> > The reason for this is that ICANN's board, a board which has zero
> > members elected by anyone, has taken upon itself to establish
> > structures (such as the internal structure of constituencies in the
> > DNSO) which are heavily biased towards certain points of view.
> the internal structures of the DNSO have little if anything to do with the
> ability of future Boards to reverse actions of this Board; at best, the
> DNSO will contribute 3 of 19 Board members.
You miss the point. The current, unelected board, is establishing
structures which essentually guarantee that the DNSO will remain
permanently a pro-commercial/anti-non-commercial entity. And, in
addition, the by-laws, much done under your hand, are such that the board
has very little power to intervene.
----------
> > It is unlikely that the later introduction of token representation
> > from non-commercial and individual interests will be able to have
> > any impact on the decisions not being made.
> so I take it all the hullabaloo on this is a waste of time, and the only
> acceptable approach to you would be to make it so the "large scale
> commercial interests" were the ones with "token" representation?
To a large extent you are right. Much of what has been done has been a
waste of time. The unelected ICANN board has created a structure that is
so anti-individual, so anti-non-commercial interests, so pro-big-business
that there is a legitimate question whether it all ought to be scrapped.
Please don't mis-understand me. I am not yet in favor of doing away
with ICANN. I still support it. But I see significant, indeed major,
flaws in structure and process that are rapidly sapping its credibility.
----------
> The fact
> is that there are many interests with legitimate roles here
"legitimate" is in the eye of the beholder.
If you believe that the DNSO, utterly lacking in a single vote for
non-commercial and individual interests, is a fair representation of
"legitimate" roles, then we do not have much to talk about.
> and whether
> you agree or not, that includes all the groups that the Board asked to form
> constituencies, including non-commercial interests.
Read your own words "groups that the Board asked to form
constituencies" -- in other words, the board had pre-determined what
the constituencies should be. The notion of "self organizing" seems
to have disappeared.
In addition, in Berlin there were multiple proposals for
non-commercial groups, thus underscoring the interest and need for one
or more such groups.
Did you adopt any? Do you attempt to merge (as you did with the raw
disputed constituency proposals in Singapore)?
No, you simply dismissed non-commercial interests and sent them into
the wilderness
And at the same time you let the DNSO proceed into substantive matters
with a highly imbalanced set of elements and engage in ejectionist
politics.
----------
> The issue of an
> individual constituency in the DNSO is a legitimate one, but it raises
> questions about the relationship of that to the At Large membership
You are saying something that is not true.
You know perfectly well that the powers of the At Large Membership are
utterly distinct and different from those of a constituency in the DNSO.
Membership in the At Large membership confers merely the right to vote for
a director who, in turn, has only the most marginal powers to review and
initiate policies.
The real policy maker in the ICANN structure are the SO's.
Your attempt to deny individuals a role inside the DNSO is tantamount to
an attempt to deny individuals a role in Domain Name policymaking.
So let's not hear any more of this nonesense that we individuals should be
satisfied with membership in the At Large Membership and forego any
meaningful voice in the policymaking of the DNSO.
----------
> and
> the appropriateness of changing what was essentially the consensus of the
> vast majority of the community on the composition of the DNSO.
You are imagining things. The constituency idea was neither a "consensus"
nor even supported by a "vast majority". Moreover, the constituency model
that came out of Singapore was one of the Board's own creation based only
losely upon disputed proposals and made without any ability of the parties
to review or comment upon that which the board constructed, in private and
in the dark.
Perhaps those of us who consider the Board's March 4 same-day creation
and adoption of its own "constituency" rules as closing the debate
ought to have complained to the -comments list before the March 31
meeting at which time the March 4 decisions were re-confirmed.
----------
> The fact
> that there are some -- it seems obvious a realtively small number
How do you measure "realtively small number"?
Ever since I first spoke to you nearly a year ago you have thrown about
such vague generalizations without an iota of support.
For example, you told me on the telephone that the early ICANN drafts
were immutable because of the "vast buy-in" of groups you refrained to
name (but who turned out to be merely a few people on the IAB.)
----------
> -- in the
> community that would do it a different way should certainly not be allowed
> to override the consensus structure, at least without allowing the
> community to comment.
Read your words again "without allowing the community to comment"?
I will state very directly -- it is not those of us who want ICANN to
abide by the wite paper groundrules who want to avoid community input.
Rather, it is ICANN that is minimizing effective comment by hiding its
decision-making process, by not having a real notice-and-comment
structure.
Where was the notice and comment on the constituency proposal put forth by
ICANN?
(You can point to the March 15 posting, but that was merely an
after-the fact elaboration of the March 4 private decision on DNSO
structure.)
