Re: [ICANN-EU] European At Large Council

[Alf Hansen <aha@uninett.no>]

Vittorio,

I am very much in line with your opinion.

However, I think it will be usefull to discuss the objectives of a
regional icann-at-large-council before starting to discuss all the
details about "should it be a list", "who should be on the list", etc.

I think what we need is some kind of At-Large organization that makes it
possible for a member to express her opinion in ICANN related matters,
and be heard. The common views should be structured and lead to
formulation of structured advices to the ICANN Board (not only to the
Board member elected by the actual Region). 

Best regards,
-- 
Alf Hansen                     Mail address:
                                 UNINETT FAS A/S
aha@uninett.no                   N-7465 Trondheim, Norway
Home page:                     Phone: +47 73 55 79 00
http://domen.uninett.no/~alf/  Fax:   +47 73 55 79 01



Vittorio Bertola wrote:
> 
> 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