See my answer embedded... At 23/07/2009 10:55 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Alan Greenberg wrote:
NCUC proposed a charter for the new NCSG. The Board (in conjunction with or through its Structural Improvements Committee) rejected some parts of that charter saying that it did not meet the Board's criteria, particularly with regard to being able to attract new players into the NCSG (one of the prime motivators for the planned new GNSO structure). The Board instructed that staff propose alternative wording for the charter which they did, and that revised charter is now out for comment.
The NCUC (quite naturally) objected to the proposed changes, and has done a good job of encouraging their own members and like-minded people to voice those objections.
Sorry, Alan, but I have one question of clarification for the benefit of all readers.
Reading what you wrote above, it appears that the Board wants all GNSO constituencies to be "able to attract new players", but that the NCUC is fighting against this. This _could_ be interpreted as NCUC's opposing an intent to be more inclusive, which seems counter-intuitive.
I don't think that such a characterization of NCUC would fair. I have no doubt that they feel they are being completely open, welcoming and inclusive. It is a value judgement whether the details of their charter will allow the NCSG to succeed in attracting "new players" (see below). Clearly the people who drafted the charter and at least some percentage of the Board/SIC do not agree on this.
Does the aim to "attract new players" do so in a way that brings more advocates to the new NCSG, or simply dilutes its already-limited influence?
Well, the hope and intent was that we could attract a variety of non-commercial interests representing a wide range of positions. The original Board committee document said "We want to emphasize that a new non-commercial Stakeholders Group must go far beyond the membership of the current Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC). We must consider educational, research, and philanthropic organizations, foundations, think tanks, members of academia, individual registrant groups and other noncommercial organizations, as well as individual registrants, as part of a non-commercial registrants Stakeholders Group." How strong the influence of any of these would be is not known. Clearly the intent was to populate the new non-commercial entity with a wider range of views than those perceived to be represented in the old NCUC.
How are other constituencies impacted by this Board criteria?
As you can see by the quote above, the criticism was leveled primarily at the non-commercial representation. However, the same could be said about the commercial side, and in fact, a number of us have made such comments. I personally feel that the CSG is too restrictive (the NCUC made a similar comment about the CSG today). To date, the Board has not voiced this concern (at least, not where I have heard it). The criteria does not really apply to the Registrars and Registries at the moment, but in the world of new gTLDs, it may be more relevant.
(I know you've been through this endlessly before, but as you can appreciate -- and has been illustrated in Dharma's recent messages -- it's a very difficult story to tell.)
It is indeed, and unfortunately, capsule answers such as the one I gave do not come close to doing justice to all of the issues at play here. And it is important to remember that there are really big $$ involved in some of the issues, and not just philosophical issue. And big $$ implies big politics. Just watch the IRT drama being carried on before our eyes. Alan
- Evan