Re: [ICANN-EU] European At Large Council

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@vitaminic.net>]

On Tue, 5 Sep 2000 11:03:41 +0200, you wrote:

>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. 

Yes, but we need to start from somewhere. This is a good occasion to
claim the legitimacy of such an organization. An open mailing list is
only representative of its subscribers.

It is not clear to me, also, what kind of role do you see for such
"council". If you think that it would be a group of persons sharing
more or less the same point of view, and willing to organize to defend
it, then I understand the value of an open list. If you think that it
should be the place where different opinions in the communities
confront and try to get to a final consensus (a thing that in some
occasions could also prove impossible), then a structured council,
with elected members and so on, will be more suited. Democracy also
means that, sometimes, there will be a majority and a minority, and
you must have a way to determine and measure them. You might call this
"formality", but there's no shortcut around it (you know, democracy is
a slow and ineffective instrument of government, but it's the best we
have).

>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).

I agree on this in principle, but I fear there is the risk of
expanding the scope too much and too suddenly, and losing focus. And
the bigger you want the scope to be, the more legitimation you need to
make it meaningful. After all, this is just the ICANN At Large
membership, and I fear that many people here would not agree in
transforming it in something even more political. (I'd like this to
happen, even if gradually, though.)

However, if you want to express user positions about such wide and
general issues, either you are the "European Internet Users
Parliament" (and you have a way to legitimate yourself as that), or
you will simply look as a bunch of people affected by megalomania.

>And to avoid exactly this we need physical regulary meetings in different
>european places on the issues to be adressed to ICANN.

I agree, though I see the problem of funding, since not all of us will
be able to afford flying across Europe repeatedly. But then, it would
be a meeting of what, if there's no recognition of the members of this
"whatever"?

>>communities. This is another reason to have a more formally structured
>>council.
>
>What do you mean with "formally"? I hope you donīt mean buereaucracy?

No, I mean something that has some degree of recognition, a clear way
to select its members, and so on - and possibly approved by ICANN. See
above.

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

While I understand what you are thinking about, I cannot see why At
Large members should call for any kind of external help to structure
themselves. It would be a bit strange to me if we decided to discard
the results of these elections, in which At Large members are
expressing their preferences about some charters and some candidates,
and then have some external people from other organizations come in
and represent the community.

And by the way, I fear that some of the so called "user organizations"
in many countries have strict connections to real-life political
parties and movements, that I'd like to keep out of this matter.

-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology