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RE: [council] FW: Candidate sought for GNSO representatives to ICANN Geographic Regions WG.
Thanks Glen. I think it would be helpful if you asked Eric to confirm that his
role if elected would be to represent the views of the GNSO as a whole, in
particular those represented in the statement we provided. I have no problem
with him communicating his personal views and agree with many of them, but I
believe we decided as a Council that the two reps should indeed represent the
broader views of the GNSO and not just their personal views.
Chuck
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Glen de Saint Géry
> Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:09 AM
> To: council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [council] FW: Candidate sought for GNSO
> representatives to ICANN Geographic Regions WG.
>
> Forwarded from Eric Brunner Williams:
> Dear Glen, Avri,
>
> I've attached a note I wrote to the RC list when we were
> considering the issue a month ago. It is more or less what I
> said from the floor at Cairo. It covers what I think are the
> hazards, and the opportunities we have attempting to actually
> obtain meaningful regional representation.
>
> Eric
>
> Attached note in plain text:
> [Sent to the RC list on 10/19/08]
>
> Let me state what I see are issues:
>
> 1. citizenship is not necessarily coincident with
> residence, my initial point. A person who left Ethiopia as a
> youth and living in California ever since is a poor choice
> for "the voice of Africa". This is not a hypothetical.
>
> 2. I think Israel is in the same part of the world as
> Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. However, Israel choses to
> identify as part of Europe. Do we have any interest in, that
> is, _do_we_benefit_by_, forcing one model of region or
> another on parties seeking to stand for diversity determined
> responsibilities? Its not just Israel, also Turkey,
> Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan identify as "Europe", at least for
> sports. Where is New Caledonia or Tahiti? How about Guyane?
>
> To use the usual mantra, ICANN should not be in the business
> of defining geographic regions against the will of those
> folks. Let them choose whether they wanted to vote in one
> region or another. ICANN should not be telling them what they
> are, but telling them that they should opt for one and only
> one description. Something along the lines of "bottom up" vs
> "top down" is appropriate here.
>
> 3. The pseudo-geograpical approach has been problematic
> from the begining. Requiring someone from the fictitcious AP
> region normally means having someone from Australia or New
> Zealand. Try and wrap your head around the idea that because
> Paul and Peter are Antipodeans, ICANN is therefore an
> Asian-centric organization. ICANN determining that Peter,
> Paul, Bruce and Adrian are "Asians", not "Europeans", is
> simply bizarre. Did I mention the problem isn't hypothetical?
>
> Now for the cure:
>
> We have adequate representation from the brightly light parts
> of the world city-to-city link map, which Fred Baker was kind
> enough to point out to me at Paris. Fred's worked (charity)
> on getting infrastructure into Kabul, and parts of Africa, as do I.
>
> Here's the URL:
> http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/medium/world
> Black.jpg
>
> ICANN is staffed primarily from the OECD states. The existing
> "diversity" requirement has been gamed throughout ICANN's
> existence to favor rich, well-connected Anglo-Saxons from all
> over the world. We need to restate the requirement towards
> material diversity, not fictional diversity, towards some
> goals of folks, staff or elected, coming from non-OECD
> countries, the darker parts of that map.
>
> The UN's model doesn't fit our needs, which is convenient
> because we _don't_ benefit by pretending treaty organization
> regionalism is an adequate representation of diversity of
> network penetration and availability.
>
> So, to a first order, our goal should be half of staff and
> half of elected roles are the responsibilities of persons
> from (and not in the remote past either) the non-OECD
> economies, because our present model is "only token
> participation, as staff or elected", by persons from anything
> but OECD economies.
>
> Our market is pretty darn good in the OECD market. Where we
> need help growing our market is in the non-OECD market, and
> last I looked, 2/3rds of the world's population are in
> non-OECD countries, and the cost of a domain name is still
> within the envelope for a huge user base all now well served
> with cheap cell phones that are already web enabled.
>
> What we're doing isn't making us as much money as doing
> something else.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
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