[governance] ICANN stumbling on a hornet nest

[Karl Auerbach]

On 09/03/2012 03:02 PM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:

>     I am that board member.
> 
> Karl, which seat number was it that you occupied at the time? 

I don't remember having a number.

I was the first (and only) publicly elected board member for the
so-called "North American" area.  (I use quote marks because I thought
it odd that ICANN's "North America" included Greenland but not Mexico.)

There were five of these publicly elected seats, one for each of ICANN's
geographic regions.  ICANN erased all of these seats so that there would
never again be a public election.

For the most part I thought that the five publicly elected directors
were quite good - and in the North American election I felt that every
candidate, except perhaps one, was extremely well qualified.  Because we
all had to endure at least some degree of public selection the election
process brought to the fore people who tended to be more opinionated
than people who came to their board seats by a "nominating committee"
process in which the criteria is sometimes that of choosing the least
objectionable, most mainstream, rather than those who might give
discomfort or ask too many questions.  There were complaints about the
election process in that in some areas there was a lot of nationalistic
and corporate activity; but that is to be expected when there are
democratic processes - the winner often tends to be he/she who is the
best organized.  (For online elections in these days of social media the
value of corporate money and organization does not seem as strong an
advantage as it is in more political governmental elections; I hope that
this isn't just a transitory or illusory situation.)

Here in the US there were seven of us running for the seat.  Some you
may have heard of - such as Larry Lessig.  All were very good and we had
a very vibrant election process including face-to-face debates (at
Harvard and Stanford universities and several open online debates.)  My
campaign platform is still online at:

http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm

Many aspects of that platform remain important, but I'd like to draw
your attention to one that is close to my heart:

http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm#full-members

I regret one aspect of that platform - I misjudged Louis Touton and did
not give him the credit he deserved.

I also felt that it was important to give to the public the reasons for
what I did when I was on the board, so I kept an on-line diary of my
decisions.  (In order not to step on the toes of others I tried to
record my points of view and not to reflect too much about what other
board members were thinking - I figured that that was their obligation
to perform, or not.)  I received a whole lot of subtle flak from ICANN
for publishing that diary, although it now seems that what I did back
then that was found so objectionable has been adopted to a degree in
ICANN's inclusion of a rationale section in its board meeting minutes.

That diary is still online at:

http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/diary/index.htm

One of the reasons that I maintained that public diary was that I was
(and am) quite aware of the tremendous risks of personal liability that
hang over every director of a non-profit corporation.  Some of these
liabilities seem to be such that they can not be protected against by
any kind of insurance policy.  So, in addition to it simply being "the
right thing to do" I created and maintained that diary so that I, should
the occasion arise, have means to demonstrate that my acts were
legitimately within the "business judgment rule" that protects corporate
directors.

	--karl--


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