re: Why does ALAC make it so hard for new members to join?

[Sandy Harris <sandyinchina@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm replying to a fairly old message of Richard Henderson's. Quotes
are shortened
and somewhat re-ordered.

> ... we have the extraordinary spectacle of ... an At Large which is for 
> organisations
> only, NOT individual users - a membership to be further curtailed and 
> restricted by
> requiring as a condition of membership that the ICANN meetings have to be 
> attended.
>
> Vittorio: ... "being an ALAC member involves the following commitments: - 
> Physical
> participation in three ICANN meetings per year (5 days each)" 
>  
> [various others quoted on the same theme]
>
> Roberto Gaetano then writes: "I agree with Vittorio on the fact that 
> participation in
> meetings should be taken for granted. If individuals cannot contribute to 
> this, no
> point in joining: 
 
As Henedrson points out:

> This requirement in itself locks out the vast majority of internet users! Why 
> should 
> *physical* participation be mandatory for membership?

The obvious answer, of course is that it should not be. Such a
requirement effecitively
restricts membership to organisations, since few individuals can fund
15 days a year
at meetings.

Consider the IETF method of dealing with a similar problem,
co-ordinating people from all over the world in work on Internet
protocols. They use mailings lists -- open ones to which
anyone interested can subscribe -- for all Working Group discussions.
They do have
meetings, but no-one imagines that final decisions can be made there.
Anything coming
out of a meeting goes to the mailing list for discussion by the whole
Working Group.

Here, you don't even appear to have mailing lists anymore, just these web fora.

Henderson continues:

> Let us be clear: ALAC was set up ... as an attempt to save face after ICANN's
> expulsion of the elected At Large representatives from ICANN's Board. ...
> ... were summarily kicked out in a coup d'etat.

And of course that was only the most recent of a long series of scams. If you go
back to the days when ICANN was being set up, you find that openly elected
board members were to be a majority.

Here is Esther Dyson writing to NTIA:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/ICANN111098.htm

|     " ... elect the nine At Large Directors. ... the Board has an
unconditional
|     mandate to create a membership structure that will elect the At Large
|     Directors of the Board

Booting out the few elected board members was just the last step. Before that,
they had reduced the number and played various other ugly games.

> Then ALAC was set up so ICANN could say "We still have an At Large...
> here it is!". Only... ALAC is NOT the At Large. ALAC is unelected. ALAC allows
> no individual members (though it purports to be FOR individual members). ALAC
> is simply a product of "spin", set up to create the semblance of user 
> involvement,
> while seeking to lock users out of its own membership, and keep users out of 
> the
> ICANN Boardroom.
 
Right.

> The proposals being posted by Vittorio are, in my opinion, a further wrong 
> turning.

Right again.

-- 
Sandy Harris
Fuzhou, Fujian, China