANN has opened up a Question Box for the Mexico City meeting, see: http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-11feb09-en.htm It'll be interesting to see whether they respond with more than just canned non-answers given that they have the time to prepare. Since we're allowed to submit more than one question, here's a few I submitted (with perhaps more to come once the next new gTLD Draft Guidebook is published). If others submit questions feel free to post them to the GA list, and we can see whether ICANN does in fact answer them in Mexico. Questions were limited to 30 words. 1. Why did ICANN use its emergency reserve fund to speculate in financial markets, losing a reported $4.6 million? Emergency reserves are supposed to be kept in risk free liquid securities. 2. In ICANN's Form 990, Paul Twomey's compensation was adjusted upwards to reflect the declining US dollar. Now that the US dollar has soared, will his compensation be adjusted downward accordingly? 3. Why is the Board Finance Committee planning an expensive hedging program, when it is possible to conduct most of its business in US dollars, shifting currency risks to suppliers? 4. One million/year is spent on telephone costs. What's being done to minimize that cost, in particular competitive tenders by suppliers, etc? What's the cost per minute of conference calls currently? 5. Why was ICANN staff researching George Kirikos' political views on President Barack Obama? (as was verified by Apache webserver referrer logs) Does ICANN keep a dossier on every community participant? 6. Why does ICANN use For-Profit companies as "comparables" in its compensation, when it purports to be a Non-Profit? Given staff's job security compared to the private-sector, isn't this unwise overspending? 7. A federal court in California awarded Verizon $33.15 million against OnlineNIC for cybersquatting. What's ICANN doing to protect registrants in the event of registrar failure? Are other registrars vulnerable? Sincerely, George Kirikos http://www.leap.com/

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Re: [NA-Discuss] [At-Large] FULL Karl Auerbach: Statement appended to ALAC Review Document.. [reformat].
by WWWhatsup Feb. 11, 2009

