Org Elections? (Re: [nc-org] "Sponsored-unrestricted")

[Marc Schneiders <marc@schneiders.org>]

Apologies for the late reply. The last three days I was in Berlin and
had some trouble to deal with my email.

Thank you for making clear to me, why it is useful to mention ex ante
and ex post. I agree completely: there should be no ex ante nor any ex
post checking of registrants. The latter would make org also not very
attractive to a large number of potential registrants, e.g. in
countries where proving one's status as not-for-profit might be
difficult. Also ex post checking is bad for the 'stability of the
internet', as it means that names are used for some time and then
disappear, or are registered by another registrant.

As for being specific about governance aspects:

1. I do not see any existing not-for-profit that could easily step
into the role of 'operator' (as the ICANN Board called it);

2. The NC is specifically asked to outline the characteristics of the
new entity to be selected or established by the ICANN Board. This
would mean, that the NC can suggest a very specific type of
organizational structure for the new org 'operator'. There does not
have to be a 'bidding' from different competiting groups. I would
prefer even to avoid that. 

3. My suggestion, concretely: The Board of new org is elected by all
registrants under org via email. (I have suggestions as to the
practical implementation of this in a not too expensive way, but
those are premature right now.) The best way to do this, in my view,
is through a form of indirect elections, in which the registrants
elect a group of (say) 20 people, who then select among them a board
of (say) 5. The board does the day to day and week to week
business. The council meets once a year, perhaps twice. Council is
advisory.

I will not try to answer beforehand any objections or questions that
this idea may evoke. Please, start shooting... That will make the
discussion more real than lengthy explanations right now.

Org is now a chance to do something innovative. Moreover, new org can
start with a nice budget of $5M. Again, I call upon all involved to
grab this chance, born out of other motives perhaps, to explore new
ways in internet governance. We need it.

-- 
Marc@Schneiders.ORG


On Sun, 16 Sep 2001, at 22:11 [=GMT-0400], Milton Mueller wrote:

> Marc:
> I think it does serve a purpose to discuss ex ante 
> and ex post. We need to make it explicit that we 
> oppose BOTH ex-ante and ex-post restrictions, because
> some people might advocate ex-post restictions, 
> e.g., yet-another dispute initiation procedure, as a
> way to avoid the costs and problems of ex-ante 
> restrictions. 

> Ex-post resitrctions, however, only leads to the
> proliferation of dispute initiation rules. This is 
> very bad for users. It is unrealistic to expect domain 
> name registrants to be able to understand and track 
> the increasing number of specialized dispute 
> resolution policies associated with the growth
> of sponsored domains.  
> 
> On the issue of being more specific about governance
> arrangements, you make a good point and I am open
> to persuasion. But we need specific proposals, and
> we need them fast.



> 
> >>> Marc Schneiders <marc@schneiders.org> 09/16/01 08:04 AM >>>
> Then we should completely omit ex ante/post language to avoid giving people (wrong) ideas. The distinction 
> serves no purpose.
> 
> 
> 
> > This is why we need to come up and put in our report a 
> > clear idea of how the users/registrants (not-for-
> > profits, individuals) are going to be represented. Who 
> > is going to (s)elect them? And how?
> > 
> > MM: =====> I think that is for the bidders to 
> > propose. I think it too interventionist and 
> > controlling to tell them specific methods that must
> > be employed for representation. We cannot anticipate
> > all the possible methods that might be proposed.
> 
> Why? If we can propose the registration policy, why not the way in
> which new org is governed? Do we not *need* to do that, since the way
> in which it is ruled (e.g. marketing new org in a certain way as you
> suggest), determines whther this policy will work? In any case we
> could (and should, I think), include clear indications that the
> bidders should tell how the org-registrants are going to be
> represented on the board of new org. Otherwise we will open up all
> sorts of possibilities to repeat the At large story on a smaller
> scale. 
> 
>