On 4/19/07, Jacqueline A. Morris <jam@jacquelinemorris.com> wrote:

Hi Danny
I would agree that the broad AtLarge community indeed has never ratified the
definition (either the first or the second)- as I'm pretty sure the vast
majority of them have never been asked. The "consensus based"  definition
was also a consensus among a group that left out most of the atlarge
community.
Now we have outreach to many parts of the world, we can ask the regions to
ask their ALSes individual members, and other individual uses who may not be
members of ALSes to discuss and agree (or not) to the definition.
Jacqueline

-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Younger [mailto:dannyyounger@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:31 AM
To: NA Discuss
Subject: [NA-Discuss] History of the At-Large definition

Shortly after ICANN's creation a Membership Advisory
Committee (MAC) was formed that examined issues
related to At-Large membership.  The MAC found
consensus on the following definition of who/what is
an at-large community member:

"1. At-large membership is for those individuals and
organizations that are not represented by the
Supporting Organizations.  It includes individual
users and should not be limited to IP address holders
or domain name holders.   We want as large and diverse
a representation of users as possible."
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rcs/conrades.html

One might reasonably ask "as ICANN has a home for both
commercial and non-commercial organizations (the BC
and the NCUC -- and logically, that should cover the
entire gamut of organizations out there), what type of
organizations don't have representation within the
Supporting Organizations?"

There are certain commercial interests (such as domain
name resellers) that are not granted participatory
opportunities within the BC due to BC Charter
exclusions.

There are also noncommercial organizations that are
denied membership in the NCUC owing to charter
considerations:

Ineligible organizations. The membership of the NCUC
specifically excludes:
-- Political organizations whose primary purpose is to
hold government office and/or elect government
officials
-- Commercial organizations and associations of or for
the benefit of commercial entities (even if they are
non-profit in form)
-- Organizations that provide services under contract
or MoU with ICANN, or are represented in ICANN through
another Supporting Organization

The MAC wanted to make sure that the At-Large would
constitute the catch-all category so that no entity
would be excluded from the ICANN process (this is why
their definition included "organizations that are not
represented by the Supporting Organizations").

This consensus definition of the At-Large was later
changed (some would say perverted) by members of the
At Large Organizing Committee (ALOC) that were
hand-picked by former ICANN Chairman of the Board
Esther Dyson after ICANN had eliminated all elected
At-Large directors.

The new definition created by these ICANN insiders
allowed for almost any organization (even those
already represented by constituency structures) to
become part of the At-Large.  This change of
definition served to divide the community of civil
society organizations and to dilute their collective
impact and well-served ICANN's interests (as they had
described the Civil Society element that kept raging
for ICANN reform as ICANN's single largest
distraction).

Instead of the At-Large being recognized as a body
that was primarily comprised of individuals (with an
occasional organizational entity as part of the mix),
the new at-large definition posited organizations as
the primary stakeholders in the at-large with
individuals treated almost as an afterthought.  In
most RALOS now, individuals either don't have voting
rights or their rights are not on a par with those of
organizational entities).

The broad At-Large community has never accepted the
new definition of the at-large that was foisted upon
us.  The current definition has no consensus-based
support and it primarily serves to exclude the very
individuals that are what the at-large community was
all about.

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