Dharma, I hear you. I think your point of view has a lot of merit. I too have been somewhat uncomfortable with the restricted mandate that ICANN has. Our members share the same concerns as yours do. Our current discussions on TC's "advisors" list revolve around telecom policy, rural access issues and community fibre. This is not to say that I don't think ICANN's issues are important - they are, but they are certainly not front and centre with our users. The above paragraph was my immediate reaction to Dharma's post of earlier to day. I have also now read Evan's lengthy response. Of course he is correct too. So, I guess we have to do a better job of being able to interpret the interface between our members concerns and the ICANN mandate. Now of course, all of us being volunteers, I'm not sure how we *do* that, but ...... Gareth On 17-Dec-08, at 12:05 PM, Gleason, Gerald wrote:
Frankly, endless discussion of purpose is more annoying that a slightly expansive interpretation of the group's mission.
Also, and I'd be happy to be correctly if this is wrong, the context is not limited by ICANN's mission as much as it should be expansive from a RALO perspective. Isn't one of the purposes of RALOs in general to represent internet users to ICANN? And how are those user's interests served by fragmenting their representation to various standards and regulatory bodies?
Gerry Gleason
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