[IFWP] [Fwd: at-large-membership discussion/]

[Jeff Williams]

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Don and all,

  Here is the text of Kathy's post:
"I was just asked to participate in a discussion of the At Large
membership this afternoon with a few other noncommercial groups.
This is an issue that I am still developing options about.  If you have
options, reports, concerns, and ** solutions ** please let me know."

However Don, this list does have archives should you care to check
fro yourself.  >;)

  You bring up some interesting and thought provoking points that
I would like as the INEGroup Spokesman as well as sometimes EU advisor
on internet affairs, would like to comment on.  More below your comments...
 
 

Don Heath wrote:

At 01:21 AM 11/13/99 +0700, Norbert Klein wrote:
>Kathryn, you wrote:
>
> >I was just asked to participate in a discussion of the At Large
> >membership this afternoon with a few other noncommercial groups.
>This
> >is an issue that I am still developing options about.  If you have
> >options, reports, concerns, and ** solutions ** please let me know.
>
>
>Yes I have concerns. Solutions, no. Or better: We will have to find
>them together.
>
>The at-large-membership idea as such is frightening for me. Not
>because I want to exclude the persons in the intended target group
>from participation, but because I am afraid a non-structured
>at-large membership, aiming at about 5000 members (?), is by
>necessity going to be a mass-organization to be manipulated. It will
>not have the practical possibility of active opinion formation on
>specific and complex issues, and of relevant action, while at the
>same time it will be considered to be an extremely participatory
>organization where "everybody" has a voice.

Hi

I seem to have missed the original note sent by Kathy,
but I too have concerns about how this group can
effectively and fairly be formed and made functional.

  Good.  Given it's rocky start, as you specifically are well aware,
many of INEGroup's members have some very great concerns as well.
I hope that we share some of these concerns as well as potential solutions
to addressing them.

  We believe for any constituency to be legitimate they should stand
on their own feet independently.  This means several thing need to
be effected as a basis for this to occur.

1.) That the NCDNHC must be financially independent.
2.) That it's mailing list and identity must break away from the
      control of the ISOC.

 

Kathy  -  Who are the organizations who have asked you
to participate?

I have had minimal conversations with people in CDT, and
other orgs with the idea of bringing together ISOC, CDT,
IEEE, ACM, ITAA, int'l membership orgs, etc., to address
this issue.  My thinking was that collectively we should
try to define a set of principles upon which we would base
our operation.  From that base we could define what we
stand for, what our positions are on the various issues
confronting ICANN, how we would propose to select and
elect board members, and so on.

  Good points here Don, and I completely agree, as I am sure many
others do as well.  But these points, though very important, must follow
the NCDNHC becoming a real constituency.  That is to stand on their
own instead of as a subsidiary of the ISOC as it does presently.

 

Once those things were determined (and the methodology to
do this could be complex  -  because we need to get the
input and consensus of our respective members), we can then
set that out for prospective members (and existing members)
to evaluate and for them to make a determination if they
would like to join (the ICANN membership org).

  The current proposal of the ICANN BoD for a ICANN membership
is an abomination and is not in compliance with the White Paper and the
MoU.  Until or unless it become so and allows for any and all participants
on the internet to join instead of limiting the membership to an arbitrary
number (5000), it cannot represent the participants.  Our organization
alone is over 98k members all domain name owners in one form or
another.  How can a limitation of 5000 in the ICANN Membership
organization possibly represent the sprit and requirements of the White
Paper.  The DNSO has already shown that it not longer represents
Domain Name owners in it's participation practices that have been
brought to light of late and have been known for some time.

 

I was thinking of the following for ISOC.  For any new
member that Joins ISOC, we have a box on the application that
if checked, the member would agree to join the ICANN at
large membership as well as ISOC.  We would keep track of
these members as a subset of the overall ISOC membership.
Further, for existing members, we would give them a chance to
positively elect the ICANN option (as part of the ISOC
membership) "now" (whenever "now" turns out to be) or when
they renew their ISOC membership.

  This works fine for the paltry 6000+ members of the ISOC,
but is not reaching out enough to other Constituencies as well
as non-constituency members of the Internet and stakeholder community.
Although this is a good for the ISOC, I fail to see how this is helpful
to the members of the NCDNHC directly, but I can see how it helps
the ISOC remain in a position of control of the NCDNHC quite
nicely.  I am not sure that this is to the advantage of the NCDNHC
members, nor the DNSO as a whole.

 

It is important that anyone who participates in the ICANN
membership, does so with a positive, that is, specific
action agreeing to do so.  There must not be any assumed
members of ICANN.

  I would agree that there should be no assumed members of
the ICANN membership organization.  In keeping with that there
should at least be positive, by that I mean, independent constituency
participation as equals in the ICANN Membership as well.

 

If all the organizations who would agree to participate
in this organizing process, would agree to the same set of
principles, etc., we could amass a fairly large mutual
set of subsets to form the ICANN membership organization.

  Of course this would be true if the ICANN Membership Organization
were not an subset of the Domain Name Owners or users of the internet
that is so small as to be unrepresentative of that same participation.  Hence
I can only therefore conclude that the abomination of the restrictive
nature of the proposed and dictated ICANN Membership Organization
is unrepresentative, and therefore not in compliance with the White Paper
nor the MoU at present.  Until or unless this occurs post haste the
repercussions could be significant early on and increase as time elapses.
This would not be a healthy thing I don't believe.

 

To Norbert's points.  It is always problematic on how to
gather member thoughts/preferences, but in the end, the
one's who show up (electronically or otherwise) are the ones
who count  -  as long as we make sure that each has the opportunity
to participate and be counted.

  I agree with you here.  Unfortunately the ICANN BoD doesn't seem
to view it that way in practice as we are seeing in the DNSO and have
seen on occasion, and at every ICANN Conference to date.

Some of this is alleviated
when we have a clearly defined set of principles and statement
of operations.  In other words, if they know what they are
getting into, they will likely abide by organizational
decisions, as long as those decisions and actions are
consistent with what we said we stood for.

  Not completely true here Don.  Unless there is equal and
unrestrained participation allowed by all stakeholders and users
as to having input and decision (Bottom-up) making influence,
this cannot and will not be expectable, and the US Congress
will need of feel a need to take over this regulation of the internet.

 

Anyway, these are just some rambling thoughts for now  -  I'm
sitting in a meeting and should be concentrating on the
matters of that meeting ;-)

  Well Don, old son, don't get to comfortable there. And put out that
Monica Cigar!!!  >;)  (Joking of course)....

 

Don

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Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 95k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Contact Number:  972-447-1894
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208
 

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