[ga] The "clean sheet" shroud...

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

This comment was posted to the ALSC Forum by one of our At-Large Directors.  
It is worthy of consideration: 

On Sun, 2 Sep 2001, Esther Dyson wrote:

> Independent of any reaction to your comments.....  I hope you have more
> luck getting outsiders interested than the ALSC had... It was not for lack
> of trying! I look forward to hearing some new voices in this discussion.


Before the ALSC was formed a so-called "outreach" was made to elicit
names of people to be on the ALSC.

That outreach was made to the DNSO supporting organizations -
organizations that are primarily composed of business entities that will
lose power in ICANN should there be an empowered At-Large.

But not a single attempt was made to reach out for suggestions from the
158,000 people who signed up for last year's election.

The ASLC thus was born containing the seeds of its own irrelevance.


Then, after the ALSC was formed there was no real effort to reach out to
those tens of thousands of people who signed up to vote last year.  There
were partial efforts, made late, made without vigor, and made by those who
at the same time were demonstrating their antipathy to the concept of an
at-large by declaring that the At-large no longer existed.

Those who had tried to participate in the past election only to discover
themselves locked out due to procedural failures may well have given up in
disgust and frustration.  And those who had heard ICANN poh bahs proclaim
that the At-Large is dead may have taken them at their word.


The ALSC was a silent body - until this recent report there was not a hint
of what ideas were being discussed, what presumptions were being made, and
what misconceptions existed.

It is hard to get interested in trying to discuss issues with a body that
doesn't even demonstrate that it is listening.


And in the end we have this report, a report that makes one wonder what
happened to the second letter "N" at the end of ICANN.  (I.e.  the
Internet Corporation for Names and *Numbers*.)

And one wonders what happened to ICANN's obligation in its Articles of
Incorporation to "operate for the benefit of the Internet
community as a whole"
          ^^^^^^^^^^


We most certainly did receive a "clean sheet" study.  And as many feared,
that clean sheet has been turned into a shroud in which the body of the
barely born At-Large will be wrapped and buried.

        --karl--

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