Re: [ga] "Moderating" the GA list.

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

Thomas,

No one in the GA has called for a moderated list.
No one in the GA has asked that the Chair be replaced by a Council appointee.
No one in the GA has demanded that we lose our voting rights.

Why are you so quickly jumping on the Board's bandwagon and supporting this 
ill-considered top-down "solution"?

The problems in the DNSO do not stem from the GA.  We have a rapidly growing 
membership whose total exceeds that of all other constituencies combined.  
Our members are more involved with the day-to-day issues in ICANN than any 
other group.  We are the equivalent of an open Town Hall meeting that is 
always noisy, has both informed and uninformed members of the public (and 
occasionally the lunatic fringe), but overall one fact remains clear -- the 
debate is always healthy and vigorous.  A Town Hall meeting requires no 
"moderation" of the type that you are proposing... it only requires that 
which we already have in place -- sanctions against those that abuse our very 
few rules.

The "problem" has always been the pathetic performance of the Council, and 
the consistently poor policy guidance that they have offered to the Board.  
The recent "Blueprint" does nothing to solve this core problem.

Instead of a purely democratic one-person/one-vote in the DNSO, we are being 
told that the dysfunctional constituency system will prevail, and that the 
public interest element will lose their voting rights while only the 
lobbyists for special interest groups may vote within ICANN's 
policy-recommending bodies.  Further, the public voice must be "moderated" 
and controlled by a top-down appointed Chair.  This is unacceptable.

Why should the voice of these lobbyists carry any more weight than the voice 
of the public that is represented in the GA?  Our founding structure called 
for a balance between the public interest and the special interests 
represented in the Supporting Organizations.  Since the At-Large has been 
eliminated, we remain the last bastion to support the public voice in the 
ICANN process, and the GNSO should reflect this necessary balance with full 
and complete voting rights for all of its members (not just for those that 
belong to special interest groups).  

As Chair, I would expect you to fight for our rights... not just to cave in 
to "imposed solutions" that run contrary to the bottom-up process.  Please 
re-think your position.   
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