RE: [wg-d] Freezing WG Membership

["Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M." <rod@cyberspaces.org>]

I agree. In fact, I think keeping the WG-C open was a good idea particularly
because that WG had a mandate to determine the consensus of the Internet
community. If the NC/DNSO establishes a WG to work out the details on a
policy/technical matter where the consensus is already clearly established,
then freezing the WG membership after the passage of an agreed upon time may
be an appropriate practice.

Rod


___________________________________
Rod Dixon
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
Rutgers University School of Law
Camden
www.cyberspaces.org
rod@cyberspaces.org

General Counsel
FreeBuyers Net, LLC
dixon@freebuyersnet.com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-wg-d@dnso.org [mailto:owner-wg-d@dnso.org]On Behalf Of
> Timothy Denton
> Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 3:45 PM
> To: Antony Van Couvering; Bret A. Fausett; wg-d@dnso.org
> Subject: RE: [wg-d] Freezing WG Membership
>
>
> Brett and Others:
>
> I am not prepared to establish a rule that all working groups should be
> either open or closed after a certain date, and would prefer a rule that
> allows for closed groups exceptionally when the circumstances
> warrant. These
> would include: a) tight deadlines and
> 		b) a narrow, technical mandate
>
> It occurs to me that certain groups, such as WG-D, could have tight well
> defined mandates and be better off with a closed structure after a certain
> period.
> On the other hand, much of this may be rearranging deck chairs on the
> Titanic.
> Having seen what the Names Council did with WG-C's 6-10 recommendation, it
> is clear that Working Groups do not really matter as regards fundamental
> questions. Perhaps this is inevitable, but it is unfortunate. It would
> appear from the decisions of the Names Council that the IP
> constituency will
> roll over everyone in each new forum, to the extent they can or that they
> are allowed to.
>
> Keeping a group that concerns itself with the large issues open during the
> course of its mandate would seem to me effective at preventing a
> closed and
> partial list, and to allow for people to get interested as the issue heats
> up.
>
> I do not see that stipulating a  period after which membership is closed
> will solve, alleviate, aggravate, or cause a stacking problem by
> itself.The
> real concern is that working groups matter for little in the
> councils of the
> great.
> Timothy Denton, BA, BCL
> tmdenton.com
> Telecom and Internet Law and Policy
> 37 Heney Street, Ottawa, Ontario,
> Canada, K1N 5V6
> phone: 1-613-789-5397
> tmdenton@magma.ca
> fax: 789-5398
> www.tmdenton.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-wg-d@dnso.org [mailto:owner-wg-d@dnso.org]On Behalf Of
> Antony Van Couvering
> Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 2:13 PM
> To: Bret A. Fausett; wg-d@dnso.org
> Subject: RE: [wg-d] Freezing WG Membership
>
>
> Agreed
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-wg-d@dnso.org [mailto:owner-wg-d@dnso.org]On Behalf Of Bret
> > A. Fausett
> > Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 12:44 PM
> > To: wg-d@dnso.org
> > Subject: [wg-d] Freezing WG Membership
> >
> >
> > >From my participation with WG-C, I noted that the group often became
> > side-tracked by the fact that new members were joining throughout
> > its work.
> > It was a distraction, an annoyance, and may have kept the group from
> > becoming more cohesive than it might otherwise have been. (I thought it
> > worked very well, actually, given its tasks and history.)
> >
> > Open membership in WG-C was important for that particular
> group, coming as
> > it did early in the life of ICANN. Last year, it was quite possible that
> > someone might have been interested in the creation of new TLDs
> > but ignorant
> > about ICANN. I doubt that is the case any longer. We might now want to
> > consider freezing the membership of a WG at some defined moment in time.
> >
> > The primary purpose would be to create cohesiveness, build
> community, and
> > encourage compromise. With a changing membership, compromise
> > reached one day
> > can be attacked the next by a new member not privy to the long
> > conversations
> > and debates that went into it.
> >
> > Something like a firm 60 day enrollment window at a working
> group's launch
> > would also serve to partially protect WG votes from being stacked.
> >
> > On the negative side, such a rule might give a false sense of
> > consensus, by
> > pushing criticism to the end (in the public comment phase).
> >
> > Any thoughts on this?
> >
> >         -- Bret
> >
> >
>
>