Stakeholder Group Charters -- comments by Leap of Faith Financial Services Inc.

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Section 4.2 of the proposed CSG charter effectively gives each existing 
constituency a veto over the creation of new ones:

"4.2 Membership shall also be open to any additional constituency recognised by 
ICANN’s Board under its by-laws, provided that such constituency, as determined 
by the unanimous consent of the signatories to this charter, is representative 
of commercial user interests which for the purposes of definition are distinct 
from and exclude registry and prospective registry, registrar, re-seller or 
other domain name supplier interests."

I believe that clause should be amended, as it's really up to the ICANN Board 
to decide. Existing constituencies should not be given a veto. The words "as 
determined by the unanimous consent of the signatories to this charter" should 
be removed.

Also, section 1.3.3 regarding "behavioural expectations", contains the clauses 
"adhering to ICANN Bylaws/Policies; supporting the bottom-up consensus model;" 
which might cause a conflict of interest between members of constituencies, as 
they'd need to put ICANN's interests ahead of their own organizational 
interests. This would mean, for example, that they couldn't advocate certain 
positions to NTIA/DOC. That's fine for Board members, but not for constituency 
members. This topic was already beaten to death in the ALAC, see:

http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q2/005507.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q2/005513.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q2/005516.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q2/005518.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q2/005526.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q2/005528.html

Thus, I'd suggest either that part be amended to ensure that members
can continue to represent the interests of their own organizations
above all without limitation and without censorship, or the words
should simply be deleted.

Lastly, I'd like to reiterate our past comments related to transparency:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-constituency-renewals/msg00000.html
http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-constituency-renewals/msg00001.html

To make things concrete, note that the ISP constituency's mailing list has not 
had a single post in the last since months (i.e. all of 2009!):

http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ispcp/

Either the mailing list archive is broken, or the level of participation is 
questionable. Their website:

http://www.ispcp.info/

contains no member list. Of course, their financials are not visible to the 
public either.

The Intellectual Property Constituency maintains a website:

http://www.ipconstituency.org/

however its list of members is incomplete:

http://www.ipconstituency.org/membership.htm

given that many participants in the IRT claimed to be members of the IP 
Constituency but are not listed on the website. The IP constituency maintains 
no public mailing nor are their financials visible to the public.

Other constituencies also fail to meet all the standards discussed in my 
February comments. Those standards should be reflected in each of the 
stakeholder group charters to maximize transparency and accountability.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
President
Leap of Faith financial Services Inc.
http://www.leap.com/