Why ALAC subverts the At Large movement

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ICANN's ALAC does not represent the bulk of individual users, and indeed 
excludes individual users from its membership. It is just continuing the logic 
which was demonstrated when ICANN expelled the elected representatives of 
individual users from the ICANN Board. It is all about exclusion and keeping 
the powerful user constituency at arms length. ALAC from the outset has been an 
ICANN top-down initiative, designed to legitimise the expulsion of At Large 
members from the Board. It was a damage-limitation exercise to create the 
facade that internet users were not actually being locked out of ICANN and its 
Boardroom. Vittorio and others - against whom I make no personal judgment, I 
just don't agree with their view - have helped to legitimise this ICANN 
top-down initiative. Now they insist on 15 days physical attendance at ICANN 
meetings as a condition of joining ALAC, which merely perpetuates the exclusion 
of ordinary users.

The real At Large exists outside ICANN in the real world, and consists of 
millions of individual users. It is extraordinary that they cannot, as 
individuals, join ALAC. The truth is that ICANN is run as a private fiefdom, 
under the auspices of the Department of Commerce, with appointments made from 
within (as ALAC was appointed from within, and continues to select members from 
within). ICANN was terrified by the free and representative voices who 
expressed alternative views when they were elected onto the ICANN Board. These 
free voices were a threat to ICANN's empire. Therefore they were eliminated. 
Instead of appointments from within, the At Large - the community of individual 
users - should allow open membership on a person by person basis, and should 
authorise representation on the basis of one-person one-vote.

ICANN's ALAC does not represent individual users, it excludes them.

Richard Henderson