Re: [atlarge-discuss] Re: [ALSC-Forum] ICANN Announcement - At-Large List Nam...

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

Jeff Williams has asked three very important questions that really should be 
given a fair amount of thought:

1.) Do you or do you not support an At-Large membership that is
      inclusive of any and all stakeholders/users?
 
2.) Do you or you not support a At-Large that has a vote on any policy
      issue that may effect any stakeholder/user?
 
3.) Do you or do you not support that any At-Large will elect at least
      51% or 9 board seats? 

In the "Principles of the At-Large Membership" as enumerated by the 
Membership Advisory Committee  http://www.icann.org/berlin/membership_rec.htm 
, the very first principle states:  "At-Large membership should primarily 
represent those individuals and organizations that are not represented by the 
Supporting Organizations (SOs)."  The objective is clearly not to construct a 
membership that is "inclusive of any and all stakeholders", but rather to 
provide membership opportunities for those that are not *already* represented 
via the SO structures.  Just as the registrar constituency has the right to 
reject all that are not registrars from their immediate group, so should it 
be possible for the At-Large to reject as members any that are already 
represented within the SOs.  As such, the At-Large need not be "inclusive of 
any and all" as Jeff would desire.  

The matter of voting on policy issues is equally unclear.  Is the At-Large 
charged with establishing policy that is to be ratified by the Board, or does 
the At-large only provide advice which may be rejected by the Board?  In the 
event that a Supporting Organization disputes the recommendations of the 
At-Large (a quite probable event as the DNSO Names Council routinely disputes 
the point of view of the membership of its General Assembly), where does 
conflict resolution occur?  Is it elevated to the Board level, or should 
there be a structure created to attend to this probability?

Finally, why should the At-Large necessarily hold 51% of the Board seats?  
The At-Large, just like all other participants in the ICANN process, is a 
special interest group.  Naturally, every special interest group believes 
that it should be represented to the maximum degree possible on the ICANN 
Board, but when you stack the deck in favor of any one group, you necessarily 
disenfranchise others that are also vying for some measure of representation. 
 Should the At-Large have nine seats if this means that the root server 
operators get none?  Should the At-Large populate half of the Board if this 
means that Intellectual Property Interests or Internet Service Providers get 
absolutely no seats on the Board?  Should the Board in fact be a model of 
"representation", or should it reflect the necessary combination of skill 
sets that are required to best manage the DNS resource?  

The ALSC was supposed to provide us with a "clean sheet" study.  
Unfortunately we never got such a study, and the important questions were 
never asked, examined, or considered in light of the expected restructuring 
of the organization.  This would be a good time to re-evaluate long-held 
positions and to ask whether there might not be merit in some reconsideration.



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