Re: [ga] NC BS

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

On 2002-05-15 18:56:36 -0400, Marilyn Cade wrote:

>We didn't enough about this issue in the GA discussion, but you 
>might draft a comment about what you think the GA should b e if 
>you don't like this formulation and forward it via the chair/alt. 
>chair.

The current recommendations 18, 19, 24, and 25, taken together, 
certainly do not provide adequate participation for the public and, 
in particular, for individual users' and consumers' interests in a 
DNSO process using them as a blueprint.

 - Recommendation 18 only lists the existing DNSO constituencies.  I  
   believe that it would be wise if the DNSO would include a  
   placeholder for a consumers' interests constituency in this  
   section.  I actually believe that such a constituency, in which  
   _strong_ advocacy groups should be represented, is crucial for  
   balanced policy-making: It could add the necessary political  
   weight to consumsers' interests.  Having these interests  
   represented (in policy-making, as opposed to the board level!) by  
   either an at-large membership or an individual domain name  
   holders' constituency would most likely carray significantly less  
   weight.

 - Recommendation 19 lacks a clear procedure for adding new  
   stakeholders. It is an extremely bad idea to essentially put the  
   participation of new constituencies in the existing  
   constituencies' hands.  Any such addition would affect the  
   current balance of powers, and could be perceived as a risk for  
   constituencies' existing influence.
   
   For this reason alone, it seems unlikely that new constituencies  
   would _ever_ be added without considerable outside pressure.  
   
   (Note that, for this reason, it's also highly unrealistic to  
   believe that the NC could follow my above remark concerning  
   recommendation 18.)
   
   If you continue this line of thought, the next thing to ask for  
   is an artificial balance of user and supplier interests in the  
   council, independently of the number of participating  
   constituencies, by weighting votes accordingly.  One way of  
   implementing this is the gTLD constituencies' recommendation to  
   have separate policy development bodies.
   
 - Recommendation 24 is, quite frankly, unrealistic: Verifying the  
   GA's members' constituency membership is something which has  
   already failed in the past.

   Actually, while the discussions about the currently-running vote  
   were going on, Alexander and I considered the idea of verifying  
   the eligibility of members of the voting registry, in response to  
   James' outside campaigning.  When we asked Roberto and Harlad how  
   this was applied in the past, we learned that these rules have  
   never been enforced - because some constituencies apparently have  
   not been able to either confirm or deny membership of individuals.

   Also, the example of the non-commercial constituency's discuss  
   mailing list demonstrates that (sort of) reasonable and 
   intelligent discussions are certainly possible on mailing lists 
   with public participation.  (As are allegations of slander, libel, 
   and the like - but that's most likely unavoidable around ICANN.)

 - Recommendation 25 describes a public consultation period as "the  
   channel by which individuals and parties not fitting into the  
   stakeholders/constituency scheme participate in policy-making".  I 
   believe that this is an extremely poor suggestion for public  
   participation: During such public consultation periods there will  
   typically be no actual dialogue between the public and task force  
   members, which severly limits the impact such comments can have  
   on evolving policy.  Also, since public consultation is to be  
   done on "proposed new policy," this consultation period will  
   occur _after_ any compromises have been carefully worked out  
   between constituencies.  It's not too realistic that any deals  
   made would be re-opened just on the basis of public comment - in  
   particular when there is no or little time between the receipt of  
   public comments and the publication of a task force's final 
   report.

   All a public consultation process could realistically do would be 
   to make visible the most obvious abuses of policy-making process. 
   But these would be visible anyways.  Thus, it's unlinkely that 
   such public comment periods would actually improve the policy 
   which evolves.

Comments?

Regards,
-- 
Thomas Roessler                          http://log.does-not-exist.org/
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