Re: [ga] NC BS

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 09:33:43AM -0700, Bret Fausett wrote:
> Philip, I think the view expressed below is mistaken. Let me explain why.
[...]
> 
> We've had difficulty finding a voice for individual registrants because of
> the concern that the registrants who choose to participate in ICANN are not
> sufficiently "representative" of the millions of registrants/end-users
> around the world. This should be of no greater concern than whether the B&C
> "represents" the world's business users or, indeed, whether even a fairly
> homogeneous group like ICANN-accredited registrars are "represented" by that
> subset of registrars that choose to participate in ICANN's registrar
> constituency. The better question is whether the opinions expressed by those
> who choose to participate in ICANN are sufficiently characteristic of the
> concerns of the larger community such that ICANN and its constituent bodies
> are making informed choices. I don't believe that small, relative sample
> sizes necessarily preclude ICANN from making informed choices.

It does, however, preclude decision making by majority rule, or any 
surrogate thereof.  

> Third, as to the view that registrants will be best represented
> federation-style by consumer-interest organizations, that's not a
> requirement we place on any other group within ICANN. In the B&C, you
> represent an association, but Marilyn and I represent individual companies.
> You'll see that the same is true in the ISPC, IPC and NCDNHC.

Companies are still organizations.

> Any reform model that doesn't allow individual domain name registrants to be
> heard *and represented* on an equal basis with businesses, intellectual
> property owners, ISPs, registries and registrars is not viable in the long
> term. 

Proposal:

Take the current GA apparatus (mailing list, voting registry, etc) and
clone it.  Name it the "individual stakeholders constituency" (ISC), and
seed it with the "membership" of the GA.  Give it 6 months to a year to
come up with a charter approved by ICANN, and give it 3 votes on the
Names Council when (if) that charter gets approved, and that the 
constituency dues can be paid.  Let the DNSO secretariate support it, 
at least for the time being.

The current GA can continue as it was originally designe: a
cross-constituency forum; people can join or drop from the ISC as they
see fit, but in my opinion there should not be any restrictions on
membership in the ISC, other than that the member be able to establish
that they are a real human being, and that they pay dues as required. 
(In particular, participation in another constituency in any capacity
should not be a restriction on participation in the ISC in any 
capacity, except that a person can only be elected to the NC once.)

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                          lonesome."  -- Mark Twain

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