[governance] Call for Action: Your comments can Support

[Milton L Mueller]

> From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at attglobal.net] 
> Bill,
> 
> I wonder if you (or someone else) could address the problem of 
> potential capture.
 
George,
I think I am in a better position to answer this, having spent the last decade laboring in the vineyards (or landfills) of the DNSO/GNSO. 

The most clear and direct protection against "capture" of a Stakeholder Group is the simple fact that these SGs in isolation have, for practical purposes, very little power. 

The entire NCSG will have one quarter of the votes on a Council. This Council does not have all that much power either - it is in the business of creating and chartering Working Groups (WGs). The WGs in turn must achieve some of kind "consensus" on an output before it goes before the Council for approval. 

Given the limited role of a single Stakeholder Group (SG), the most important form of protection against capture comes from making sure that one SG cannot be taken over by (or stacked with hidden agents of) another SG. That would mean protecting against infiltration by Commercial users, or by Registries and Registrars. 

If you read the eligibility requirements of the NCSG charter, you can see that there are clear protections against such infiltration - members of other SGs are ineligible, and membership in the NCSG is mutually exclusive with membership in any other SG. (Note that McTim complained about this, almost certainly innocently, not knowing the implications of allowing cross-membership in the GNSO's delicately balanced structure). 

I can say that in the entire history of the DNSO/GNSO, there have been _a few_ attempts by interest groups to invade or infiltrate the noncommercial constituency. None have been successful, but it is worthwhile to recount these to give some indication of where the threat might come from. First, at the beginning (1999) there was an attempt by representatives of Country code TLDs (ccTLDs) to join and dominate the Noncommercial constituency, even though they already had their own constituency. They claimed they were nonprofit organizations (and indeed, many were). There was also an attempt by registrars (e.g., CORE) to claim that they were nonprofit and also should get a double vote by joining the noncommercial constituency. Those of us involved in forming the Noncommercial constituency and protecting its independence insisted that as suppliers they belonged in the ccTLD or registrar constituencies, respectively. And we politely (well, perhaps not so always so politely) asked them to get out. We were scolded by the likes of Esther Dyson and Mike Roberts for being "exclusionary" but we were of course right and that was that. Indeed, some of the ill-will the NCUC still suffers from dates back to this early attempt to protect itself against "capture."

The second incident is ocurring right now. No need to inflame things further by naming names and going into the details; suffice it to say that certain business interests who are unhappy about losing their 3 to 1 voting advantage in the GNSO would be quite interested in splitting the NCSG into warring factions, one of whose agendas, which might be summarized as "control the Internet in the name of safety" just happens to align comfortably with that of many of the multinational brand holders who dominate the Commercial SG. Such a strategy would allow them to "capture" the user House, although even that would not allow them to capture the GNSO as a whole. 

In short, the threat of capture does not now, and never has come from unrestricted individual membership. It comes from invasions or manipulations from other SGs. Only when SGs combine to form a captured majority of a GNSO Council can it pose a real threat. 

The most persistent and difficult problem faced by the Noncommercial SG is now, and probably always will be the problem of finding volunteers who are crazy enough to devote massive amounts of their time to doing the difficult, uncompensated work that ICANN demands. There is not now, and probably never will be, people standing in line for that function. 

Milton Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
------------------------------
Internet Governance Project:
http://internetgovernance.org
 

