[ICANN-EU] How to proceed

[patrick.mayer@gmx.de]

Dear European At-Large-Members,

before some more thoughts on ICANN ALM, I would like to congratulate Andy
Mueller-Maguhn, but also all the other candidates and nominees. I think it
is very courageous to participate in Internet governance, and the last days
have shown that. I wish to express my thanks to everybody who participated.
Special thanks again to Thomas Roessler and Hanno Wagner for setting up the
list and the IRC discussion.

Now, how to proceed?

I think, first we should encourage Andy to get in touch with the other
selected ALM directors. They will have to prove to the Board and to the public
that the At-Large-Membership (and ICANN itself) is a good idea and should
not be weakened but strengthened.

Then, they of course must build up as much knowledge as possible on
ICANN's past, its proceedings and purposes.

For Andy and us, one main point will be to build a strong european
supporter base. He must in no way be a "german" director. While I still think the
german press did a good job in promoting the election in the first place, I
was _embarrased_ by their purely german point of view in the last days. I
think Alexander Svensson (www.icannchannel.org) was one of the few with a
european perspective. We should go on in that direction. 

Then, we will have to think more about a european At-Large-Member-Forum.
The Euroean At-Large-Membership should get stable and expand on that basis
without being taken over in the next round by industry interests. I still
stick to the idea of having this list as an _informal_ nucleus for discussion
and (undefined) rough consensus-building. But dont forget that we are just a
bunch (about 200?) of more than 10k European voters. Not very representative,
so. No need to set up formal rights and procedures at this point, but
rather we should try to get more impact on the media, like Andy successfully did.

I still like the idea of independent funding for the yet-to-be-elected
Director. Unfortunately (strictly in the sense of fundraising ;-)   , he is
elected now. Therefore, several groups of donors will pull out. Anyway, I would
like to follow the idea of some kind of interest group independent funding.
Does it still make sense to set up a european fund to support Andy's (1)
travel costs, esp. for his european contacts, and (2) back office (incl. some
people to do administrative work for him?)?

The most important point IMO is to make the At-Large-Membership-Elections
a success in terms of useful work of it's directors. Let's support Andy (and
the others) now to get the most democratic influence possible on the ICANN
BoD. The goal should be to prevent the ICANN board from abolishing ALM in
the first place and then, to get them to have the full number of ALM directors
(9) elected over time.

Finally, Andy has very much promoted the idea of a "(trademark-) law-free"
TLD. If there are any lawyers or other law people on the list interested in
discussing that idea and developing it in some more detail, please contact
me by PM.

Kind regards,

Patrick


-- 
Rechtsanwalt Dr. Patrick Mayer   patrick.mayer@gmx.de
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