It is a joke to see "comments" flowing in a -comments mailing list.
Comments to which the board members rarely, if ever, respond.
That's not comment. That's more like dictatorship with flowers.
----------
> There was no opportunity for notice and comment
> before the Berlin meeting
And why not?
> but I am sure there will be before the Santiago
> meeting. If this is too slow for you, I'm sorry, but since you were one of
> the major proponents of the extensive notice and comment procedures we
> have, you will have to take the credit or blame, such as it is, for the
> speed at which ICANN can operate.
You've got it backwards again.
I want the board to go slower. I want it to put off making substantive
decisions that pre-dictate net policy.
Didn't you read our petition about holding back on the WIPO report? (You
know, the petition for which we were accused by an ICANN Board member as
being "arrogant" and "juvenile")?
And by-the-way, I'm glad you bring up "extensive notice".
Clearly creation of, and adoption of, the constituencies was made and
adopted without any notice whatsoever.
The decision of which constituency proposals to accept and which to reject
was made without any notice (or explaination) whatsoever.
Overall, I'd suggest that ICANN isn't even close to living up to its
procedure.
----------
> > As for the $1 tax on domain name. Yes, it will be reduced when ICANN's
> > board imposes a similar tax on IP addresses.
> >
> > But will the revenue needs of ICANN be reduced? Not with a proposed
> > budget of several million dollars and more than a dozen employees.
> >
> > ICANN is rapidly becoming a bloated bureaucracy.
> Thank you for your financial analysis. Would you like to examine the
> budget and tell us where we can cut expenses and still undertake the (1)
> global outreach, (2) extensive due process and (3) administrative oversight
> that we have been charged with?
Let's begin with the employees:
There's 5 officers (at $100,000 to $300,000/year each), plus five managers
at $40,000 to $120,000/year each)... all to deal with a total staff of one
technical person and three admins.
That's extraordinarily top heavy.
Especially considering that at the ICANN layer the work to be done is
pretty trivial -- the SO's do the heavy lifting and that's mainly by their
membership.
Then lets look at "Professional and Technical Services" -- A cool
million dollars (US) a year. May one presume that this is mainly for
your firm's services?
Then there's $850,000 for Board travel and meeting expenses.
Even if we assume half of that for staff and meeting room expenses
that's more than $22,000 per board member per year.
That is clearly excessive. Board members can fly Cattle-Car rate like the
rest of us and share rooms like I'm required to do by my employer.
I note that this budget doesn't even mention the "global outreach" or
"extensive due process" that you mention above.
In other words, the budget as published is full of perquisites and low on
actually making ICANN an open, responsive entity.
But you ought to have heard all this before. This is not the first
time the bloated budget has been mentioned. Your indication that you
have not heard such complaints is indicative of the weakness of the
ICANN process for seriously hearing what is going on as opposed to its
ability to hear what it wants to hear.
----------
> > > .... The only thing you
> > > mention that might not be reversible is the establishment of a mechanism
> > > for the election of nine Board members by an At Large membership; if done
> > > badly, and the result is capture by an economic or philosophical (or for
> > > that matter religious or just mischeivous) minority
> >
> > What you are espousing is a rejection of democracy.
> >
> > If there were enough votes in an ungerrymandered ICANN to elect a majority
> > of board members, then who are we to say that the election is
> > illegitimate, religious, or mischevious?
> So let me get this straight: if a not carefully thought out election
> process produces a Board that is not capable or interested in maintaining
> the operational stability of the Internet, that's ok with you because that
> is the democratic way?
Now you are equating democracy with network instability.
That's a false linkage between to non-related issues.
Let's go back to the original point -- you reject a democratic ICANN
because you fear that people with views you don't like might get seats.
I might point out that "operational stability" can be as badly damaged by
a gerrymandered ICANN as one that encompasses all interests.
Certainly the actions of ICANN's unelected board with regard to NSI have
exacerbated a tense situation and made closre on these issues more remote.
And your own willingness to see the Names Council trample all over the
ICANN by-laws in a race to eject those not liked by the chairman have
inflamed those who might otherwise have been more willing to compromise
and explore new avenues.
----------
> You may be prepared to risk this
Risk what? Network instability?
That boggyman has been waved too many times to scare me.
I know how the Internet works -- I've been building it since 1974.
It simply is not true that ICANN is saving the Internet from chaos.
But let's get back to the original point -- ICANN is supposed to be
representative of the internet community. Yet so far, it constists solely
of an un-elected board and a subset of the board-crafted set of DNSO
constituencies.
Substantive decisions are being made as fast as ICANN can make them.
