<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Bruce,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">It's not just the statutory rights. It's the fundamental fact that (and I am oversimplifying here) the Members are "at the top of the totem pole" in a membership non-profit corporation (at least under US law).</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">That said, focusing more narrowly on how to enforce an IRP is worth doing. But I don't think that using the membership concept to do it is advisable. I also don't think it makes sense to eliminate the overall concept of community-as-member.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">In other words, I am not discouraging discussion of a mechanism to enforce the IRP, in addition to the potential capacity of the member or members to do so.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Greg</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 4:54 AM, Bruce Tonkin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au" target="_blank">Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hello Greg,<br>
<span class=""><br>
>> Members have a legally distinct role in a nonprofit corporation, particularly with regard to authority and decision-making vis a vis the Board. <br>
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</span>Yes I get that. Members have a series of statutory rights under the law of where the membership organization is incorporated.<br>
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However my understanding is that we are actually explicitly enshrining the powers that the community seeks into the bylaws.<br>
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So then surely the issue is then whether ICANN is adhering to the new bylaws.<br>
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The IRP is a mechanism to adjudicate if there is a dispute about whether the Board is adhering to these bylaws. I hope that there are also some lighter weight mechanisms - reconsideration/ombudsman as a step before needing to use an IRP (which currently seems to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and that is just the panel's costs, and take years to resolve).<br>
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Then there is a need to ensure that the Board abides by the outcome of the IRP.<br>
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My proposal was how to deal with the unlikely situation where the Board goes against an IRP panel.<br>
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Regards,<br>
Bruce Tonkin<br>
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