[icann-nominations] Amadau Abril i Abril acceptance

[Amadeu Abril i Abril <Amadeu@nominalia.com>]

Template for acceptance:

1. Full name of the nominee:

Amadeu Abril i Abril

2. E-mail address of the nominee:

Amadeu@nominalia.com

3. Organization you work for (if apply):

As for ICANN-relevant purposes, Nominalia
Internet S.L., an ICANN accredited registrar.

4. Snail-mail address (street, city, country):

Amadeu Abril i Abril

c/o Nominalia

Passeig Lluís Companys 23

E-08010 Barcelona (Catalonia; EU)

5. The region that includes the country of which
you are a citizen:

Europe, as for ICANN purposes

6. The region that includes the country in which
you reside:

Europe, as for ICANN purposes

7. A clear statement of acceptance of the
nomination:

I accept the nomination made by François
Collignon

8. If you are a Member of the Names Council,
state your intention to resign from the Names
Council if you are elected to the ICANN Board:

N/A

9. A Curriculum Vitae (no more than 500 words
long):

My life has not changed that much since my last
electoral statement so I’ll reuse most of it ;-) :

Is There Life Outside DNSland?

I was born in Barcelona (Catalonia; EU) in 1961
(hmmm, you thought I was older, right?). I am
married, without children. After spending seven
years in four different European countries I came
back to Barcelona with the firm conviction that it
is very unlikely that I ever move again too far from
the Mediterranean Sea.

After obtaining my law degree from the University
of Barcelona (http://www.ub.es/facdt/) in 1985, I
continued my legal education in different
post-graduate and research programs at the Centre
Européen Universtaire
(http://www.univ-nancy2.fr/PRESENTATION/CEU.html)
of the Univerity of Nancy II (France), the Institut
d’Études Européenes (http://www.ulb.ac.be/iee/) of
the Free University Brussels (Belgium) and the
European University Institute at Florence
(http://www.iue.it) (Italy).

I also spent a year and a half at the European
Commission’s then-called DGIV, now the
Directorate General "Competition"
(http://europa.eu.int/comm/competition/index_en.html),

(antitrust, if you prefer).

I currently teach European Union Law,
Competition Law and Internet Law at ESADE Law
School (http://www.esade.es), Ramon Llull
University, where I will also serve as Director of
its European Documentation Center
(http://www.esade.es/cde/eng/index.html).

I am a member of the Barcelona bar, where I
served for three years as Secretary to its
Competition Law & Policy Section.

By summer of 1997 I started acting as Legal &
Policy Advisor to the Catalan Research Foundation
(http://www.fcr.es) and its domain-name
registration department, Nominalia
(http://www.nominalia.com), now an
independently owned company. I have spent most
or my time between the University and
DNS-related efforts since then.

On January of this year I joined a large local law
firm, Cuatrecasas (http://www.cuatrecasas.com), as
Of Counsel in its newly-created IT law group.

My first involvement with the Internet Community
(besides being a user) was the launching of a
pioneering electronic democracy project
(http://www.bcnet.upc.es/democ.html) within
BCNet (http://www.ulb.ac.be/iee/), a local
community network. The original project has now
evolved into an independent initiative.

I have also been among the promoters of the
domini .ct campaign (http://www.domini-ct.org), a
7000 adherent strong campaign asking the
recognition of a TLD aimed for the
Catalan-speaking cultural community

Besides my mother tongue, Catalan, I speak
Spanish, French and Italian, and something that’s
getting close to English over time. Some basic, but
fairly rotten German, average Portuguese.

And that’s all. Well, perhaps I should add that....

I*CANN Tell You That...