Feb. 11, 2009

> I've taken the liberty of reformatting Karl's statement for readability: Appendix 3: Concurrence from Karl Auerbach, member of the ALAC Review WG I concur with the report of our working group. Yet, while I agree with nearly all of our recommendations, I am not satisfied. I would like more. But knowing that progress is achieved by small steps more often than by great leaps I see our report as a step towards a destination and not the destination itself. Our report is a complex work of many hands; the Westlake Group, those who commented, the staff who helped put together the text, and ourselves, the working group members. I was impressed by the remarkable degree of open dialog, open minded consideration of ideas, and the total absence of any self-interested agendas. What I write here may appear to stretch beyond the charter of our working group. Perhaps. But it is necessary. ICANN's at-large Advisory Committee is a facet of the central issue of ICANN: the operation of the internet's domain name and IP address systems so that they serve the public interest. Artificial constraints on our inquiry would lead to artificial results. I chose to err, if I err, on the side of a more synoptic treatment. I watched ICANN before and as it was created; I have not forgotten some of the promises1 that were made. These promises should be remembered and honored. The current ALAC was a step backwards from the system that it replaced. That prior system self-organized and self-funded itself into a vibrant system of debate and information exchange. ICANN merely ran the election machinery. In that system the public itself nominated and elected people onto the ICANN Board of Directors, a far cry from the thickly insulating committee upon committee upon committee intricacy of the present ALAC. Today's ALAC, even after six years of funding and intensive management by ICANN, has not approached the vibrancy or scope of its predecessor. It is my view that ICANN ought to scrap the ALAC in its entirety and return to the status quo ante. But I do not feel that there is, as yet, adequate support within ICANN for such a move. So I am forced to accept incremental improvements to the ALAC. Much as I agree with the incremental improvements that our working group is recommending, the result is not even a shadow of its predecessor. Rather than suggesting more minor adjustments, I will focus here on one particular principle, that of accountability of ICANN to the public. To my mind all other issues are subordinate to this question of public accountability. {this is footnote 1} For example of one such promise see the statement of Esther Dyson, Chairman of ICANN, made the before the US House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, July 22, 1999. Someone or something must have the power to require ICANN to meet its obligation to serve the public benefit. Who or what ought to have that power? My answer is simple: ICANN should be answerable to the same public for whose benefit ICANN was created. ICANN is already accountable to the people of the State of California through its publicly elected Attorney General. My thesis is that it is better to vest that accountability into the community of internet users than into a government official. ICANN's structure is so complicated that it is nearly impossible for any group, much less the public, to hold ICANN accountable. Moreover, ICANN's Board of Directors has exercised only weak authority over the activities of their chosen executives and their staff. This has created a highly imbalanced situation in which ICANN and its decisions are largely driven by a freewheeling ICANN staff. The Board has the authority to remedy this problem but it shows no signs of doing so. As long as the Board allows this imbalance to continue, it matters little whether the Board of Directors or the ALAC become more strongly representative of the public: As long as ICANN's Board allows ICANN staff to "run the show", effective oversight of ICANN, and thus accountability of ICANN, will not exist. Our working group was constrained; we could not deal with the larger issue of ICANN structure. And we were faced with an ambiguity whether our charter allowed us to go beyond the Westlake report. As a consequence the best we can do is to try to cure some mild symptoms of the ALAC's weaknesses. There are two causes of that weakness: The ALAC is excessively complex. The word "byzantine" was not invented to describe the ALAC, but it does apply. The ALAC is simply too complicated and inserts too many layers between internet users and the policy making engines of ICANN. At a minimum the "RALO" layer of the ALAC serves little purpose and should be eliminated. The ALAC is unlikely to be an effective source of accountability or advice as long as it retains its labyrinthine form. And internet users will feel that the layers of the ALAC operate to insulate and isolate ICANN from their opinions. The ALAC has too little authority. I am pleased that our working group partially remedies this lack of authority by recommending two at-large filled voting seats on ICANN's Board of Directors. I wish that number were significantly larger and that the number of other seats were reduced. It is important that the public's choice of Directors not be filtered and diluted through the nominating committee. The ability to fill voting seats on ICANN's board will give the ALAC some much needed actual credibility. But that credibility will be pointless unless it can be well exercised which requires that the ALAC push more resources out to its edges. Our report recommends that more resources be made available at the edges of the ALAC. I strongly agree. In addition, I also believe quite strongly that the edges should be as autonomous and independent as possible, even to the degree of allowing the edges to engage in decisions to hire, or discharge, people. (The legal implications of this to ICANN could be significant.) Such autonomy and independence could lead to some waste and possibly even to misuse. I believe that such risks are worthwhile. ICANN can minimize these risks by imposing good and timely cost tracking and accounting on any resources that ICANN makes available. In addition, the ALAC is not really independent. The ALAC depends on ICANN for money and resources. The ALAC resembles a "company union", a form that has a checkered reputation and has even been outlawed in some locales. Nor does it help that the ALAC's job is widely perceived in a narrow way, that the ALAC's role is to do little more than be a source of advice that others within ICANN might chose to consider, or not. These problems make the ALAC ineffective. And that, in turn, diminishes the perceived value of ALAC participation by people who might consider joining. The ALAC is further weakened by its context. The ALAC is structured as a polite debating society. Yet it most operate in the middle of a maelstrom. ICANN is a political battlefield on which economic and social forces engage in ways that are not necessarily pretty. The position and structure of the current ALAC doom it to be little more than a defenseless waif lost on this battlefield. Can that waif ever grow-up to be a titan in that battle? ICANN's system of permanent structural preferences for selected "stakeholders" makes that very unlikely. We have been asked to overlook the ALAC's flaws on the grounds that it is new and needs time. I do not agree. The