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. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com