[CCWG-ACCT] Personal thoughts on membership

[Kavouss Arasteh]

Dear Bruce
Thank you again for this one as well
Do you have another one to compete with these two?
Regards
Kavouss

2015-10-03 9:09 GMT+02:00 Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin at melbourneit.com.au>:

> Hello All,
>
> I have given the topic of membership some thought over the last 6 months.
>
> As has already been noted, the Articles of Incorporation does contemplate
> that one day ICANN may have members.
>
> Member organisations are quite common structures for ccTLD managers (e.g
> the manager of .au - auDA has about 150 members) , RIR structures  (APNIC
> has 4,500 members) , and other I* bodies like the Internet Society (65,000
> members)  and World Wide Web Consortium (404 members).
>
> ICANN owes a fiduciary duty to the Internet community as a whole.
>
> For ICANN to move to a membership model I think it needs a membership
> structure that more broadly reflects the size and diversity of that
> "Internet community".
>
> The Structure of the SOs and ACs is an attempt to at least have a
> structure that "could" involve a large proportion of the Internet community.
>
> Using the GNSO as an example, it has as part of its structure:
> - gTLD registries, gTLD registrars, business users, intellectual property
> interests, internet service and connectivity providers, non-commercial
> users, and not-for-profit operational concerns interests.
>
> From my perspective ICANN would be ready to move to a membership model
> when each of the parts of the Internet community has a statistically
> relevant participation in ICANN.    The gTLD registrars stakeholder group
> for example have 89 members of about 1000 registrars, and those registrars
> represent a majority of the domain name registrations.     I am less clear
> on whether the representation is appropriately in proportion across the 5
> geographic regions.   When I look at other areas though - I see limited
> participation from different parts of the world, and a limited proportion
> of the business, non-commercial entities and individuals involved in any
> way.
>
> The current ICANN model was established to reduce capture from any
> particular segment - e.g. just commercial gTLD registry or registrar
> interests, or predominately US based intellectual property interests etc.
>
> Each SO appoints two directors, ALAC appoints one director, the technical
> community has three liaisons (IETF, SSAC, RSSAC) and the public sector has
> one liaison (GAC).   Other than that we formed a nominating committee
> comprising all of the above to find 8 directors that provide some cultural
> and geographic diversity to the Board.   The nominating committee operates
> using consensus amongst all the representations from the SOs and ACs.
>  This model attempts to balance people on the Board with specific technical
> names and numbers expertise, with people that bring a broad range of
> experience from different cultural and geographic backgrounds.   This
> voting model was established over 16 years with a few changes along the
> way  to substitute for the broader membership based body that many would
> like to see.   I interpreted the NTIA announcement that it was ready to
> transition its stewardship as support for this governance model.
>
> So I don't think ICANN has sufficient participation to move to a full
> membership mode such that  each of the parts of the Internet community has
> a statistically relevant participation in ICANN.
>
> Regards,
> Bruce Tonkin
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list
> Accountability-Cross-Community at icann.org
> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/attachments/20151003/63255751/attachment.html>