Re: [ICANN-EU] Independent support for Jeanette Hofmann

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

On 2000-08-28 11:08:05 +0200, Vittorio Bertola wrote:

> Are you sure? I fear that the "country representation" issue
> could be used by an excuse also by those who would like the whole
> At Large concept to be killed, and ICANN to be only ruled by the
> industry. I know that many people in the national registries and
> in the ISP-telco companies that surround them are supporting this
> process and understood that without a strong and credible user
> representation ICANN will simply fail and disappear. But I guess
> that many would like to oppose the process and say something like
> "we will never support ICANN, since it is ruled by people who
> were chosen with such a weird and unrepresentative method" - and
> this will happen more easily if the elected director will be an
> independent candidate. I think that this is the reason why ICANN
> tried to limit as much as possible the chances for independent
> candidates in Europe.

While this may indeed be a nice argument against ICANN, it would
most likely be one which backfires immediately: Who, if not the
registries, knows about the importance of ICANN?  And who, if not
the registries, should take care of mobilizing a more general
public?

From this point of view, some of the national registries are among
the ones to blame for the current disequilibrium of participation
from various countries.

> We, as supporters of the At Large membership, have to prevent
> such arguments to be credible, and this is why such an unbalance
> should be perceived as a big problem by anyone here, German or
> not. I'm not sure what a possible solution could be, but I've
> already proposed one - a semi-official At Large council, however
> chosen, to back the Director and give an
> as-much-official-as-possible representation to anyone. This would
> really help ICANN to survive in Europe, don't you think?

-- 
Thomas Roessler                         <roessler@does-not-exist.org>