Why I joined the NCUC in ICANN
It had not been my intention to join the Non Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC). In fact I had opined to quite a few people that I never ever would join the NCUC.
I had actually been planning on trying to form an Individual Professional Registrant’s Constituency (IPRC), because I think one is very badly needed. A constituency were artists, engineers, writers and other independent professionals who were registrants of a domain name they used to advertise themselves and their services could represent their needs. No matter what anyone may tell us, the interests of these professionals are not covered by the existing commercial constituencies (and there are a lot of commercial constituencies - in fact all but one, a 5:1 ratio of constituencies are commercial of one sort or another). As a protocol architect of both technical and governance systems, I often sell my services as a free lance professional and I have a domain name I use for the purpose - in other words I am a Independent Professional Registrant. and I do hope someone, someday does form an IPRC. But it won’t be me.
I should also indicate why, though I felt qualified to start an IPRC within the Commercial Stakeholder Group of the GNSO, I still felt entitled to join the NCUC. I have long felt an affinity for the NCUC - I am even a member of or a contributor to several of the organizations that are members of the NCUC. But more then that, as a part time faculty member of a university that was not about to join the NCUC, I was qualified to become an individual member of the NCUC. But as I said above, I did not plan on it.
Also, I had not really planned to do anything until after I finished my term as a Nomcom appointee to the GNSO council and my term as the chair of that council in October 2009.
But the situation inside ICANN became so intolerable I felt I had to take a stand.
For over a year now, the GNSO has been going through a Board initiated restructuring and reorganization of the GNSO and its council. This has been a painful and difficult exercise for everyone. Part of the process included having the 6 existing constituencies reform into 4 stakeholder groups. Part of the restructuring also includes some reapportionment of seats on the GNSO council to redress the balance of representation and move from a situation where there were 5 assorted commercial constituencies to 1 non commercial constituency to a situation with 3 assorted commercial stakeholder groups to 1 non commercial stakeholder group. One could wonder why 3:1 was considered fair, and while it is a good question, and one I might explore at some point, it is the not the point of this blog. Certainly 3:1 was closer to fair then 5:1 had been. Some, however, found this reapportionment intolerable and did all they could to keep it from happening. The story of how the organizations within what is to become the Commercial Stakeholder group did all they could to stop the reapportionment, might also make a good blog (but what do I know? I am new to blogging. I haven’t even read many blogs), but not today because it was not the reason I joined NCUC.
As part of this exercise NCUC had, therefore, been working on developing a charter for the Non Commercial Stakeholder Group. They had worked hard on this for almost a year and had achieved rough consensus within the group for a charter. Yet, even though this charter had the support of most all of the members of the NCUC and strong support from the Civil Society organizations and the Non Commercial community, it was thrown out by ICANN Policy Staff, a move that was supported by the Board. I saw this as unjustified, and unjust. But still that was not enough to motivate me to join the NCUC.
The ICANN Policy Staff then went further and decided to ignore the comments that came in during the review period against what they had done in creating a replacement charter. They said many of the comments were not valid because they had been sent as part of a letter writing campaign. But this same ICANN Policy Staff had told the NCUC to get these letters in a sequence that went something like this:
- A great number of organizations wrote in during the first public comment period indicating their strong support for the bottom-up charter created by the NCUC.
- After that bottom-up charter created by the NCUC was summarily replaced by the top-down charter written by ICANN Policy Staff, that new top-down Policy Staff written charter was put out for a public comment period.
- At a meeting one of the NCUC GNSO council members asked the ICANN Policy Staff if the great outpouring of support that had been received in regards to the discarded bottom-up NCUC written charter would be taken into account when reviewing the new top-down ICANN Policy Staff written charter.
- The answer was “no.” They were told that if there were comments regarding this new top-down ICANN Policy Staff written charter they needed to get those people to write again.
- So the call went out to everyone - please review the new charter and send in your comments.
- And when the comments came in, they were rubbished because they had been solicited.
- And then the Board rubber stamped it.
The utter cynicism and disregard for ICANN bottom-up process and the importance of respecting public comments that was displayed by ICANN Policy Staff, and endorsed by the Board, in this sequence of events, and in fact in the whole sorry affair, left me with little choice but to support those who had followed the rules and the procedures and then been shafted.
As the chair of the GNSO council, I have attempted to faithfully and neutrally adhere to and enhance the rules and procedures as well as the spirit of bottom-up processes in ICANN. I feel compelled to support those who are being injured because the ICANN Policy Staff, endorsed by the Board, was transgressing against the rules and procedures as well as the spirit of ICANN.
So I joined the NCUC.
I do not plan for my support to consist of mere body count. I plan to be active and do all I can to make sure this wrong is redressed and the injury repaired.
My history tells me I can be relentless at times.
If that is so, I plan to be relentless this time.
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Glossary for anyone who reads this (not that I really expect many will) and is not trained in the arcane alphabet soup:
ICANN - Internet Corporation for Asigned Names and Numbers
IPRC - Independent Professional Registrant Constituency - A part of the commercial User Stakeholder Group that does not exist, but in my opinion should exist.
GNSO - Generic Names supporting Organization, part of ICANN
NCUC - Non Commercial Users Constituency, part of the GNSO
Nomcom - the group within ICANN that chooses some of the Board members and Organization members such as GNSO Council members in lieu of elections. The subject of elections in ICANN is an old sore chestnut that I may blog on someday. But not today.
