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As an individual internet user, I do not recognise
ALAC's authority to organise on my behalf.
I believe ALAC is a top-down invention, initiated
by the ICANN Board, to protect its own interests.
I believe an umbrella organisation for internet
users should (and probably will) be set up outside ICANN, in order to operate
critically and independently over issues concerning the DNS.
The RALOs are not only flawed in their proposed
constitution, they are unacceptable in principle, because they presuppose that
ICANN is the right "home" for the worldwide organisation of an "at large"
community.
This is like suggesting that a "watchdog"
organisation should be set up and overseen by the very people who would benefit
from being "watched".
It is the very lack of democratic accountability,
and the top-down autocracy of a self-sustaining Board, which concerns many
people. And what is ALAC? An effort to legitimise the "reform" process of
expelling elected At Large representatives on the Board; a top-down initiative
existing for the benefit of the Board, who by paying lip-service to an
"invented" at large process, can suggest to DoC and the public that they have
integrity of intent; an exercise in damage limitation, to "contain" the most
critical constituency and limit its influence.
What efforts have been made to ask the individual
users who seek to participate in DNS matters, what structure and organisation
THEY want? Polls of many of the most regular individual participants in your
forums and lists clearly show a majority opposed to the RALO structure being set
up in relationship to ICANN, and show an overwhelming mistrust of the ICANN
Board, Denise Michel, and Esther Dyson (no personal slur intended - just an
observation of their failure to win over individual users in
general).
Who asked for this ALAC / RALO
initiative?
I repeat my opening comment:
As an individual internet user, I do not recognise
ALAC's authority to organise on my behalf.
ALAC is a sham, founded for the wrong reasons, in the interests of a Board
which is regarded with disdain by many in the internet community.
The structure I propose is one which begins with asking 1000's of internet
users to organise themselves, gets them to define their own identity and
purposes, and creates "clear water" between them and ICANN.
Only by shifting the organisation *outside* of ICANN can the process gain
any credibility.
ICANN is just playing games with the user community. Just as it set up the
ALSC and then ignored its decisions (because they voiced user wishes for
democratic representation), it is setting up the ALAC only as an instrument of
its own convenience.
An independently organised At Large, with proper one-person-one-vote
representation, is the only set up which can claim the authority to represent me
if I choose to take part.
Internet users, and the At Large, must determine their organisation and
their objectives and their processes for themselves.
ALAC is just an invention.
with regards,
Richard Henderson
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