[ALSC-Forum] Re: Membership

[Mike Roberts]

At 10:53 -0400 9/1/01, DannyYounger@cs.com wrote:
>Dear Mike,
>
>The beauty of a "clean-sheet" approach is that it allows for a re-examination
>of issues that have already been long-since been "settled" -- in fact, it is
>what has allowed this committee to recommend against having the nine At-Large
>Directors that the Internet community was promised.  My question was as much
>a query regarding the methodology employed by this committee as it was a
>quest for answers.   In a true "clean-sheet" study it would be immaterial if
>a topic had been "hashed and rehashed innumerable times".

It's significant that the ALSC did not consider this issue.  They can 
speak for themselves, as you suggest, but I suspect that they view it 
as a settled piece of business, part of the stakeholder checks and 
balances, for the reasons I stated in my email to you.


>I take issue with your conclusion that "It's very clear that granting
>corporate statutory membership to
>individuals would fundamentally discriminate against other stakeholder
>interests in ICANN, and more particularly against non-US interests."  Our
>neighbors to the North (CIRA) have an executive Board in which 9 out of 12
>Directors are publicly elected, and an organization that confers real
>membership rights to its domain name holders.

I admire the CIRA structure.  I spent time in Ottawa last year 
working with the Board and Industry Canada (the equivalent of our 
Dept of Commerce) on the three way arrangements among the govt, CIRA 
and ICANN that are being implemented.

It is significant that voting rights are vested in those most closely 
aligned with the registry - the holders of domain names.  This is 
close to the position adopted by ALSC, for many of the same reasons, 
and not at all like the position advanced in the NAIS report or by 
some of the members of this list.

Of course, the responsibilities of CIRA as a national top level 
domain registry are a subset of those vested in ICANN, as reflected 
in the chartering documents (detail available on the ICANN and CIRA 
websites).

ICANN must deal with global DNS and IP address issues as discussed in 
the White Paper, and its multi-stakeholder representation structure 
reflects those additional responsibilities.

- Mike




>
>
>Please note their Bylaws cited at: 
>http://www.atlargestudy.org/forum_archive/msg00424.shtml 
>http://www.atlargestudy.org/forum_archive/msg00446.shtml
>
>Why is it that the Canadians can have this type of responsive structure, and
>we cannot?  A full 75% of their Directors are "At-Large", and their "At-Large
>membership" has true membership rights.  They don't seem to believe that they
>are discriminating against other stakeholder interests...
>
>Perhaps you can expand upon your argument, that we may better understand your
>point of view.  You might also wish to ask the formulators of this Draft to
>actually participate in some discussion, as they, not you, crafted the
>proposal under discussion.