[Comment-Dnso] Amendment process

[kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca (Kerry Miller)]

The draft minutes of the Berlin Meeting,  May 25-27 include 
resolutions of the form,

"FURTHER RESOLVED, (Resolution 99.36) that the phrase 
'except with the consent of the Board' shall be inserted after the 
twenty-first word of Section 3(c) of Article VI-B of the Bylaws." 

Studying those minutes, and those for the June 23 meeting, I see 
no evidence that the proposed amendment has been moved or 
seconded, altho it too is framed as being  RESOLVED, that 
Section 3(c) of Article VI-B of the Bylaws of the  Corporation is 
hereby replaced in its entirety with the following: 

"Each Constituency shall select up to three individuals to represent 
that Constituency on the NC, no two of which may be, except with 
the consent of the Board, residents of the same Geographic 
Region, as defined in Article V, Section 6. Notwithstanding the 
foregoing, no Constituency may have more representatives on the 
NC than there are members of the Constituency. Nominations 
within each Constituency may be made by any member of the 
Constituency, but no such member may make more than one 
nomination in any single Constituency." 


Be that as it may, if the Board can amend the bylaws as noted 
(and also re VII.3.a)  in May without public comment, why is it 
appropriate to call for comment on July 16? 

In this connection, the 'resolution' in introduced 
(http://www.icann.org/dnso/dnso-nc-amendments.htm ) "The 
following proposed Amendments to the ICANN Bylaws are intended 
to implement an evident consensus among participants in the 
ICANN process ... At its Berlin public meeting, the clear sentiment 
of the attendees and online participants was that the ICANN 
Bylaws should be amended...  

How is 'consensus' determined in the ICANN process? How many 
people attended the Berlin meeting, approximately? How many of 
them participated in the ICANN process? Was it made clear to 
either RL or VR participants that a constituent could select 
'representatives'  for the Names Council who were not necessarily 
affiliated with that constituent's organization?  


---------------
Article VII, Section 3(c) states, " Until such time as the process for 
the election of At Large directors shall have been approved as 
contemplated by Section 9(c) of Article V, there shall be an 
Advisory Committee on Membership."  Is there a 'MAC' at present? 
Will there be a MAC before the next board meeting? Will the report 
of the prior MAC be acted on at or before the next board meeting?


In nine months, the Board has amended its organizing documents 
at least twice, so it is clear that that part of the process works. It is 
equally clear that if there had been some fundamental operational 
flaw in the documents, it would have been caught in the scrutiny 
leading to those April and May amendments. How is the present 
proposal justified as more than an attempt to cover the Board's own 
failure to recognize that there are, and have been for several years 
prior to ICANN's coming into existence, TLD registrars whose 
domains, however, are not resolved by the so-called 'authoritative' 
root server network? Would not a simple apology suffice to permit 
three or more registrars to be represented in the DNSO? 

Conversely, if the primary obstacle to progress is NSI's 'monopoly,' 
not merely as registrar but as manager (and putative owner) of the 
domain names *registry, how does a continuing policy of refusal to 
recognize alternative TLDs -- and with them, their respective 
registries -- facilitate the 'ICANN process'?  


kerry miller
Wilmot, NS