Re: [ga] I personally repudiate ICANN At-Large

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ICANN's ALAC does not represent the bulk of individual users, and indeed excludes individual users from its membership. It is just continuing the logic which was demonstrated when ICANN expelled the elected representatives of individual users from the ICANN Board. It is all about exclusion and keeping the powerful user constituency at arms length. ALAC from the outset has been an ICANN top-down initiative, designed to legitimise the expulsion of At Large members from the Board. Vittorio and others - against whom I make no personal judgment, I just don't agree with their view - have helped to legitimise this ICANN top-down initiative. Now they insist on 15 days physical attendance at ICANN meetings as a condition of joining ALAC, which merely perpetuates the exclusion of ordinary users.

The real At Large exists outside ICANN in the real world, and consists of millions of individual users. It is extraordinary that they cannot, as individuals, join ALAC. The truth is that ICANN is run as a private fiefdom, under the auspices of the Department of Commerce, with appointments made from within (as ALAC was appointed from within, and continues to select members from within). ICANN was terrified by the free and representative voices who expressed alternative views when they were elected onto the ICANN Board. These free voices were a threat to ICANN's empire. Therefore they were eliminated. Instead of appointments from within, the At Large - the community of individual users - should allow open membership on a person by person basis, and should authorise representation on the basis of one-person one-vote.

ICANN's ALAC does not represent individual users, it excludes them.

Therefore I join Eric Dierker in repudiating it.

Richard Henderson

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Hugh Dierker 
  To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 12:26 AM
  Subject: [ga] I personally repudiate ICANN At-Large


  I am Eric Hugh Dierker, I have been refused admission on an individual basis to At-Large Groups and ICANN. They do not represent me. They do not represent any person I am associated with.
  I ask others to join in repudiating the At-Large.

  Eric