[discuss] Will there be life on 1net after IANA is globalized? (:-)

Thu Mar 13 16:24:02 UTC 2014

Milton describes the situation well within the GNSO, and he has consistently supported diversity in the GNSO’s deliberations through the representation in the non-commercial stakeholders group.

Expanding on one of his points, there is an At Large Advisory Group, the ALAC, whose job it is to represent what Apple calls “the rest of us.”  This organization is maturing, has quite capable leadership, and is becoming an important voice in the context of ICANN activities.  It’s an important organization that I hope will become even more important as ICANN evolves.  The structure of the ALAC is specifically regional, which provides greater possibilities for representatives in developing regions and countries to participate and to be heard.

How to represent “the rest of us” who number in the billions has been the subject of some dispute in the history of ICANN.  While IMO this issue has not yet been finally resolved, the ALAC effort is sufficiently developed that it deserves attention, respect and support from all of “the rest of us.”
Regards,

George 

On Mar 13, 2014, at 11:46 AM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

>  
>  
> From: discuss-bounces at 1net.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at 1net.org] On Behalf Of Naresh Ajwani
> >"Motherhood-and-applepie" statements are always liked but here
> > specifics that can address concerns would help more: how many new
> > constituencies have been added, especially since emerging economies
> > started becoming important stakeholders of internet.
>  
> Just a point of information for Naresh. Within ICANN’s GNSO, the main policy making organ for domain names, the term “constituency” has a very specific meaning in the bylaws. Along with “Stakeholder Groups” they are units of representation within ICANN. ICANN has created a two-level structure in which constituencies are located within Stakeholder Groups, and Stakeholder Groups are represented on the Council.
>  
> Currently there are 4 Stakeholder Groups: Registries, Registrars, Noncommercial users and Commercial Users. Those 4 categories are broad and flexible enough to encompass virtually any interest group. My point is that ICANN doesn’t really need “new Constituencies” in a structural sense – it needs additional members and participants within its constituencies.
>  
> Asking “how many constituencies have been added since emerging economies started becoming important stakeholders of the internet” is the wrong question. Adding a constituency is a structural change in ICANN (which has mostly bad effects, but that is another story): Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that what you really want to know is “how many _people_ or _organizations_ from emerging economies have joined ICANN in, say, the last 5 years?
>  
> The answer is that in the Noncommercial Stakeholder Group, very many. You can see a list of the Noncommercial Users Constituency membership here: http://www.ncuc.org/about/members/ And a list of NonProfit Operational Constituency members here: http://npoc.org/?p=members
>  
> ICANN’s At Large also does a pretty good job of involving people from the developing world.
>  
> In the Commercial stakeholders group, very, very few. There are almost no active members from the developing world, and I think over the year it has had perhaps 1 or 2 Council members from developing countries elected, if any. The Commercial SG is dominated almost entirely by US and European business interests, and has been run by essentially the same people almost since the beginning of ICANN.  This problem was reflected most recently when the private sector nominated its 5 members to the 1net steering committee, and ALL 5 of them were from US companies.  
>  
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at 1net.org
> http://1net-mail.1net.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://1net-mail.1net.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20140313/113e986f/attachment.html>