ALAC was created six years ago. The ALAC has had six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, of direct ICANN funding and staff support. While one can say that that the ALAC has achieved some formal structure and a small cadre of active adherents, it can not be said that the ALAC has obtained a wide following, particularly when compared to the hundreds of thousands who tried to participate in ICANN's year 2000 elections. The ALAC is not a new system and there is no reason to excuse its faults on the grounds that the ALAC is new and needs more time. And finally, I am disappointed that even after a year since we first began asking, ICANN has not been able to produce current or historical data on the cost of the ALAC. It is my belief that our report would have been different, in detail and in gross, had historical and present cost data for the ALAC been available. This lack of financial data is particularly ironic given that the system of elections that preceded the ALAC was dismantled in large part because it was considered too expensive. Even in the absence of financial data it is very clear that the ALAC system, including the ICANN staff that manages it, is very expensive. It is quite apparent, simply by looking at the number of staff members involved and the few visible funding numbers, that the ALAC is much more expensive then the elective system that it replaced. ICANN Is A Regulatory Body; Its Debates And Decisions Are Political, Not Technical There seem to be many within ICANN who feel that ICANN is above the fray of politics, that ICANN is some kind of higher creation in which ideas are weighed on unbiased scales and discussed by purely disinterested minds. That is a beautiful idea. But it is is not consistent with actual practice. The real ICANN is a body of internet governance. The real ICANN does not do technical coordination. The real ICANN engages in economic and social engineering. The real ICANN is a full fledged regulatory body. The impact of ICANN's regulations are significant. ICANN's policies have an impact upon the community of internet users that is measured in multiples of billions of US dollars ($1,000,000,000 US) each and every year. ICANN's decisions are life or death sentences to completely lawful innovations on the internet. We should not expect the debates about ICANN policy to be pretty set pieces or Victorian tea parties. We should recognize the interest groups will confront one another with a full armory of political weaponry. ICANN can, at best, create a playing field and rules of engagement; ICANN can not stop the battle. The ALAC is at a disadvantage. With the ALAC being largely an ICANN dependency, structured, funded, staffed, and operated by ICANN, the ALAC is a weak pawn while ICANN's stakeholder constituencies are rooks, bishops, and knights. ICANN's long term goal should be to engender an independent at-large or ALAC that is able to act on its own behalf, manage (and fund) its own affairs, and have a direct and significant role in the actual process through which ICANN makes decisions. Accountability to the Public To avoid misconception, I am not proposing anything like an ALAC or at-large plebiscite on every ICANN matter. Rather I am suggesting that accountability to the public requires that the public, via its arm, the ALAC, be able to have a reasonable ability, over a period of time, to induce ICANN to more closely track the public interest. This can be realized in concrete terms by several techniques, the most direct being a majority of voting seats on the Board of Directors. But there are other means. For example perhaps objections by the ALAC on a matter would trigger supermajority voting requirements before the Board could adopt that matter. It is reasonable that there be dampers and constraints on this power to hold ICANN answerable, but those dampers and constraints should be impediments that bring caution and inhibit rash actions, they should not be insurmountable barriers that moot the reality of accountability. There is a theory that ICANN's Board of Directors represents the public and forms the bulwark of accountability. Clearly the Board has the authority to take the helm and change ICANN's course should ICANN's course veer from the public interest. However, ICANN's Board members are chosen by means that are too remote from the public. So while it is the case that ICANN's Board members are people of great integrity and have great concern for the public's interests, those people are not chosen by the public, they do not serve at the pleasure of the public. (This insulation from the public is also a problem for the ALAC, which is why I strongly believe that that ALAC can not itself be considered an effective means of public accountability until its structure is significantly streamlined and some of its layers removed.) The Public's Role Is Not Primarily To Give Advice To be an effective voice for internet users the ALAC must have a seat at the table where decisions are made. An advisory role is not sufficient. Many consider the proper public role in ICANN to be largely passive. That view holds that ICANN will be wise and just, and, if provided with enough public comments, ICANN will create the best of all possible answers. There are two problems with this: First, much as we may wish otherwise, ICANN is not a college of wise and disinterested philosopher kings. Experience with ICANN has shown that in practice ICANN is typical; it emits results that mirror the forces that industrial and technical interests bring to bear and the public interest is often overlooked. Second, whether advice is well formed ought not to be a precondition on the person giving of that advice but rather a measure of credibility that is applied by the one hearing that advice. In a political forum, such as ICANN, the measure of quality of advice is very subjective and often depends on which side of an issue the speaker and listener happen to be on. The ALAC and the public have a self-interest in making their advice as cogent and persuasive as possible; we ought merely to support the ALAC in that effort but not expend too much energy trying to coerce the ALAC in that direction. An Error In The Westlake Report Our report corrects a flaw in the Westlake report. That report contained a recommendation that the ALAC be permitted to designate two people who could observe and speak to the board but who would not have the rights, particularly voting rights, and duties of full board members. That recommendation was based on a presumption that presence of full board membership would deny the ALAC's choices freedom to consider the interests of the public. In this the Westlake report misapprehended the fiduciary obligations of ICANN's directors. In actuality, because ICANN is a "public benefit" corporation, ICANN's directors, all of them no matter how they obtained their seats, are required by law to consider the impact of their decisions, whether for or against a matter (or even to abstain), on the public interest. In other words, the public interest is a material element to be considered when deciding whether a matter is in ICANN's interest. Thus, whether or not an ALAC director has a vote, he or she may, indeed he or she must, take the public interest into account when evaluating what position to take on a matter before the board. Joly MacFie 212 608 1334 http://wwwhatsup.com http://punkcast.com http://pinstand.com

