RE: [ga] RE: GA irrelevant

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

Karl,

> 
> I'm not familiar with that joke .. (that's a slight nudge to 
> get you to tell us. ;-)

Sure. But it needs a bit of explanation of the cultural environment in
Naples.
You might know that in Naples the most important saint is San Gennaro, who
is believed to make miracles. And that people in Naples are known for
playing games like "Lotto", where you have to guess the numbers that will be
extracted, and if your guess is correct, you win x times what you have bid.
So, a guy prays San Gennaro to win at the "Lotto", and he does that
continuously, for several weeks. One day, he complains bitterly to the
Saint, reproaching him that he never made the miracle to let him win, and
suggesting that after all he was not that good as a Saint. At this point,
San Gennaro was a bit fed up, and replied: "You could at least play once!".

The point was that we can reproach the Board for not approving a Registrants
constituency, but maybe we should at least write a charter before
complaining.

 
> 
> (I imagine you reading this having a cup of good coffee while 
> enjoying the kind of nice spring weather we are having here 
> on the edge of the
> Pacific.)

Not at all. Winter is still the owner of the place here in Vienna.


> 
> Getting down to business..

I see your point that registrants who are not domain owners are also a
proper constituency.
I fully agree. However, the way I see it, there is a matter of priority. The
policy for the deployment of new TLDs is being decided now, and registrants
are, IMHO, more impacted than users, and should be acting now.
This said, there is nothing that prevents both groups to create
constituencies, what I would not advise is to wait to form one until the
other is also ready, because to wait will not help anybody.
I skip the parts on which we have some agreement to go to the one on which
we disagree:

> 
> The board of directors of ICANN need not wait for a concrete 
> proposal; rather it could write a simple resolution that 
> recognizes that domain name registrants appear 
> under-represent within ICANN, expresses a corporate desire to 
> remedy that under-representation, and says that it desires 
> concrete proposals, each accompanied by a roster of 
> supporters, to be submitted for board consideration by 
> such-and-such a date.

In theory, you are perfectly correct.
However, in practice, we do have a process now to establish a constituency
in the GNSO, which foresees the compilation of a charter and the
presentation of a petition. If registrants (or plain users) do not do this,
I would argue that we are in a situation similar to the one of asking San
Gennaro to win at the Lotto without even playing...

;>)

Roberto