> -----Original Message-----
> I understand that the voting scheme is to allow large organizations 4 
> votes, small organizations 2 votes and individuals 1 vote.  It seems 
> to me that it would not be difficult to mount a campaign in which a 
> significant number of individuals, all of whom have a legitimate 
> interest in ICANN, could be mobilized to vote for a specific slate of 
> candidates, in effect capturing the new organization.  such a capture 
> could theoretically be engineered by either the current group of 
> leaders, or by another group completely outside the current 
> structure, or anywhere inbetween.
> 
> I understand that the problem of preventing capture is a difficult 
> one.  Our experience with the ICANN direct elections in 2001 proved 
> that beyond a doubt.  so I'm not arguing against the proposal just 
> because the group hasn't definitively solved this intractable 
> problem.  However I really would like to hear opinions regarding the 
> capture issue, because I think it is a real possibility.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> George
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> At 9:51 AM +0100 3/24/09, William Drake wrote:
> >Hi McTim,
> >
> >I'm puzzled by your objections, could you please explain.
> >
> >On Mar 24, 2009, at 6:36 AM, McTim wrote:
> >
> >>Hullo Mary,
> >>
> >>On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Mary Wong 
> <MWong at piercelaw.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>>1. The NCSG proposal is inclusive (not divisive) and democratic.
> >>>
> >>>- Membership is open to both individuals and 
> non-commercial organizations;
> >>
> >>yes, but there is a long list of which of these folk are to be
> >>excluded.
> >
> >The "long list" simply comprises organizations and individuals that 
> >patently don't fit in a noncommercial group (e.g.  industry trade 
> >associations, investors) and will be represented in other 
> >stakeholder groups as the board has defined these.  The whole scheme 
> >of putting actors into one stakeholder group and not another is 
> >ICANN's, not ours, and it maps with standard practices in public 
> >policymaking bodies (e.g. the new OECD framework) and indeed many 
> >standards bodies.  If you have a problem with classification of 
> >actors per se, sorry but there's a big world out there that for 
> >sound reasons are not based on the IETF model, and ICANN's part of 
> >it.  The proposal just says how the board's model is to be locally 
> >implemented by specifying that the noncommercial users SG is for 
> >noncommercial users just as the commercial users SG is for 
> >commercial users etc.  Moreover, it should be recalled that we do 
> >include the possibility of flexibility regarding orgs and 
> >individuals in ALAC, and others if they are not ineligible due to 
> >their own or their organization's membership in another GNSO SG or 
> >the ccNSO.
> >
> >If you want to file a public comment saying the whole architecture 
> >stinks and SGs and constituencies should be abolished and replaced 
> >with one big sand box in which consensus among actors with sharply 
> >different interests will magically emerge through cool technical 
> >reasoning, do that.  Or, file comments rejecting each and every SG.  
> >But to reject just ours for being part of a larger framework 
> >alongside others would be rather unfair.
> >
> >>The Chair gets to decide, ultimately who can join.
> >
> >No, the chair plus an elected committee of representatives.  Someone 
> >has to review and decide on applications, and this is an 
> >appropriately accountable and transparent way of doing that, guided 
> >by explicit charter criteria.  It's not a secretive cabal in smoke 
> >filled room, and I'm hard pressed to imagine plausible scenarios in 
> >which someone with a credible claim to fit in the noncommercial 
> >rather than one of the business SGs would be rejected.  And 
> >constituency approval is left to the board, informed by a public 
> >comment period.
> >
> >>>
> >>>- In the new SG structure, the existing Non-Commercial 
> User Constituency
> >>>(NCUC) group automatically dissolves. Each current NCUC 
> member (individual
> >>>or organizational) has to decide whether or not to join 
> the new NCSG, and no
> >>>existing NCUC committee or position carries over into the 
> new structure.
> >>
> >>Except for:
> >>
> >>" 3.4.4. As a transitional provision, the first election for the 
> >>June 2009 ICANN
> >>meeting will elect three (3) NCSG Council Representatives, and the
> >>terms of the 3
> >>NCUC Council Representatives elected in October 2008 will run until 
> >>June 2010."
> >
> >Yes, Mary, Carlos and I would remain as 3 of the 6, just in the 
> >transition period.  It would be useful to have some continuity in 
> >engagement in the counsel's arcane work program, particularly at a 
> >time when things are being restructured. This hardly represents 
> >capture by an incumbent cabal, especially since the NCSG will just 
> >be beginning reformulation and might have trouble coming up with six 
> >plug and play candidates on the fly.
> >
> >These objections seem like a pretty thin basis upon which to reject 
> >the entire proposal, which was developed through an open and 
> >transparent consultation process and continuously revised in 
> >interaction with members, staff and board people over months, and is 
> >far more flexible and democratic than other SG proposals on the 
> >table.  BTW have you read the Commercial Stakeholder Group (CSG) and 
> >Registry Stakeholder Group proposals?  Will you be opposing these 
> >too?  A pox on all ICANN's "houses"?
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >Bill
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