[CCWG-ACCT] Personal thoughts on membership

[Jordan Carter]

Hi Bruce

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us candidly and honestly. I would
hope that everyone can follow in that path, and that doing so will help us
move into a mode of collaboration or at least compromise that lets us get
the work done.

I think it's important to recognise that broadly speaking, the CCWG shared
the same logic of concerns with you in prepping its second draft proposal,
and came to a different conclusion of how to deal with them.

The SOs and ACs aren't stakeholders per se - they are channels or routes
for a wide range of stakeholders to be involved with ICANN processes, and
(at their best) they aggregate and consolidate those stakeholders' views.
Making sure they are open routes to aggregate stakeholder preferences is
the only thing that grants them -- and by extension ICANN -- any legitimacy
at all.

To another post you made in the past few days - the reason we went to a
single member model was to enhance and consolidate the idea that the
community, acting together, should be what holds the Board to account - not
the individual stakeholder groups.

If ICANN doesn't have suitable involvement of the global stakeholder
community today, then what you are essentially suggesting, if I am right,
is that the ICANN Board should be seen as the Platonic "Philosopher Kings"
of old.

I personally am very uncomfortable with such an approach being taken for
governance at the core of the Internet's identifiers system. And after the
contract goes, in the Board's proposal, that is all we are left with.

Jordan



On 3 October 2015 at 20:09, Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin at melbourneit.com.au>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Jordan Carter

Chief Executive
*InternetNZ*

+64-4-495-2118 (office) | +64-21-442-649 (mob)
Email: jordan at internetnz.net.nz
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*A better world through a better Internet *
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