Re: [ga] GNSO Council Votes

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard and all former DNSO GA members or other interested
stakeholders/users,

  We have had this discussion and debate before.  ICANN choose to
"Stack the Deck" this way so as to ensure that it can get the votes it
needs with the minimal amount of effort expended.  It is a form of
gerrymandering...


Richard Henderson wrote:

>    Could somebody confirm the number of votes the gTLD Registries and
> Registrars have on the GNSO Council? And how that compares with the
> number of votes the Non-Commercial Users have on the GNSO council?
>
> My reading of the ICANN By-Laws Article X Section 5 Subsections 1 and
> 2 here:
> http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#X
>
> suggests that the combined voting power of the Registrars and
> Registries is EIGHT votes, whereas the voting power of Non-Commercial
> Internet Users is TWO votes. Is this correct?
>
> Given that some Registries (eg Afilias) are simply cartels made up of
> Registrars, it seems to me that the Domain "Supply" Industry enjoys a
> wholly disproportionate voting power, compared to the millions of
> ordinary non-commercial internet users who they are supposed to serve.
> At any given time, these millions of people can be outvoted by a group
> of "insiders" who probably represent the interests of a few hundred
> people at most.
>
> The DNS should surely be run for the benefit of USERS, not for the
> benefit of its own Supply Functions, and it therefore seems illogical
> that priority in policy decision making is given to a few commercial
> interests who are only meant to be "go-betweens" to help the system
> work for users worldwide.
>
> When you consider that even the GNSO Council is a small sub-structure
> in the ICANN process, with marginal voting influence at Board level,
> and when you consider that the ALAC is the only other representative
> of general users, and has no voting power at all on the ICANN Board,
> it is reasonable to conclude that ICANN has chosen to marginalise and
> disempower the interests of the millions of ordinary internet users
> worldwide for whom ICANN should principally exist.
>
> Why so many votes on the GNSO Council for the Domain Supply industry?
>
> Yrs,
>
> Richard Henderson
>

Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 134k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" -
    Pierre Abelard

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
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