Re: [ga] European At Large meeting announcement (today)

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:08:42 -0000, you wrote:

>Unfortunately the ALAC was invented by the Board, is financed by the Board,
>is controlled through a maze of mechanisms by the Board. 

The first affirmation is only partly correct - actually, it was a proposal
coming from a top-down appointed group (the "ALAC Advisory Group"), which
the Board adopted while making some changes (for example, adding the five
NomCom-appointed members).

The second affirmation is only partly correct - yes, ICANN is paying our
travel costs to come here, but is not paying our time, nor a number of other
practical expenses that we are supporting with our own money or with money
from our organizations.

The third affirmation is absolutely incorrect - please show a situation
where the Board has obliged the ALAC to do or say something it didn't want
to do.

>Individual Users themselves did not call for the ALAC to be formed. It was
>imposed top down. The ALAC lists are almost dead. Contrast the thousand +
>posts sent each month on the legacy At Large lists, the active elections,
>the genuine involvement bottom up.

Could you also contrast the number of policy-related statements,
interventions, presentations and documents that the ALAC produced in the
last six months with the number of those produced by all the At Large
efforts in the previous three years?

>The At Large must be given a decisive voting presence in the Boardroom, and
>the principle of a self-determining At Large must be re-instated, based on
>one participant one vote.

What isn't "self-determining" in a set of existing user organizations and
active individuals coming together and forming an independent regional
group, with the Bylaws they like, and the internal mechanisms they like?

>It is a risible irony that the ALAC which purports to represent individual
>users refuses a vote to... individual users.

When, exactly, has the ALAC been refusing a vote to individual users? In
fact, the internal mechanisms of the regional organizations will be decided
by the organizations who join them (not by the ALAC or by the ICANN Board).
This means that if those organizations favour a one-head one-vote electoral
system for their leaders and their ALAC representatives, it will be put in
practice. So I think it would be more productive if you and an organization
like icannatlarge.org decided to participate in this mechanism and fight for
this principle.

Of course this doesn't deny the fact that individual users presently don't
get to elect representatives in the ICANN Board (but well, no other
constituency does!), but you should really keep different problems separated
and try to solve them one by one, rather than mixing all of them in a single
huge lamentation.
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
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