Re: [ga] At large presentation

["L. Gallegos" <jandl@jandl.com>]

Jamie,

If only you could clone yourself a few million times, maybe your voice 
would be a force.  It's a shame that people seem to have given up due to 
the obvious futility of the individual's fight to exist in the ICANN 
framework.

Personally, I was proud of you and would like to thank you for 
attempting to put a voice to the frustrations of most of us in the user 
community.

Leah


On 26 Jun 2002, at 3:38, James Love wrote:

> I'm in the GA, and Denise, Esther, Vittorio, and Izumi Aizu and on the panel 
> to present a report on the at large organizing effort.
> 
> Denise:
> In Accra, the board has called for bottom up at large "structures."   She 
> reports $17k in contributions for at-large.org, and asks for more money. 
> 16 "at large structures" have been created or designated by the effort.  The 
> implication is that all the groups who are listed on the at-large.org web 
> page are on board with this new approach.  There is some talk of creating a 
> "structured role" in policy making, and input into the board decisions. 
> She ends with a slide that says that greater involvement of governments and 
> establishment of 'meaningful' participation by individuals are not 
> necessarily mutually exclusive.   Esther then jumped in to say some people 
> didn't support a greater role by governments.
> 
> Izumi Aizu and Vittorio Bertola appeared on the pane with Esther and Denise, 
> and were generally supportive of the presentation by Esther or Denise.
> 
> Esther made a confident (almost smug) presentation.  She said "I hope you 
> walk away with an appreciation by the huge amount of progress that has been 
> made."  Earlier the at large was an "incoherent" idea, now it is something 
> with .5 million people engaged through the 16 groups, and a structure in 
> place to provide input.  If ICANN becomes government controlled, it will 
> become too powerful.  It is really important that ICANN be controlled by 
> users, by the participants, than by governments.
> 
> I just had my time at the mike from the floor... and went through the 
> basics...   The proposal for "at large structures" eliminates any votes by 
> individuals.  The White Paper gave individuals 8 of 19 board seats.  In 
> Cairo this was reduced to 5.  In Accra, the 5 elected seats were phased out, 
> but there was some hope that there would be an at large SO with maybe 3 
> seats on the board.  Now you have an at large "structure" that at best can 
> place 1 member on a 19 member nominating committee for some board seats, and 
> no one can explain even how that 1 person is selected.  To present this as a 
> success for enhancing the power of individual internet users is absurd.  I 
> said it was not true, as implied by Denise Michel's presentation, that the 
> groups listed as part of the at-large.org effort support the elimination of 
> elections for ICANN board members or the proposals in the blueprint to 
> dismantle democratic mechanisms (http://www.at-large.org/at-large-members.htm).
> 
> Denise said that CPSR was in fact supportive of the new "at large 
> structures" approach, and had joined in submissions on this to the ICANN 
> reform.    I'll let Andy Oram and Hans Klein respond with any helpful 
> clarificatons on this point.
> 
> This was followed by a presentation on the Canadian Internet Registration 
> Authority (CIRA), which recently concluded its elections.   Alexander 
> Svensson then asked a series of good questions, asking about how the elected 
> members addressed issues of mission creep, why participation has declined in 
> elections, and about "outreach" in the elections.  I asked if there was 
> fraud?  And also, how much does it cost to audit the elections?  The CIRA 
> rep said that mission creep had not been a problem, the board had kept 
> things fairly narrow, and that many people seemed satified with the CIRA 
> operation, and were just didn't feel the need to be bother as long as things 
> were working ok.   The last CIRA election had about 1,000 voters.  The CIRA 
> has an external audit function, which ended up questioning about 100 votes, 
> and ended up rejecting about 10.  The cost of the audit and verification 
> proceedure was about $3,000 for the June 2002 election.
> 
> 
> 
> ------
> James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
> http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
> voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
> 
> 
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