Re: [ICANN-EU] European At Large Council

[Andy Mueller-Maguhn <andy@ccc.de>]

Vittorio Bertola wrote: 

>I am getting messages that say "We are supporting you since you are the best
>of the Italian candidates, but we are very disappointed about the procedure,
>and we feel that our vote will be wasted, since Italy will not be able to
>get a voice." This, I fear, is what is happening everywhere outside Germany

I understand this fear and would like to combine it with the question
of organization. Europe is not that small and germany not that big.

If course one way of organizing a council - or however we call it - would
be to take the candidates with the most votes of all european countries
and put them together in a mailing list, newsgroup or regulary meeting
institution. But does this make sense? Still, the number of registred 
ALM and the number of votes cannot claim this as "representatives";
and if we try to get a "representative" organization of the european
users, we need lotīs more. 

So my idea would not be to have a closed group through an election but
an open forum trying to enable participation for european users - if they
are ALM or not - , user groups and NGOīs. ALM is something quiete
new compared to other user groups and NGOīs who exist for a long
time in europe.

I think the main point is, that such a european communication plattform,
forum, council, call-it-like-you-want makes sense itself, getting 
european user groups closer together, adressing issues to politics,
to the media and not only to ICANN. When you look at special issues
like "lawful interception" (that european echelon stuff) it might be
important to adress ETSI as well as ICANN. And/or IETF. And/Or
all european ISPīs. And/or european parliament (copyright controll
discussion).

>Otherwise, next time I think that we will have even less voters from outside
>Germany, and even more voters from Germany, and so on until the Director
>will be weakened since other countries' members will not accept him as their
>fairly elected representative in ICANN.

Again I understand your fear, but letīs try together - whoever the director
will be - to think constructive on how we can break this situation up. I still
think it is a good idea to have regulary physical meetings in different european
countries as one possible way to get a european understanding and let people
loose fear of beeing taken over.

> I do want to have it, to create as many forums in as
>many languages as possible (we already have a French mail forum and lots of
>German Web forums, by the way), and to involve all the community, but it is
>not enough, and if we lose this occasion to raise our level of legitimation,
>we are scoring a goal to ourselves.

I completely agree with that.

>This is also unavoidable, and this will also weaken furtherly the strength
>of this "open list" we want to establish. Imagine that on this list a
>proposal is discussed, and consensus is reached. Then we bring it to ICANN,
>and someone else pops up and says "Hey! We, on the French (Spanish,
>Italian...) list, reached consensus on the very opposite!" What should ICANN
>do? They will possibly decide that At Large members cannot express a clear
>position, and will do as they like. And even if the Director chooses one of
>the two positions, he will be weakened by the fact that there are structured
>groups of At Large members claiming that he is going against the will of the
>community

And to avoid exactly this we need physical regulary meetings in different
european places on the issues to be adressed to ICANN. Mailing lists and
News Groups are great to get an broad band diversity of ideas and 
opinions, but if we need to concentrate on finding a concensus, solution 
and/or clear statement to a question, itīs much easier in real life and/or
on a mailing list with a clear focus on that. To avoid misunderstandings:
A clear statement could also be, that on special questions there simply
is no represantative statement to make for all user and that the issue
and/or structure should allow different users interests.

>Since I'm quite sure that we are going to have at least five or ten "open At
>Large lists" in different languages and communities, there must be some way
>to coordinate them all and get to a consensus shared *among* the
>communities. This is another reason to have a more formally structured
>council.

What do you mean with "formally"? I hope you donīt mean buereaucracy?

One of my main questions to constructively building such a thing is in what
european countries there are what (user-)organizations that could help?


best regards,

Andy M.-M.

-- 
"chaos will reign" - MPAA lawyer Leon Gold in the lawsuit against 2600 cause of DeCSS

Andy Mueller-Maguhn, andy@ccc.de, Postfach 640234, D-10048 Berlin, Germany
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