Re: [ga] The Real World

["James Love" <james.love@cptech.org>]

Kent, are you involved in the political or technical part of ICANN now?
In terms of how boards are choosen,  a lot depends upon what the group is.
A basic right of association is for people to act together with others, in
whatever form of internal governance they choose.  People can have
organizations with board members elected from a membership, self
perpetuating, choosen at random or just about anything they like.  When it
comes to governments, things are different, and some basic issues of
accountability have to be addressed.

If ICANN wants to morph itself into an advocacy organization, with opinions
but no power over the Internet, quite a few models of governance might be
appropriate.  If it wants to be an Internet governance organization, it is
different.  This is the guts of the issue.  What is ICANN?  If it wants to
be a global regulator, it can't organize itself like CPTech, ICANNWatch, the
Rockefeller Foundation or the Cato Institute.  It has to address the
legimacy of the process for electing or appointing board members.   The
difference goes to the regulatory or governance function.  The fact that
NGOs are advocates in governance is of course entirely appropriate in a free
society, regardless of their organizational structure.  Some are membership
based (like Public Citizen, the ACLU or Consumers Union), others are not
(Like Essential Information, CDT, etc).   CPTech is part of the Trans
Atlantic Consumer Dialogue, a group with 65 member groups. most of who are
membership based, and have millions of members, where I am the co-chair of
the IP committee.  TACD operates under tough consensus rules (any member
group can block an action), and has elections for its steering committee and
committee chairs.   It limits its membership, based upon a criteria.  TACD
isn't a government, it is a group that issues recommendations to
governments.

CPTech is an unincorporated project that Ralph and I started in 1995.
CPTech is small, with a staff that is typical two to four (not counting RN).
I am an employee of the Center for Study of Responsive Law, a non-profit
corporation created by Ralph Nader in 1968.   One of the CPTech staffers is
an employee of Essential Information.   Essential Information is in fact the
main funder of CPTech activities, based primarly on grants from the Ford and
Rockefeller Foundation, but from time to time other grants, such as one from
the Center for the Public Domain.  We don't take corporate funding.  The
office I referred to is the EI offices, which have other projects, on topics
such as tobacco control, environmental protection, banking, and various
international development projects.  I run CPTech.  I don't run the other
projects.

If CPTech wanted control over the DNS system, it would have to be organized
quite a bit differently.  ICANN wants that control.  ICANN has to accept
that it can't create governance organization that is self elected.   This
should be basic 101 stuff.  Maybe ICANN's staff is short on people who
appreciate what ICANN is trying to do, and why people are so appalled at the
"reform" proposals.

  Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kent Crispin" <kent@songbird.com>
To: <ga@dnso.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2002 1:46 AM
Subject: Re: [ga] The Real World


: On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 04:45:51PM -0400, James Love wrote:
: > Kent, what is the basis for having the ICANN board of directors elect
the
: > ICANN board of directors?
:
: It is, in fact, quite common for boards of non-profits to select their
: own successors.  Let me illustrate why this is so by asking you a few
: questions:
:
: According to the website of the Consumer Project on Technology, it is an
: organization dedicated to representing the interests of consumers in a
: number of areas (ie, it is concerned with regulatory issues), and you
: are its director.  Were you elected to that position? If not, why not?
: To use your question, what was the basis for your not being elected?
:
: A more interesting question, of course, is how could you (or CPTech)
: claim to fairly and transparently represent the interests of consumers
: if you weren't elected to that position? Do you believe that the mere
: association with Ralph Nader's name is sufficient to remove all
: necessity for accountability? If you believe that CPTech can fairly
: represent the interests of consumers without holding public elections,
: why doesn't that apply to ICANN?  To be concrete, CPTech is doing
: things that may directly impact me, but I had absolutely no say in the
: positions that CPTech is adopting.  Why is that OK in the CPTech case?
:
: Another question I would like to know the answer to is whether there is
: a board of directors for CPTech (or it's apparent parent organization),
: and if so, are they elected through elections open to the general
: public? If not, what is the basis for that.  Note that this basic
: information is not available from the CPTech website -- could you
: explain why that is? Also, you reference grants, and how people can
: donate money to CPTech, but there is no public accounting of how you
: spend their money.  How can you justify this?
:
: I note on the web site that three staff members are mentioned; but in a
: recent message to the GA list you said "In our office of 25 people..."
: Who are these other people and what do they do?
:
: In sum it appears that CPTech, a non-profit organization that is deeply
: involved in governance issues, is not at all motivated to inform the
: public about its structure, how it is run, its finances, or its
: staffing.  I realize that ICANN and CPTech are very different in many
: ways, but there are also enough similarities that CPTech's profound lack
: of transparency and accountability is rather noteworthy.  Perhaps it
: doesn't matter to you, the director of CPTech, that the public doesn't
: have access to this elementary information about your organization.  Or
: perhaps you would really like to put up that information, but you just
: can't find the time (I can certainly sympathize with that).
:
: Incidentally, did you realize that CPTech apparently has about 50% more
: staff than ICANN? (ICANN has 17 people working for it, some of them part
: time).
:
: Kent
:
: --
: Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
: kent@songbird.com                          lonesome."  -- Mark Twain
:
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