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Re: [NA-Discuss] [At-Large] Auerbach: "It is my view that ICANN ought to scrapthe ALAC in its entirety"
by Thompson, Darlene Feb. 11, 2009

Feb. 11, 2009

Well, if you can live with the "geographic boxes", NARALO accepts membership by individuals, pesky or otherwise! :) D Darlene A. Thompson Community Access Program Administrator Nunavut Dept. of Education / N-CAP P.O. Box 1000, Station 910 Iqaluit, NU X0A 0H0 Phone: (867) 975-5631 Fax: (867) 975-5610 E-mail: dthompson(a)gov.nu.ca -----Original Message----- From: at-large-bounces(a)atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:at-large-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Elisabeth Porteneuve Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 4:45 PM To: at-large(a)atlarge-lists.icann.org Cc: na-discuss(a)atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [At-Large] Auerbach: "It is my view that ICANN ought to scrapthe ALAC in its entirety" I concur wholeheartedly with Karl's notes. I have been here for ICANN and DNSO creation, five long years, and should not have much difficulty to follow or catch up with its organizations or committees. Still, I cannot comprehend ALAC. Sometimes I wonder if ALAC, or At Large, or whatever acronym used here and designating something in a dark forest of its labyrinthine form, have been formed to prevent good people to discuss Internet matters together, learn, share and rise important issues. "The current ALAC was a step backwards from the system that it replaced. That prior system self-organized and self-funded itself into a vibrant system of debate and information exchange. ICANN merely ran the election machinery. In that system the public itself nominated and elected people onto the ICANN Board of Directors, a far cry from the thickly insulating committee upon committee upon committee intricacy of the present ALAC." In early ICANN's days we had the GA "ga" list, open to anyone willing to join. I still do not know if I am legitimate person on this ALAC, At Large or whatever acronym list. And yes, I am that pesky individual, only individual, not accepting to be segregated into geographic boxes. Thanks Karl, thanks Danny. Elisabeth Porteneuve > Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:30:46 -0800 (PST) > > My thanks to Karl for his honest assessment of what ought to be done > with the ALAC. > > You may read the ALAC Review WG Draft Final Report (along with Karl's > comments) here: > http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-11feb09-en.htm _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large(a)atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.i cann.org At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org

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Re: [NA-Discuss] [At-Large] FULL Karl Auerbach: Statement appended to ALAC Review Document...
by Cheryl Langdon-Orr Feb. 11, 2009

