Re: [alac] [Fwd: Re: [governance] RALOs without halos]

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Il giorno mar, 24/01/2006 alle 18.40 +0100, Annette Muehlberg ha
scritto:
> All, 
> after all these years of not building up RALOs, and still not having a
> concept on how end-users interests could be served best by ALAC, I am
> surprised by the public proposal of an EU-RALO structure with a *time
> limit* for discussion to the *15th of February!*
> 
> As new EU-ALAC member, I do not understand why my EU-fellow ALACs
> chose a way which does not even give us the time to contact other
> organisations and individuals who are not on ALAC- or IG-mailing-lists
> and discuss this proposal. 

In my opinion, you misunderstood the point of the exercise, which is not
to involve new people in the discussion, but to conclude the interim
process and agree on the EURALO structure among those who already
applied to participate.

Potential ALSes had over two years to sign up to the process, and
everyone knew since 2003 that those who had signed up in the interim
phase would have been those who set up the RALO; we have done extensive
efforts to do outreach and encourage participation. So I don't see why
we should wait for more and more time for people who never showed up in
two years - in fact we've already been waiting too much.

Building a RALO in their Region is the first and foremost mandate given
to members of this Committee. I feel this as a responsibility and I do
not want to postpone it any more - in fact, the legitimacy of the
interim ALAC members is getting weaker and weaker as time goes by.

Incidentally, we initially drafted the document in October (copying you
on all messages) and we were ready to start the consultation at that
time, but we realized that you were unavailable (not your fault) and so
we decided to defer it until we could have you back online. After
Vancouver, on December 12 I sent you again the draft asking for
comments, and I even told you that we were to use a web forum provided
by ISOC Belgium. I then waited for over one more month before starting
the consultation. There's nothing bad in your comments and there's still
plenty of time to discuss them, but it would have been nice to get them
before.

My last, important point is:

> III.
> It is good that it is planned to finish the exclusion of individuals
> and to have both: organizational as well as individual members.

While it is true that the Board in Ghana tried to scrap direct
individual participation forever, there was never an "exclusion of
individuals" in the RALO mechanism - actually, while the RALO structure
is based on organizations, we fought to keep the possibility for the
RALOs to allow direct individual participation, and to ensure that the
ICANN Bylaws were drafted to this effect. Unless the ICANN Bylaws are
changed, individuals will continue to be unable to participate directly
as long as there is no RALO set up in their Region - or if the RALO
chooses not to have individual members. 

Thus, setting up the EURALO asap is the only practical way to reinstate
direct participation by individual European users in the foreseeable
future.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...