RE: [gnso-consensus-wg] Proposal for discussion July 17

["Milton L Mueller" <mueller@xxxxxxx>]

Chuck:
I think the horse has left the barn and you are talking about closing
the barn door a bit late. ICANN is deeply into intellectual property
protection, competition policy, regulation of expression, as well as
'consumer protection.' Interest groups and governments will use the most
convenient lever at their disposal to solve policy problems and if icann
appears to be the most convenient lever it will be used. Those of us
wanting ti limit ICANN's mission lost the battle in 1998.

Thus, to ask consumer protection advocates NOT to get involved when
everyone else is already pursuing whatever agenda they can think can be
addressed using icann's authority seems a bit arbitrary. 

Consumer protectionn orgs are already part of NCUC and part of ALAC.
(And they don't need a separate "constituency" to do so, because
consumer protection agendas are often closely related to, e.g., privacy
concerns, competition concerns, and technical issues.) More will get
involved. 

Indeed, I am getting one of those schizophrenia-inducing mixed messages
here. 

Gods of ICANN: "NCUC, you are insufficiently representative go out and
get more NGOs interested in domain name policy!" 
NCUC: "OK, here's a bunch of consumer protection orgs that want to get
involved."
Gods: "er, well, cough, that has nothing to do with what we do." 
NCUC: "hmm, well, these customer groups complaining about domain name
prices that you set in your contracts or scam registrar practices don't
seem to think so. How about these Iranian religious groups upset about
Internet porn?" 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-gnso-consensus-wg@xxxxxxxxx 
> [mailto:owner-gnso-consensus-wg@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Gomes, Chuck
> I personally think that is reasonable but there might be concerns that
> any such constituency would have a tendency to continually push for
> expansion of ICANN's mission.  That happens already so maybe 
> it is not a big deal and it is probably manageable.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-gnso-consensus-wg@xxxxxxxxx 
> > [mailto:owner-gnso-consensus-wg@xxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Avri Doria
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:35 PM
> > To: gnso-consensus-wg@xxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: [gnso-consensus-wg] Proposal for discussion July 17
> > 
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > But would people agree that this might be an acceptable 
> > constituency within an expanded NCSG (assuming there was such 
> > a constituency that wished to organize and get involved and 
> > that the NCSG was created so as to allow new constituencies 
> > to form etc... and recognizing that talking about how any SG 
> > is organized is defined as beyond our remit.)
> > 
> > a.
> > 
> > On 16 Jul 2008, at 13:30, Gomes, Chuck wrote:
> > 
> > > Agreed Alan, as long as it involves issues within ICANN's 
> > mission.   
> > > But it is not a good idea in my opinion to view ICANN 
> (and hence the
> > > GNSO) as a consumer protection organization because it is 
> > not part of 
> > > their mission, they do not have the resources to do that 
> > and there are 
> > > organizations already in place to handle that.
> > >
> > > Chuck
> > >
> > 
> > 
> 
>