Feb. 11, 2009

For those of you who wish to immediatly look at ALL of Karl's statement I have inserted into the body of this message as text... <copy of pages 32 - 37 of the full report> Appendix 3: Concurrence from Karl Auerbach, member of the ALAC Review WG I concur with the report of our working group. Yet, while I agree with nearly all of our recommendations, I am not satisfied. I would like more. But knowing that progress is achieved by small steps more often than by great leaps I see our report as a step towards a destination and not the destination itself. Our report is a complex work of many hands; the Westlake Group, those who commented, the staff who helped put together the text, and ourselves, the working group members. I was impressed by the remarkable degree of open dialog, open minded consideration of ideas, and the total absence of any self-interested agendas. What I write here may appear to stretch beyond the charter of our working group. Perhaps. But it is necessary. ICANN's at-large Advisory Committee is a facet of the central issue of ICANN: the operation of the internet's domain name and IP address systems so that they serve the public interest. Artificial constraints on our inquiry would lead to artificial results. I chose to err, if I err, on the side of a more synoptic treatment. I watched ICANN before and as it was created; I have not forgotten some of the promises1 that were made. These promises should be remembered and honored. The current ALAC was a step backwards from the system that it replaced. That prior system self-organized and self-funded itself into a vibrant system of debate and information exchange. ICANN merely ran the election machinery. In that system the public itself nominated and elected people onto the ICANN Board of Directors, a far cry from the thickly insulating committee upon committee upon committee intricacy of the present ALAC. Today's ALAC, even after six years of funding and intensive management by ICANN, has not approached the vibrancy or scope of its predecessor. It is my view that ICANN ought to scrap the ALAC in its entirety and return to the status quo ante. But I do not feel that there is, as yet, adequate support within ICANN for such a move. So I am forced to accept incremental improvements to the ALAC. Much as I agree with the incremental improvements that our working group is recommending, the result is not even a shadow of its predecessor. Rather than suggesting more minor adjustments, I will focus here on one particular principle, that of accountability of ICANN to the public. To my mind all other issues are subordinate to this question of public accountability. {this is footnote 1} For example of one such promise see the statement of Esther Dyson, Chairman of ICANN, made the before the US House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, July 22, 1999. Someone or something must have the power to require ICANN to meet its obligation to serve the public benefit. Who or what ought to have that power? My answer is simple: ICANN should be answerable to the same public for whose benefit ICANN was created. ICANN is already accountable to the people of the State of California through its publicly elected Attorney General. My thesis is that it is better to vest that accountability into the community of internet users than into a government official. ICANN's structure is so complicated that it is nearly impossible for any group, much less the public, to hold ICANN accountable. Moreover, ICANN's Board of Directors has exercised only weak authority over the activities of their chosen executives and their staff. This has created a highly imbalanced situation in which ICANN and its decisions are largely driven by a freewheeling ICANN staff. The Board has the authority to remedy this problem but it shows no signs of doing so. As long as the Board allows this imbalance to continue, it matters little whether the Board of Directors or the ALAC become more strongly representative of the public: As long as ICANN's Board allows ICANN staff to "run the show", effective oversight of ICANN, and thus accountability of ICANN, will not exist. Our working group was constrained; we could not deal with the larger issue of ICANN structure. And we were faced with an ambiguity whether our charter allowed us to go beyond the Westlake report. As a consequence the best we can do is to try to cure some mild symptoms of the ALAC's weaknesses. There are two causes of that weakness: The ALAC is excessively complex. The word "byzantine" was not invented to describe the ALAC, but it does apply. The ALAC is simply too complicated and inserts too many layers between internet users and the policy making engines of ICANN. At a minimum the "RALO" layer of the ALAC serves little purpose and should be eliminated. The ALAC is unlikely to be an effective source of accountability or advice as long as it retains its labyrinthine form. And internet users will feel that the layers of the ALAC operate to insulate and isolate ICANN from their opinions. The ALAC has too little authority. I am pleased that our working group partially remedies this lack of authority by recommending two at-large filled voting seats on ICANN's Board of Directors. I wish that number were significantly larger and that the number of other seats were reduced. It is