[ga] "the fact that the Board does not pay attention"

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Roberto,

Over the years the Board has been often warned about
matters such as the lack of registrant data escrow
services, about registrar circumvention of consensus
policies, about the lack of competitive choice in the
RGP cycle, about the folly of creating a defacto
registry/registrar guild, about deficient
accreditation practices that led to the creation of
hundreds of phantom registrars, etc. etc.

The GA has served as an early warning system exposing
the the flaws in current ICANN policies, but
apparently it takes a major disaster such as the
Registerfly debacle for the Board to realize that the
GA has been on target while the Board and Staff have
been asleep at the wheel.

If the Board has chosen not to pay attention to those
that endeavor to help safeguard the future of the DNS,
then they are exercising their fiduciary
responsibilities in a truly delinquent manner. 

We can't gloss over issues that you regard as "long
closed" because we see a Board that has been derelict
in its duty to the community.  Eliminating all
at-large directors pushed the pendulum too far in the
wrong direction.  The White Paper warned of the
potential for capture by a self-interested faction,
and indeed ICANN has been captured by those with
little regard for the public interest element.

Now the public interest considerations are beginning
to bite ICANN in the butt as inattention to this
factor has commanded the world's attention.

Issues aren't closed just because the Board says they
are closed.  

The Board has made a number of bad decisions ranging
from its manhandling of the at-large community to
shafting the registrant community with unwarranted
price increases.  

Don't expect us to forget these insults just because
the Board has moved on to other issues.  

Wrongs must be corrected.



--- Roberto Gaetano <roberto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Michael Froomkin wrote:
> > 
> > As for the RALOs they're so far from the Board's
> ear that one 
> > wonders whether anyone takes them seriously or if
> they're 
> > just there to let ICANN insiders bamboozle the
> press.  There 
> > is no constitutency now represented in ICANN that
> would ever 
> > settle for such poor representation.  The day
> that, say, 
> > businesses, who also number in the millions, are
> asked to 
> > organzie along the same lines is the day that I'll
> start to 
> > take RALO's seriously.
> 
> I would like to offer a different perspective.
> Businesses belong to the Business Constituency of
> the GNSO. That
> constituency is one of the 6 in the Council. In the
> Name Council you have
> also the NomCom representatives, and two
> constituencies (Registries and
> Registrars) have weighted voting.
> So, they count in the Council for slightly more than
> 10% of the voting.
> The current GNSO-elected Board Directors come from
> the IPC and Registrars,
> and the former came from NCUC. Previous Directors
> also came, if I am not
> mistaken, from IPC or Registrars. So the Business
> Constituency as such has
> zero power on the Board.
> The ALAC, on the contrary, has a non-voting Liaison.
> Although the Liaison
> does not have a vote, I can assure you, for having
> been ALAC Liaison for 3+
> years, that his/her voice is heard and taken into
> account. In simple words,
> the Liaison does not have the power of voting, but
> does have the power of
> directly influencing, during Board meetings. Of
> course, if the Liaison is
> only complaining and bitching, he/she will no longer
> be listened to, while
> if he/she is available to debate in a civilized way,
> there is wide room for
> being able to have ALAC's points of view taken into
> account in shaping the
> final decision.
> 
> On the same line of reasonment, maybe we could
> wonder whether there is a
> correlation between the fact that most of what goes
> on now in the GA is
> complaining or resuscitating issues that are long
> closed and the fact that
> the Board does not pay attention. Or whether there
> is a correlation between
> the fact that whenever somebody new does not conform
> to the groupthink
> he/she gets attacked and the fact that very few
> newcomers resist in the GA
> for long.
> 
> Best regards,
> Roberto
> 
> 



       
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