Public Comments--Consumer Constituency

[SS Kshatriy <sskshatriy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, 
I am S. S. Kshatriya, Work Team Member of GNSO Council Constituency Operations 
Team (COT), an ISOC Global Member, and an Internet Consultant in India. My 
comments are given below:
 
In line with the GNSO reform, NCUC has spent most of its energy in the past 7 
months
preparing a charter proposal for the new Noncommercial Stakeholders Group 
(NCSG).
 
1. Reference to Notice of Intent 
http://gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/consumers-constituency-noif-28feb09.pdf  
paragraph 1.1, the CC (Consumer Constituency) says that its focus will be on 
areas ‘related to Cyber Crime’, while agreeing at the same time that Cyber 
Crime is beyond the purview of ICANN.
 
In my opinion, the founders of CC should have other avenues to meet their 
interests and that such avenues are available. Forming of CC, entering into a 
Stake Holder Group, representation into GNSO (Stake Holder Group) and then 
impressing upon ICANN through GNSO to change its policy (entering into the 
areas of cybercrime) for intended purpose looks to be an indirect and strenuous 
way of achieving something.
 
2. Reference to Petition 
http://gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/consumers-constituency-petition-charter-redacted-10apr09.pdf
 , section 11.0 Finances, it is clear that CC does not have any finances and 
will raise them in future to carry out its operations. It also appears to be 
depending on grants from (NCSG) and ICANN (11.2.4). 
 
A new and active constituency would have lots of initial expenses for creating 
an office, recruiting office staff, creating and maintaining a website and 
travel. It should have corpus of funds at its disposal to start its operations.
 
In my opinion ICANN should make it mandatory that the founders of a new 
constituency should raise certain minimum funds and also assure future accruals 
before their application is considered. 
 
3. Membership of GNSO Council:
I will take this opportunity to comment on the Membership of GNSO Council. It 
is composed of members from Constituencies, Stake Holder Groups and one member 
from Nominating Committee.
 
My association with ICANN tells me that representation of Constituencies and 
Stake Holder Groups should be reduced and ICANN should induct Independent 
Experts from time to time.
 
Thanks,
 S. S. Kshatriya (SS)