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

Wed May 6 16:03:21 UTC 2020

Intriguing. Why the sudden awakening?

Foo

On Wed, 6 May 2020, 8:54 pm Evan Leibovitch, <evan at telly.org> wrote:

>
> 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
>
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