I was lurking during the old "newdom lists" days
where all the movement of DNS reform was
somehow started (I believe that most of the right
questions were made at that time, even if the right
answers needed more time to surface). I
participated in the IAHC (http://www.iahc.org)
process and brought the FCR (Catalan Research
Foundation) as one of the initial signatories of the
gTLD-MoU (http://www.gtld-mou.org). I was
elected by PAB (the body grouping the 200+
signatories of the MoU, a sort of General
Assembly and at-large membership all in one) as
Observer within the Policy Oversight Committee
(the body intended to set the policy within the
framework of the gTLD-MoU). When CORE (the
Internet Council of Registrars, from which
Nominaia is a founding member) was formed, I
was elected as one of its representatives within the
same POC.

When the Green Paper came about, I actively
participated in the campaign against that
unacceptable proposal, especially in Europe. In
that sense I have been active in the so-called
European Commission Panel of Participants
(EC-PoP, http://www.ec-pop.org) and I have
participated in most if not all or its meetings.

Once the more acceptable (but still largely
unsatisfactory) White Paper was released I
participated in the Geneva, Singapore and Buenos
Aires meetings of the IFWP (International Forum
for the White Paper) and served as a volunteer
member in its Steering Committee.

I also organized in Barcelona the first meeting of
the DNSO formation process, and have attended
the other three formation meetings at Monterrey,
Washington and Singapore, also serving in their
organising committees. I also was among the
promoters of the so-called "BMW" DNSO
application,

I have attended all ICANN meetings so far, and I
also drafted and submitted the Registrar
Constituency charter for recognition during the
Berlin meeting.

I was elected as provisional Names Council
representative by the registrar constituency on
June 1999.

Besides my work within the NC I have also
co-chaired Working Group A on the uniform
dispute resolution policy (and took active part in
all previous WIPO efforts on this issue).

And I was selected to serve at the ICANN Board
on October 1999, where I am also a member of the
Reconsideration Committee

In one sentence: I have been very present during
all this process for the last five years. Perhaps
"too" present? Well the NC will have a chance to
have a say on that ;-))

10. A statement indicating your ideas, intentions
and/or the reason why you consider you should
be elected to serve in the ICANN Board (no
more than 500 words):

First of all, and as I’ve already said two years ago,
I won’t promise that I will represent all the
constituencies, GA and other incarnations of the
delicate equilibrium we have achieved (we try to
achieve) within the DNSO. Simply because the
ICANN Bylaws clearly state that all Directors,
including those elected by SOs have the duty to
represent what they reasonably believe are the best
interests of ICANN as a whole. But I would
certainly keep trying that DNSO voice(s) is (are)
heard, understood and taken care of within the
Board.

I am not completely sure that I should write an
electoral statement explaining my ideas or
program. For one thing, facts and acts are more
relevant than words and each DNSO member,
specially the NC members, should evaluate my
past term within the Board as the most complete
and credible statement, clearly showing my
achievements and my failures, my strengths and
my shortcomings. Moreover, as I have already
said, my main electoral commitment is to channel
the voices, interests and priorities of the ICANN
community in general, and specially the DNSO.

Let me give you an example: the ccTLD
constituency has declared that they don’t see their
place within the DNSO and would prefer creating a
new ccTLDSO. While I understand and sympathise
with all the arguments they have advanced, I
remain skeptical about the solution. A new SO
could solve some of these problems, most
specailly the adequate "representation" of ccTLD
interests. But it immediately opens the Pandora’s
Box of Constituencies and SO realignments, and
many will claim that their current
"representativity" should not be diluted if a new
SO is created, while others will likely claim their
right to also increase their "voice" within ICANN
structure. The final net effect could (just could) be
that ccTLDs voice ends up as diluted as now...
with a far more complex and less workable
structure. Or not. It could also happen that we
simply replicate DNSO current structure and
problems into that new SO, therefore not solving
another of the advanced problems. But these are
just my fears. The fact is that a significant and
undoubtedly representative interest within ICANN
unanimously expressed its view, and as a Board
member, I can simply take note of this and try to
work a solution with them.