Yet, at the same time ICANN is slogging ever more slowly on establishing
an At Large membership.
By the time that membership is in place, the current board will
probably have self-voted to extended its term, and the DNSO will have made
substantive and pragmatically non-reversible decisions.
And you sit there at your keyboard and try to tell me that democratic
methods are dangerous.
I sit here at my keyboard and tell you that you are afraid to give
democratic methods a chance.
----------
> ... The notion that pure democracy -- and
> immediate at that -- is a value higher than the operational stability of
> the net is a view,
This is not a choice between democracy and net stabilty, and I reject your
attempt to turn it into one.
Those who will vote and who will be elected will make the choices of
policy, will evaluate the risks and benefits.
It is not a decision for you to make, even if you had the qualifications
to make it.
----------
> > And as you well know the language of the ICANN by-laws prohibits the board
> > from initiating action to overturn a DNSO initiative already adopted by a
> > previous board.
> I don't understand this point at all. The Board is free to make any
> decision that it thinks is"necessary or appropriate to further the
> interests of the Corporation." See Article VI, Section 2(g). Obviously,
> it could do so only after proper notice and comment, and only upon a proper
> showing that meets this standard, but the fact that a previous Board had
> come to a contrary decision would certainly not prevent this standard from
> being met.
I'm glad you pointed it out -- that the board is obligated to "further
the interests of the Corporation" -- not further the interests of the
Internet.
In other words, the obligations of the board, as written in the
by-laws, are to preserve ICANN's interest even at the cost of network
stability.
But let's go deeper, you largely wrote Article VI Section 2(e) of the
ICANN by-laws. So you should know what they say.
As a reminder they say (I've elided the excess words)...
(e) ... the Board
shall accept the recommendations of a Supporting Organization if the
Board finds that the recommended policy
(1) furthers the purposes of, and is in the best interest of,
the Corporation;
(2) is consistent with the Articles and Bylaws;
(3) was arrived at through fair and open processes (including participation
by representatives of other Supporting Organizations if requested);
and
(4) is not reasonably opposed by any other Supporting Organization.
There's nothing in there that allows the board to look into the merits
of a policy initiated by an SO.
Section (f) gives the board a bit more power -- and I might remind you
that section (f) was added as the result of work by people like me.
But section (f) is only triggered after the board rejects an SO proposal
on the narrow grounds of section (e). Section (f) does not give the board
carte blanch to dig into matters normally under SO control.
If you think it means otherwise, I can only say, "blame the person who drafted
the language that fails to say what was intended."
----------
> In fact, the
> only thing you don't see is the discussion
I'm glad you admit that we don't see what happens inside the ICANN
board, that it is neither "open" nor "transparent".
Don't you think that knowing how decisions are made is important?
Perhaps the board mis-understood a point, perhaps there is a way that
the proponents of something can change things to address a concern.
The board's utter silence prevents this.
----------
> The fact of the matter is that this open meeting stuff is
> philosophy, not substance
I'm glad you made your point clear -- that to you (and presumably the
ICANN board) the words "open" and "transparent" in the White paper are
mere fluff that you are free to ignore at your pleasure.
----------
> you and some others seem to think you have an
> inherent right to be in every conversation, listen to every phone call, and
> certainly to sit and watch every meeting, no matter how that would affect
> the efficiency or the efficacy of those events.
Yes. I do.
Everybody went in knowing that the fundamental groundrules are "open",
"transparent", and "accountable" processes.
Now you are saying that "efficiency" trumps those.
Can you say why it was "efficient" or "efficacious" for the board to
privately reject non-commercial and individual interests?
I'm happy to provide an exception for matters regarding personnel. It
would be appropriate for the board to do that in private.
But for everything else, the cone-of-silence approach that ICANN is using
is inexcusible.
----------
> Most others in the
> community, who do not share this view, would rather see things get done as
> quickly and effectively as possible
You are once more speaking on-high without an ounce of proof.
May I suggest that the only answer to this is to get moving on the
creation of an elected board so that we can actually measure things.
But until then, I suggest that you stop saying that you are all
knowing about some "silent majority" and let ICANN operate accoring to
the rules that were established by the White Paper.
----------
> > The mechanics of the membership issue...
...
> > What ever happened to exposure of the decision making process used by the
> > board so that those who comment can constructively address the defects
> > perceived by the board or respond to mis-understandings that the board may
> > have?
>
> maybe you know something I don't; I fully expect the Board to ask for
> comments on any implementation plan it considers before it adopts it, as
> required by the bylaws.
That's nice to hear. It would be a refreshing change from the past process.
--karl--
