Esther Dyson wrote:
>Second, I am more concerned that the voices and interests of individuals be
>*represented* in the work of the DNSO, than with precisely how that happens.
Another avenue for individual domain name holders to let their interests
be known would have been through participation in the constituencies with
which they are naturally allied. Individuals using their domain name for
commercial purposes could participate in the Business and Commercial
Constituency, individuals using the domain for non-commercial purposes
could participate in the Non-Commercial Constituency, and individuals who
have interests in the interface between their registered domain and
trademark law could participate in the Intellectual Property Constituency.
The ICANN Board recognized the value of such of scheme in Singapore. In a
Board resolution, it wrote: "Individual domain name holders should be
able to participate in constituencies for which they qualify." (See,
http://www.icann.org/dnso-formation.html). Unfortunately, all of the
constituency proposals accepted by the Board to date have disallowed
participation by individual domain name holders.
All of these recognitions are provisional though. ICANN could rectify
this by forcing all contituencies to open up their membership to
individual domain name holders in order to receive formal, permanent
recognition. Short of that though, the only way for ICANN to give life to
the statement quoted above from the Singapore compromise is to recognize
the IDNO at the Santiago meeting. I hope it does one of the these two
things.
