[council] FW: Candidate sought for GNSO representatives to ICANN Geographic Regions WG.

[Gomes, Chuck]

Thanks Glen.  I think it would be helpful if you asked Eric to confirm that his role if elected would be to represent the views of the GNSO as a whole, in particular those represented in the statement we provided.  I have no problem with him communicating his personal views and agree with many of them, but I believe we decided as a Council that the two reps should indeed represent the broader views of the GNSO and not just their personal views.

Chuck 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-council at gnso.icann.org 
> [mailto:owner-council at gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Glen de Saint Géry
> Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:09 AM
> To: council at gnso.icann.org
> Subject: [council] FW: Candidate sought for GNSO 
> representatives to ICANN Geographic Regions WG.
> 
> Forwarded from Eric Brunner Williams:
> Dear Glen, Avri,
> 
> I've attached a note I wrote to the RC list when we were 
> considering the issue  a month ago. It is more or less what I 
> said from the floor at Cairo. It covers what I think are the 
> hazards, and the opportunities we have attempting to actually 
> obtain meaningful regional representation.
> 
> Eric
> 
> Attached note in plain text:
> [Sent to the RC list on 10/19/08]
> 
> Let me state what I see are issues:
> 
>    1. citizenship is not necessarily coincident with 
> residence, my initial point. A person who left Ethiopia as a 
> youth and living in California ever since is a poor choice 
> for "the voice of Africa". This is not a hypothetical.
> 
>    2. I think Israel is in the same part of the world as 
> Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. However, Israel choses to 
> identify as part of Europe. Do we have any interest in, that 
> is, _do_we_benefit_by_, forcing one model of region or 
> another on parties seeking to stand for diversity determined 
> responsibilities? Its not just Israel, also Turkey, 
> Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan identify as "Europe", at least for 
> sports. Where is New Caledonia or Tahiti? How about Guyane?
> 
> To use the usual mantra, ICANN should not be in the business 
> of defining geographic regions against the will of those 
> folks. Let them choose whether they wanted to vote in one 
> region or another. ICANN should not be telling them what they 
> are, but telling them that they should opt for one and only 
> one description. Something along the lines of "bottom up" vs 
> "top down" is appropriate here.
> 
>    3. The pseudo-geograpical approach has been problematic 
> from the begining. Requiring someone from the fictitcious AP 
> region normally means having someone from Australia or New 
> Zealand. Try and wrap your head around the idea that because 
> Paul and Peter are Antipodeans, ICANN is therefore an 
> Asian-centric organization. ICANN determining that Peter, 
> Paul, Bruce and Adrian are "Asians", not "Europeans", is 
> simply bizarre. Did I mention the problem isn't hypothetical?
> 
> Now for the cure:
> 
> We have adequate representation from the brightly light parts 
> of the world city-to-city link map, which Fred Baker was kind 
> enough to point out to me at Paris. Fred's worked (charity) 
> on getting infrastructure into Kabul, and parts of Africa, as do I.
> 
> Here's the URL: 
> http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/medium/world
> Black.jpg
> 
> ICANN is staffed primarily from the OECD states. The existing 
> "diversity" requirement has been gamed throughout ICANN's 
> existence to favor rich, well-connected Anglo-Saxons from all 
> over the world. We need to restate the requirement towards 
> material diversity, not fictional diversity, towards some 
> goals of folks, staff or elected, coming from non-OECD 
> countries, the darker parts of that map.
> 
> The UN's model doesn't fit our needs, which is convenient 
> because we _don't_ benefit by pretending treaty organization 
> regionalism is an adequate representation of diversity of 
> network penetration and availability.
> 
> So, to a first order, our goal should be half of staff and 
> half of elected roles are the responsibilities of persons 
> from (and not in the remote past either) the non-OECD 
> economies, because our present model is "only token 
> participation, as staff or elected", by persons from anything 
> but OECD economies.
> 
> Our market is pretty darn good in the OECD market. Where we 
> need help growing our market is in the non-OECD market, and 
> last I looked, 2/3rds of the world's population are in 
> non-OECD countries, and the cost of a domain name is still 
> within the envelope for a huge user base all now well served 
> with cheap cell phones that are already web enabled.
> 
> What we're doing isn't making us as much money as doing 
> something else.
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
>