ICANN Board resolutions, public and not so public

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

Dear all,

We have had little discussion about the resolutions that the ICANN interim
Board made in Berlin.
Certainly not all appeared in the press release.

Let's enumerate some of them. 

1. Not to have an open Board meeting in Berlin.  

The public meeting in which some members the Board replied to public
questions should not be confused with an open Board meeting. We did not
hear the Board's deliberations on the merits of the contituency
applications, for example. We do not know the positions of each Board
member on the decisions taking in Singapore on dividing the DNSO into
constituencies and the rationale of limiting the constituencies to exclude
the representation of the Individual DN owner.
As Richard Sexton pointed out, most members of the Board remained totally
silent and left the talking to Esther, Mike Roberts and George Conrades.


2. Not to have the entire Board present at the Press conference.

Only Esther Dyson and Mike Roberts were there, flanked by 2 staff from
their lawyers Jones&Day,   Mr Sims and Mr Louis Tuton (sp?).
This enabled the rest of the Board to hide their positions and to escape
from possibly awkward questions by the press.

3. Not to have the decisions made in the closed meetings of 26 and 27 April
in Room 217 of the Adlon Hotel presented by a Board member to the waiting
DNS community,  but to leave this job to the ICANN lawyer, Mt Tuton.
Mr Tuton did not volonteer any information about the decisions taken on the
application of the Individuals for a recognised constituency, but only on
being asked, revealed that indeed a resolution has been passed on the IDNO
application and that it was resolved to take no action on the application.

4. Not to publish the Board resolution on the only timely bottom-up
application for recognition of a constituency, the IDNO application.

This has led to speculation as to why.
At least during the press conference the issue was addressed and the
resolution was mentioned. Upon being asked, the two Board members present
explained the resolution by referring to the still unresolved issues of
ICANN at large membership. 
This is the point where the other Board members should have been quizzed
about their positions on the issue and the likelihood of action prior to
the Santiago meeting.

The incompleteness of the press release leaves an uncomfortable question
mark about possible other secret resolutions.


--Joop Teernstra LL.M.--
the Cyberspace Association,
the constituency for Individual Domain Name Owners
http://www.democracy.org.nz/idno/