RE: [alac] President's Committee on Strategy, and ICANN legitimacy

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

Vittorio Bertola [mailto:vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] wrote:
> 
> In Wellington, I criticized the Committee on a number of points:
> 1. It was a new entity not foreseen by the Bylaws, that 
> apparently altered the normal consensus-making process on a 
> delicate matter such as ICANN reforms; 2. Its mission was 
> unstated and unclear; 3. Its composition was completely 
> unbalanced; 4. It was unclear whether the Board (that must 
> act as "check and balance" for the management) had ever 
> discussed points 1, 2 and 3, and what was the result.

Agree on all points.
FYI, the Board had discussed points 1, 2 and 3, and most probably will not
accept as given facts the recommendation of the committee (as was feared in
other contribution to the discussion).

> 
> Now, point 3 has been partly addressed: one of our nominees 
> was accepted, and so the composition is now only extremely 
> unbalanced, rather than completely unbalanced (or do you 
> disagree on this?). Other points have not been addressed. I 
> think it is simply not enough to stop criticizing this 
> Committee and start supporting its work.

ALAC's criticism is always necessary. The call for disbandment of the PSC
is, however, not criticism, but something else, that will simply be yet
another proclaim to the wind, without any whatsoever effect in the reality,
and therefore no impact on the situation of the internet users worldwide.
IMHO, the role of ALAC is to evaluate the work of the PSC, provide guidance
(and support!!!) to Pierre, not to neglect its work. To support the work of
the committee does not mean at all to blindly accept all its conclusions,
but to consider this an additional element to vehicle our opinions and
needs, via the representative that we have in it. Pierre is an extremely
well reputed delegate, has (as far as I know) good relationship with Adama
Samassékou, and the two of them can really put forward the issues and needs
of the emerging internet users societies.
Considering that one of the key issues in front of us is the future of the
MoU with USG, I consider the presence of people like Marylin Cade and Tom
Niles essential, for their different and complementary insights in the USG
maze.
Carl Bildt is a long time advocate of user participation in the policy
development process, as Vittorio knows for personal experience, and Peter
Dengate Thrush is one of the Board members who has the most critical
attitude towards shortcomings in ICANN transparency, and both of them are
Vice-Chairpersons.
Yes, some points of view are missing. But if I had to be worried by
something, it would rather be the absence of LAC presence and the absence of
the different view on IDN that could come from China or the Arab world.
Honestly, not much more. But that's only my personal opinion.

> 
> Of course, the Board and the management are absolutely free 
> to stand by their opinion even if it does not coincide with 
> that of the ALAC, and to ignore our input. But I think that 
> the ALAC should be free to stand by its opinion as well, and 
> continue opposing the actions that it doesn't like.

Absolutely agree.
But just keep in mind that the Board must sinthetize the different opinions
of the ICANN community. While it is absolutely true that the voice of the
individual users is underrepresented, to declare that the users point of
view has to prevail over every other opinion because "[t]he public is not
just one element among many Internet stakeholders, it is the citizenry for
whose benefit this whole edifice is constructed" sounds to my ears very much
like the leninist proclaims on "power to the soviets" rather than a serious
attempt to build a common house.

> 
> Perhaps the mistake was accepting to provide names rather 
> than calling ourselves out of the process, but I am a 
> reasonable person and I don't like destructive opposition. 
> But you can't say that since we could cooperate on names, 
> then we lose our right to criticism on all other parts of the story.

It very much depends on what our strategy is. Do we want to modify or kill
the system? If we want to kill the system, yes, it was a mistake to provide
names. We should have an Hezbollah-like opposition to whatever agreement can
be reached, because our purpose is to buils a (yet another) world order. If,
on the other hand, we want to modify the system to address more the user
community needs, it was a *good thing* to take the opportunity to provide
names. And we can criticize the process and the outcome, but our primary
duty is to support Pierre in presenting reasonable proposals to the
committee, that can be put on the table for discussion. And I speak as
representative of ALAC to the Board, when too often I had to defend the
undefendable, like "fire the .com negotiating team". The ALAC representative
to any committee, to have any chance of achieving something, has to go on
the table with something workable for a compromise. I don't want to involve
matters that are too serious to be compared with our situation, but on next
Wednesday in Rome neither party will seriously show up at the table saying
either "Israelis should pack their things and get out of the Middle East" or
"We are stronger, therefore we make the law over here".
I think that ALAC has survived for too long in keeping its foot in two
shoes. We all agree that the current situation is not ideal, but we have
different strategies for the future. It happened with the self-assessment,
it happens again with the PSC, and it happened with a lot of subjects in
between. It is now high time to make a definite political choice on whether
our way is reform or revolution. And make an ALAC official statement,
otherwise our outreach program is going to remain foggy.

> 
> > always be in line with the wishes of ALAC. And I know that 
> the first 
> > time that something gets decided that is not what ALAC 
> wants (or maybe 
> > some in ALAC want), it is not going to be because we have to 
> > acknowledge that there are interests and approaches other 
> than ALAC's, 
> > but it is going to be rather the living proof that the Board is 
> > blindly obeying to the ordeers of the multinational 
> capitalist pig, or 
> > the president's committee, or other fashionable conspiracy.
> 
> I think I have provided reasonable reasons for my continued 
> disagreement (others can do the same if they want). I would 
> like to be challenged on the reasons I am giving, rather than 
> having my line of reasoning rewritten to then criticize it.

I kept my statement on purpose. I agree with Vittorio, except for the fact
that I do think that my statements were going in the direction of
challenging the reasonment. Of course, email exchanges are not the best way
to understand eachother, but we can overcome this.
However, what I meant with my sentence above, was not a rewrite of
Vittorio's thoughts, but, unfortunately, my own prediction on what I will
hear again as criticism of the Board's decisions.

> 
> If the point is that there are interests, both by some 
> governments and by the business people who have more power at 
> ICANN, to reach an agreement among themselves on the new 
> ICANN structure and keep everyone else out of the door... ok, 
> I acknowledge that "there are interests and approaches other 
> than ALAC's", but don't ask me to accept in silence that 
> they're the only ones playing a role :-)

If everyone else would have been kept out of the door, I would be completely
in agreement with Vittorio.
However, I don't see things in the same way.
The Board has changed, the Board is still changing.
We do have powerful means, one of which is the NomCom (incidentally, one of
our priorities has to be to be prepared to defend it against attacks from
SOs and other powers, who feel underrepresented in it vs. ALAC).
Go check the positions, if not the vote, of Board members on different
issues and relate them with the body that elected/appointed them. A group is
building, that has the interest of the users in high consideration. Some of
the new Directors are far more active in the link with the wider internet
community than most of the proclaimed champions of internet democracy, i.e.
the Directors elected with popular vote. For instance, without disrespect to
the value and contributions of Katoh-san as ICANN Board Director, my
perception is that Joichi Ito, NomCom appointed Director, is far closer to
end user issues than Masanobu Katoh, AtLarge elected Director in the same
region.
My point is only that politics is not religion. You don't go very far with
few dogmatic statements, you only manage to have a religious war in which,
most of the time, the users in name of which the war is declared will not
get very much out of it. And sometimes, to get your hands durty, day after
day, is the only way to achieve results. You don't get in history books, but
you achieve results, step by step.

Best regards,
Roberto Gaetano
ALAC
ICANN Board Liaison