important that the public's choice of Directors not be filtered and diluted through the nominating committee. The ability to fill voting seats on ICANN's board will give the ALAC some much needed actual credibility. But that credibility will be pointless unless it can be well exercised – which requires that the ALAC push more resources out to its edges. Our report recommends that more resources be made available at the edges of the ALAC. I strongly agree. In addition, I also believe quite strongly that the edges should be as autonomous and independent as possible, even to the degree of allowing the edges to engage in decisions to hire, or discharge, people. (The legal implications of this to ICANN could be significant.) Such autonomy and independence could lead to some waste and possibly even to misuse. I believe that such risks are worthwhile. ICANN can minimize these risks by imposing good and timely cost tracking and accounting on any resources that ICANN makes available. In addition, the ALAC is not really independent. The ALAC depends on ICANN for money and resources. The ALAC resembles a "company union", a form that has a checkered reputation and has even been outlawed in some locales. Nor does it help that the ALAC's job is widely perceived in a narrow way, that the ALAC's role is to do little more than be a source of advice that others within ICANN might chose to consider, or not. These problems make the ALAC ineffective. And that, in turn, diminishes the perceived value of ALAC participation by people who might consider joining. The ALAC is further weakened by its context. The ALAC is structured as a polite debating society. Yet it most operate in the middle of a maelstrom. ICANN is a political battlefield on which economic and social forces engage in ways that are not necessarily pretty. The position and structure of the current ALAC doom it to be little more than a defenseless waif lost on this battlefield. Can that waif ever grow-up to be a titan in that battle? ICANN's system of permanent structural preferences for selected "stakeholders" makes that very unlikely. We have been asked to overlook the ALAC's flaws on the grounds that it is new and needs time. I do not agree. The ALAC was created six years ago. The ALAC has had six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, of direct ICANN funding and staff support. While one can say that that the ALAC has achieved some formal structure and a small cadre of active adherents, it can not be said that the ALAC has obtained a wide following, particularly when compared to the hundreds of thousands who tried to participate in ICANN's year 2000 elections. The ALAC is not a new system and there is no reason to excuse its faults on the grounds that the ALAC is new and needs more time. And finally, I am disappointed that even after a year since we first began asking, ICANN has not been able to produce current or historical data on the cost of the ALAC. It is my belief that our report would have been different, in detail and in gross, had historical and present cost data for the ALAC been available. This lack of financial data is particularly ironic given that the system of elections that preceded the ALAC was dismantled in large part because it was considered too expensive. Even in the absence of financial data it is very clear that the ALAC system, including the ICANN staff that manages it, is very expensive. It is quite apparent, simply by looking at the number of staff members involved and the few visible funding numbers, that the ALAC is much more expensive then the elective system that it replaced. ICANN Is A Regulatory Body; Its Debates And Decisions Are Political, Not Technical There seem to be many within ICANN who feel that ICANN is above the fray of politics, that ICANN is some kind of higher creation in which ideas are weighed on unbiased scales and discussed by purely disinterested minds. That is a beautiful idea. But it is is not consistent with actual practice. The real ICANN is a body of internet governance. The real ICANN does not do technical coordination. The real ICANN engages in economic and social engineering. The real ICANN is a full fledged regulatory body. The impact of ICANN's regulations are significant. ICANN's policies have an impact upon the community of internet users that is measured in multiples of billions of US dollars ($1,000,000,000 US) each and every year. ICANN's decisions are life or death sentences to completely lawful innovations on the internet. We should not expect the debates about ICANN policy to be pretty set pieces or Victorian tea parties. We should recognize the interest groups will confront one another with a full armory of political weaponry. ICANN can, at best, create a playing field and rules of engagement; ICANN can not stop the battle. The ALAC is at a disadvantage. With the ALAC being largely an ICANN dependency, structured, funded, staffed, and operated by ICANN, the ALAC is a weak pawn while ICANN's stakeholder constituencies are rooks, bishops, and knights. ICANN's long term goal should be to engender an independent at-large or ALAC that is able to act on its own behalf, manage (and fund) its own affairs, and have a direct and significant role in the actual process through which ICANN makes decisions. Accountability to the Public To avoid