[governance] Fixing an ICANN problem

[Milton L Mueller]

George:
Understanding your intention to be helpful, here are my somewhat hasty responses as I prepare to go to IGF:

One IMPORTANT lesson that the Board can draw about "fixing an ICANN problem" is that the more complex and reversible it allows its processes to become the more it will disadvantage noncommercial groups and individual registrants relative to paid, professional indstry lobbyists. 

In other words, when the Board launches something like the IRT, which second-guesses policy that already emerged from a three-year GNSO policy process, and forces us to chase trademark and registry advocates around the world in a new series of events addressing a policy issue that we thought was already resolved, then the extra effort has to be taken away from something else. We do not have unlimited resources of time, money and labor. 

This is indeed an ICANN problem, not an NCUC problem.

More comments:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at attglobal.net] 

> Perhaps ICANN's study will motivate these groups to involve 
> themselves more in the working groups in the future.

No, a study showing a lack of participation will not alter anything. What will alter levels of participation are a) stronger incentives for people to participate, and b) greater capacity on their part, via internal education and organization in the new NCSG, more money, and more people.

>  This is 
> especially important for the NCSG, which represents individual 
> registrants who are further removed from ICANN activities than are 
> the other constituencies within the GNSO.

We are not further removed. We are in the thick of things on issues that matter to our members (free expression, registrant rights, new TLDs, competition, multilingualism)

But we are not paid industrial lobbyists who stand to gain thousands of millions of dollars if the inter-registrar transfer policy is defined in a certain way or if so-called abuse policies are altered in one way or another. And we can only cover so many WGs and IRTs and consultations at once. The Board's continuing inability to understand basic, political science 101 features of collective action is always amazing to me. How can anyone expect nonprofit organizations to deovte as much time to ICANN WGs as Chuck Gomes, who is a well-paid, professional, full-time employee of VeriSign, whose very existence depends on ICANN contracts and policy? 

We will ALWAYS have to pick our battles and our battlegrounds carefully, and if we don't spend 10 hours a week on a bureuacratic work group defining PDP processes please excuse us, but we do have day jobs. 

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