[CPWG] To convey, not to judge (was: Calif. AG mentions ALAC advice in note to ICANN re: PIR)

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Tue, 5 May 2020 at 18:09, David Mackey <mackey361 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Evan,
>
> Thank you for the summary.
>
> Do you have any suggestions on how our process could be improved to
> produce outcomes which better "filter, judge, vet or micromanage the
> global end user response to DNS-related issues" and help us "discover,
> understand, articulate and advance it" better too?
>

I think you misread the intent of what I said.

I *don't* want ALAC to better "filter, judge, vet or micromanage". I don't
want ALAC doing those things *at all*.

Who the hell are we in At-Large to judge that a mass commenting campaign is
stupid or ill-informed, simply because their participants use the same form
letter? We should be celebrating that there is so much external engagement
rather that claiming monopoly on which public engagement is "well informed"
and which are not. Americans in particular should by now be sensitized to
the repercussions of calling whole swaths of public opinion "deplorable";
such elitism tends to end badly. Have we not learned the lessons?

When ALAC expresses an opinion that's unpopular with the domain industry we
are invariably greeted by "who the hell are you and what gives you the
right to speak on behalf of the billions of the world's Internet users?" On
reflection, they're right. We have about 25 At-Large leaders (give or take
a few liaisons) attending each ICANN meeting, elected or appointed by RALOs
and other self-selected volunteers, who really have absolutely no authority
or rationale to act as a filter for the public sentiment. We keep busy by
chasing ICANN public comments and the agendas of others, carefully crafting
commentary on things that mean a great deal to the domain industry but not
a shred to the outside world. And by and large we avoid issues that would
collide with ICANN's highly-corrupted goals, so as not to incur the "who
the hell are you?" retort.

Meanwhile, when an issue of substantial public interest comes up -- one
that gets the attention of the mainstream press, NGOs and lawmakers around
the world -- ALAC sits back in judgment, sneering at the masses and
chock-full of its own self-righteousness, unreasonably loyal to the status
quo. Leadership of this committee has denigrated both the volume and the
quality of the opposition to the Ethos sale for reasons I cannot fathom.
Sure it's an angry mob, but it's OUR mob and we ought to be understanding
it and channelling its passion within ICANN rather than dumping on it
(every other constituency in ICANN is quite able to do that already).

So .... when the world depended upon us, ALAC absolutely failed the ICANN
by the conscious design of its leadership. But we're right on top of the
EPDPs and RPMs.

How to fix? Needs to start from the ground up, bandaids won't fix this
mess. ICANN At-Large needs to be designed to highlight researchers and
writers, not petty politicians and lobbyists. I would personally trade
almost every dollar spent on ALAC attending ICANN meetings for a decent R&D
budget and the ability to do global surveys. How many people here know that
Heidi Ullrich, the ICANN VP in charge of At-Large, has a PhD in Policy
Development from the London School of Economics? Indeed, many of ALAC's
support staff over the years have brought immense policy talents within
reach, yet are wasted on petty bureaucracy and internal politics. They feed
ALAC's incessant need for insufferable meetings at ICANN events with their
large U-shaped tables and moving cameras and interpreter booths like we're
the freaking united nations. At such events people let their egos run amok
and waste three seconds of every comment with "This is [name] for the
transcript record".... as if anyone is ever going to read transcripts of
ALAC meetings. So three times a year 25 ALACers get to feel utterly
self-important, speaking into lit microphones and getting interpreted into
a half-dozen languages and always running out of time debating trivia,
while the public interest outside our doors gets completely ignored. The
term "bikeshedding" is extremely appropriate.

The UN-like meetings and fake self-importance need to stop. Our main job is
to listen to and understand, not act as a gatekeeper for, what the world is
saying on DNS issues. Our prime task is to make sure that ICANN is aware of
the public PoV, as accurately possible, regarding:

   - The (to many needless and abuse-generating) expansion of TLDs
   - The ability of registrants to assert rights protections in domain
   space that are disallowed globally for trademarks
   - The utility of "memorable" domain names versus search engines and
   social media
   - The practise of domain hoarding and speculation (also illegal under
   international trademark regime)
   - Whether domain names need regulation or just the basic sanity checks
   now on offer
   - The balance between privacy and law-enforcement access to reduce abuse

But look elsewhere in this list and you'll find none of those things being
the focus our work. Instead good people are caught up in endless
development processes about development processes, success metrics etc.
Nobody told ALAC that we had to apply all that bureaucracy to our own
workings and yet we do, to the detriment of what really matters to our
community.

If you don't agree with what I think the public wants from us above,
fantastic! Let's find out! What we *ARE* highly likely to find is that the
public doesn't give a damn about any of the topics currently on the plate
of this WG.

I'm not sure I've answered your question, David. But at least I hope I've
offered a window into how I see ALAC's horribly misplaced resources, both
financial and human, and what is needed to get back on track.

- Evan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cpwg/attachments/20200506/28060137/attachment.html>