misconception, I am not proposing anything like an ALAC or at-large plebiscite on every ICANN matter. Rather I am suggesting that accountability to the public requires that the public, via its arm, the ALAC, be able to have a reasonable ability, over a period of time, to induce ICANN to more closely track the public interest. This can be realized in concrete terms by several techniques, the most direct being a majority of voting seats on the Board of Directors. But there are other means. For example perhaps objections by the ALAC on a matter would trigger supermajority voting requirements before the Board could adopt that matter. It is reasonable that there be dampers and constraints on this power to hold ICANN answerable, but those dampers and constraints should be impediments that bring caution and inhibit rash actions, they should not be insurmountable barriers that moot the reality of accountability. There is a theory that ICANN's Board of Directors represents the public and forms the bulwark of accountability. Clearly the Board has the authority to take the helm and change ICANN's course should ICANN's course veer from the public interest. However, ICANN's Board members are chosen by means that are too remote from the public. So while it is the case that ICANN's Board members are people of great integrity and have great concern for the public's interests, those people are not chosen by the public, they do not serve at the pleasure of the public. (This insulation from the public is also a problem for the ALAC, which is why I strongly believe that that ALAC can not itself be considered an effective means of public accountability until its structure is significantly streamlined and some of its layers removed.) The Public's Role Is Not Primarily To Give Advice To be an effective voice for internet users the ALAC must have a seat at the table where decisions are made. An advisory role is not sufficient. Many consider the proper public role in ICANN to be largely passive. That view holds that ICANN will be wise and just, and, if provided with enough public comments, ICANN will create the best of all possible answers. There are two problems with this: First, much as we may wish otherwise, ICANN is not a college of wise and disinterested philosopher kings. Experience with ICANN has shown that in practice ICANN is typical; it emits results that mirror the forces that industrial and technical interests bring to bear and the public interest is often overlooked. Second, whether advice is well formed ought not to be a precondition on the person giving of that advice but rather a measure of credibility that is applied by the one hearing that advice. In a political forum, such as ICANN, the measure of quality of advice is very subjective and often depends on which side of an issue the speaker and listener happen to be on. The ALAC and the public have a self-interest in making their advice as cogent and persuasive as possible; we ought merely to support the ALAC in that effort but not expend too much energy trying to coerce the ALAC in that direction. An Error In The Westlake Report Our report corrects a flaw in the Westlake report. That report contained a recommendation that the ALAC be permitted to designate two people who could observe and speak to the board but who would not have the rights, particularly voting rights, and duties of full board members. That recommendation was based on a presumption that presence of full board membership would deny the ALAC's choices freedom to consider the interests of the public. In this the Westlake report misapprehended the fiduciary obligations of ICANN's directors. In actuality, because ICANN is a "public benefit" corporation, ICANN's directors, all of them no matter how they obtained their seats, are required by law to consider the impact of their decisions, whether for or against a matter (or even to abstain), on the public interest. In other words, the public interest is a material element to be considered when deciding whether a matter is in ICANN's interest. Thus, whether or not an ALAC director has a vote, he or she may, indeed he or she must, take the public interest into account when evaluating what position to take on a matter before the board. ****************** 2009/2/12 Danny Younger <dannyyounger(a)yahoo.com> > My thanks to Karl for his honest assessment of what ought to be done with > the ALAC. > > You may read the ALAC Review WG Draft Final Report (along with Karl's > comments) here: > http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-11feb09-en.htm > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > At-Large mailing list > At-Large(a)atlarge-lists.icann.org > > http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large_atlarge-lists.ican… > > At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org > -- Cheryl Langdon-Orr (CLO)

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Auerbach: "It is my view that ICANN ought to scrap the ALAC in its entirety"
by Danny Younger Feb. 11, 2009

Feb. 11, 2009

My thanks to Karl for his honest assessment of what ought to be done with the ALAC. You may read the ALAC Review WG Draft Final Report (along with Karl's comments) here: http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-11feb09-en.htm

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