RE: [ga] A Fool's Paradise

["Bret Fausett" <bfausett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> An ICANN RALO -- see
> http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-22nov06.htm

For those of us who have been working with ICANN since its beginning in
1998, we all wanted to see a strong, vital At Large membership, which would
elect 9 of the Board's 18 seats. That was the ICANN that was supposed to
have been produced by the White Paper process and the ICANN called for by
the original ICANN Bylaws. At one point in 1999, ICANN's Board Chair even
testified before Congress that the election of half the Board by the
Internet's end users was ICANN's highest priority. 

We all know it didn't work out that way, and there are villains aplenty on
which to place the blame.

But I would ask everyone not to discredit the people who came to ICANN
later, who know little about this history, and now are working to build
these RALOs and ICANN At Large Structures. This is valuable work, even if it
falls far short of our longer term goals.

         Bret