Re: [ga] Good work by GNSO on sTLDs

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thomas,

Leah's responses are exactly my fears, and the concerns expressed by many of
our members at IcannAtLarge (for example when polled about ALAC and the
RALOs).

ALAC has no credibility, and so there's no incentive to join.

Stuart Lynn branded ICANN's public forums "a joke" - that's how seriously
Paul Twomey's predecessor took the public forums... now they don't even work
at all (even though the webmaster was notified about this some time ago).

Constituents want to represent themselves by their own votes, not have some
organisation vote for them. That's how a bottom up individuals constituency
should work, surely?

I'm not sure I can see the ICANN Board granting half their seats to At Large
representatives (though it's a fair argument given the millions of users,
compared to a few hundred registrars etc)... but ICANN would certainly need
to restore, say, 2 seats to elected At Large members in order to start
winning the confidence of At Large members that it is worth participating in
the ICANN structure. At the moment, there's very little interest in ALAC for
this very reason: people don't feel they'll be able to determine their own
constituency by individual vote, or vote for their own representatives...
and people don't believe that ICANN is sincere about including the At Large
voice, when it has already sacked the At Large from the Boardroom and
expelled the At Large's elected representatives.

I appeal to the ICANN leadership to revisit the whole issue of (a) elected
representation as the mandatory model within ALAC; and (b) restoring at
least 2 elected At Large Board members.

Thank you.

Richard Henderson

----- Original Message -----
From: L. Gallegos <jandl@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 11:03 PM
Subject: Re: [ga] Good work by GNSO on sTLDs


>
>
> On 1 Nov 2003 at 21:26, Thomas Roessler wrote:
>
> > On 2003-11-01 16:28:58 -0000, Richard Henderson wrote:
> >
> > > A further big step forward would be for ICANN to recognise the
> > > significant credibility *and support* it could gain by
> > > 'individualising' ALAC - in other words by actively promoting the
> > > principle of one-person-one-vote in all its RALOs, and thereby
> > > starting to attract the significant numbers of At Large
> > > participants who could make a useful and informed contribution to
> > > ICANN's processes, while adding to its legitimacy.
> >
> > Let me just note that *nothing* in the ICANN bylaws *prevents* a
> > RALO from going for "one man one vote."
> >
>
> Very true.  However there is still the problem with having the ALAC reps
not elected
> by individuals and not having board seats numbering at least half.  Until
that is
> accomplished, it means very little to the users.  The ALAC will still be
summarily
> ignored.  ICANN is paying lip service to the at-large and will use the
ALAC to
> promote the sham that it is representative just it has used the public
comments
> forums to say there is participation when those comments are ignored.
When
> people are simply tired of the sham, ICANN says they don't care.  At the
same time
> there is no outreach, forums are still labeled "experimental" and things
remain at the
> status quo.  The "current" forums have not worked for quite a while now,
btw.
>
> > > If the ALAC and its RALOs were to be developed along a democratic
> > > model (rather than an organisation-based model);
> >
> > A democratic and an organization-based model are not mutually
> > exclusive.
> >
> True, if the organizations are, in fact, representative of those with
interests in the
> whole.  So far, that is not the case at all.  They can't be representative
if the
> consitituents have not elected them.
>
> > --
> > Thomas Roessler  <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > At-Large Advisory Committee: http://alac.info/
> >
>
>
>
>