At large membership

[Joop Teernstra <terastra@terabytz.co.nz>]

Below follows my comment on 
http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws-amend-redline-8oct99.htm#II

The proposed language makes it clear that ICANN does no longer intend to be
a membership organization as originally envisaged and mandated by the White
Paper and by the earlier iterations of the bylaws.

The fact that the word "member" is still used in the bylaws is misleading
and the term "supporting individual" would be more appropriate.

In particular:
section 2. The power of the Board to waive  fee requirements for selected
groups of members might lead to accusations of favouritism for certain
groupings of members.
It were better if the Board did not have such powers but that independent
foundations, not connected to any of the interests represented in the SO's
would subsidize members individually or in groups.

section 3. This should simply be a members-only mailing list, with proper
list rules. This would be the only place where candidates for Council or
Board could campaign.

Section 4.
 (f) the word "methods" makes the intent of this article unclear. Is what
is meant abuse of the mailing list privileges?
(g) "prejudicial to the corporation" should not lightly be used to stifle
honest criticism. More detailed procedure is necessary to determine what
actually happens before a "member"  can be ousted and how fair hearings can
be effected.

(h)(members can be expelled for any other reasons determined by the
Board--presumably the Board minus it's at large members)  is is too open
ended and should be deleted

Section 6. It would be better if this article actually specified a  method
of nomination and  election rather than leave it to the yet unstructured
body of members to make  this determination.
This would greatly speed up the process of getting elected AL Council members.
Or is this perhaps not intended?

Section 7. General Comment on the Geographic diversity requirements: these
will serve to frustrate the membership in the election of globally
acceptable candidates and cause division and possibly strife with
regionally elected candidates with far less numerical support. 

Section 9 (b and c) do not provide sufficient safeguards that individuals
strongly identified with and represented by SO constituency interests, will
not  gain additional support for their interests by standing for elections
for the AL council.
The basic idea behind the AL council is to create genuine balance on the
ICANN Board and a counterweight for users' interests that are unrepresented
by the SO's.

(g) The comprehensibility of this article could greatly benefit by some
rewording. Is it meant that a date will be established by which the number
of members entitled to participate in an election be frozen?
Or did I fail to comprehend it at all?

Dropping the whole AL Board member elections when the membership falls
below 5000-      NO, DO NOT DO THIS.

(h) This provision undermines the whole idea of ICANN as a membership
organization. If the members are invited to join by a genuine open process,
without special announcements to existing interest organizations or special
membership fee privileges for such groups, the number of 5000 members
should not be the be-all and end-all for the AL membership.

The powers of the Board to make membership more attractive or less
attractive could be abused to manipulate the membership number around the
critical 5000.
With this rule in place, being a "member" of a membership of less than 5000
holds no attraction at all, leading to a massive negative feedback on the
remaining membership as soon as the number would spiral below 5000.
The conclusion that an insufficient number of individuals would have an
interest in ICANN would become self-fulfilling.

I strongly recommend that this provision be deleted.

General Comment on these AL "membership" provisions.
I fail to see how anyone would be interested to spend precious time, let
alone money , on being an ICANN "member", unless this would come
pre-packaged with the benefits of a membership in an existing organisation.  

This is exactly what should *not* happen, in view of the climate of
suspicion of capture by certain industry -dominated groups that already
exists.
But unless these rules are substantially rewritten in the light of comments
received from the community, it seems almost inevitable that no
*independent* at large membership will come into being.

Failure or capture of the AL membership makes it even more important for
Individual Domain Name Owners to press for their admission into the DNSO.

--Joop Teernstra LL.M.--  , bootstrap  of
the Cyberspace Association,
the constituency for Individual Domain Name Owners
http://www.democracy.org.nz/idno/