This reminds me of the priorities I sketched out in
my electoral statement two years ago. It is striking
how many of them are still on the table:

     Yes, we do have new gTLDs, but the selection
     process and criteria seems far from satisfactory.

     What’s more, the competition model we are
     setting in the gTLD domain name registration
     market is much less robust that I would like
     accepting (abandoning registry/registrar
     separation; allowing the practical blockage of
     domain name portability, as the registrar
     transfer procedures are immature and currently
     not working; se allow new registries to run d
     facto monopolies on attached services....).
     Too often ICANN focuses only in the private
     business aspect of a registry without taking
     due note that they are also fulfilling a public
     trust position when running a TLD service

     We must still complete the process of
     agreement drafting and signing with both
     Root Server operators and ccTLDs (I have
     always opposed direct agreements between
     ICANN and Governments on his issue), even if
     my feeling is that we have lately made a lot of
     progress on both issues.

     We have advanced a lot in the funding issue,
     but the system still seems a bit unstable.

     As for ICANN structures and procedures, we
     are still revisiting At Large Membership.
     Without prejudging the outcome of the current
     Study, my experience is that 19 Directors make
     too large a Board to really make it work as it
     should. One of my ongoing concerns and
     priorities is making sure that staff effectively
     acts under the directions or guidance of the
     Board. Too often, and for a number of reasons,
     those directions do not exist at all, but this is
     a serious flaw in our procedures. And let’s face
     it: the DNSO does not work. And now less than
     two years ago. Since I joined the Board, the
     recommendations we received from the DNSO
     are practically non-existing. And some of them,
     nearly useless as recommendations because too
     vague..... And there is a lot to do! We are under
     a review process, but I submit that, among
     many other problems, the Constituency
     structure as it works right now is not helping to
     articulate the DNSO as expected. There is an
     excessive divisiveness and nearly nobody feels
     like being part of the DNSO, let alone ICANN,
     but just of a given Constituency, and this
     reality affects the lack of strength and lack of
     real usefulness of the DNSO itself.

     Internationalisation: To make it short, we do
     have a geographically diverse Board, and
     geographically diverse Councils. We run
     meetings all over the world. But we are not
     very culturally diverse if you see what I mean.
     There is a recurrent priority: we need, more
     than ever, a more internationalised staff,
     possibly working in different parts of the
     world. In this regard, the appointment of
     Herbert Vittzthum as ccTLD liaison is a move
     on the right direction, but clearly insufficient.

     Sell-governance. Let me simply cut-and-paste
     a part of what I wrote two years ago: "ICANN
     is a private-sector driven experiment in Internet
     self-governance. I am specially worried about
     the clear and distinct feeling that despite all
     declarations about their commitment to
     deregulation and self-governance many
     Governments tend to act in the contrary
     direction. It is perhaps an unwarranted
     impression, but there it is nevertheless. "

No, neither my priorities nor ICANN open issues
have changed that much over the last two years.
Indeed, there are new problems, like the serious
risk to Internet stability brought by the so-called
"internationalised domain names". I am afraid that
ICANN is seriously underestimating the
consequences (technical, operational, legal, social,
cultural) of such experiments. Hope we will not
react too late (as it risks being soon)....

I am afraid that I have exceeded the canonical 500
words once again ;-) I stop here, therefore. I hope
that the DNSO appreciate my past work within the
Board and considers renewing it for a new term.
It’s a demanding task, and sometimes a frustrating
experience (there is a clear limit to what a single
Director may achieve). Many think that I stick too
much to principles, but I believe that someone has
to perform that role (and yes, often I do it rather
theatrically ;-)) I don’t have a different program
and I am not a different peson: I can only promise
the same commitment, enthusiasm, impartiality,
availability and energy, perhaps with a little bit
less excitement and a little bit more pragmatism.
But not only ICANN is growing older ;-)

Amadeu Abril i Abril



--
Election of the ICANN Board Director by the DNSO
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/icann-nominations/Arc01/