[ga] WLS decision makes "bottom-up" initiatives like ALAC seem meaningless
Title: Help I have to say, after the ICANN Board's recent proposals/decisions on WLS,
which ignored the prevailing views of its constituencies (if you set aside the
gTLDs)... it makes you wonder what the participation is for.
The ALAC initiative is another example, when set in the context of WLS. If
the ICANN Board just reverses the judgement and advice of DNSO and others and
"does what it likes" in a "top-down" autocratic manner, then what on earth will
be the point of an ALAC which has even less influence?
All we achieve is to legitimise their "top-down" decisions because they can
then point to us and say: Look! There's a process for participants. etc etc. A
process which they then ignore at will.
I have felt all along that since the @large is despised by the ICANN Board
as a threat to their "absolute power", and since they have no intention of
surrendering power to the @large, our only remaining policy is to "go round"
ICANN and "bypass" their structures, by building an organisation which is so
substantial and numerically convincing, that we can find supporters outside
ICANN to pressurise the Board into ceding us power.
To me, it's the only realistic way.
We set our own agenda. We build our own community. We demonstrate how
representative it can be. We uphold transparent processes of integrity.
What we cannot afford to do, is to "legitimise" the typical autocracy we've
witnessed here with the WLS decision, where it doesn't matter who participates
or what they are saying, the ICANN politburo will still do whatever they
want on behalf of a limited commercial group whose interests it seeks
to uphold at all costs.
The WLS fiasco illustrates why ALAC is likely to be futile, powerless, and
counter-productive.
Richard Henderson |