Re: [IFWP] Board Resolution on Constituencies

[Michael Sondow <msondow@iciiu.org>]

Kent Crispin a écrit:

> Richard J. Sexton wrote:
> >
> > I watched Sondow and Mueller make all sorts of compromises I
> > didn't see Heath make any. I talked to him about it and
> > was told "my constituents won't accept this". I asked how
> > he knew this without asking them or explaining the situation.

We could all have used that same argument. The ICIIU proposal was
not written by me alone, but in collaboration with the ten ICIIU
supporters, all legitimate non-commercial organizations. I took the
risk of negotiating a compromise with the ACM reps without
consulting the ICIIU's supporters. Heath could have done the same.

> > In the end the dispute was about one paraghraph - how to
> > elect the names council memebrs.

No, not how to elect the NC representatives, but how to arrange an
interim group of leaders to see the process through and find a
compromise solution.

> > Heath wanted the 30 orgs
> > he signed up to elect them

Not exactly. Heath and Maher (who should not have been there at all,
since he's a trademark lawyer for IBM and can never represent
non-commercial interests) wanted to elect NC members immediately
because ISOC had the longer list of supporting organizations (a
result of their superior funding, their pretended NCDNHC mailing
list, and their having tricked many people into believing that the
ISOC was already, in the pre-Berlin period, the NCDNHC). They
realized that they might be able to win all three seats if voting
was done immediately.

> > many other peple pointed out
> > one names council member from each of the 3 groups invoilved
> > in this seemed reasonable.

What Mueller, Kleiman, I, and the other reasonable people there
pointed out was that the constituency was not yet formed, since the
majority of interested non-commercial organizations weren't yet
represented in it. We asked that voting for NC seats be postponed
until the constituency's base was broadened to reflect a more fair
membership. We never asked that each of the three proposal groups be
given a seat, even if this was a far fairer distribution than that
proposed by ISOC. The ACM compromise called for a temporary council,
made up of one ACM rep, one ICIIU rep, one ISOC rep, plus Roberto
Gaetano (a CORE member but legitimately there as a representative of
ETSI) as a balancer between ACM/ICIIU and ISOC/CORE. This seemed
like the best and fairest way to keep the process open and ongoing.
It was finally accepted by Don Heath (who seemed to have grown tired
of Maher/POC/CORE shenanigans) but was rejected by David Maher. The
only thing Maher would accept was the immediate designation of
himself as an NCDNHC Names Council member. All other proposals for
compromise were rejected by him. (Don't forget that he had nominated
himself for the NC before the Berlin meeting, for which he was
severely reproved by people on ISOC's own lists). Thus the deadlock
at the end of the day.

> Except when you realize that the three groups weren't really three
> groups -- Mueller at best represented a single organization; Sondow
> represents an organization with no members.

Mueller and Kleiman are now the offical designated Internet
Governance Committee of the ACM, an international non-commercial
organization of some 80,000 members. As to the ICIIU proposal, it
was signed onto by twelve non-commercial organizations including Tom
Lowenhaupt's Communisphere Project (a community networking project
of Community Board 3 in New York, comprising 125,000 families),
COMTELCA (the Central American telecommunications and networking
clearinghouse), and REDI (the Spanish/Latin American cyberlaw
association), to mention only three of the ICIIU's supporters. To
say that the ICIIU proposal was only supported by myself (or only by
the ICIIU) is simply not true.

> I wasn't there, but I was watching, and what you say above is not
> what was said in the televised report.  The competing proposals were
> not about Names Council members, but about some sort of membership
> committee;

Not a membershop committee, but a committee to oversee an outreach
to new non-commercial organizational members, to prepare a website
and mailing list for the constituency, and, yes, to fairly assess
the legitimacy of applicants, all on a temporary basis until the
board approves the NCDNHC. What could be fairer? The ACM and the
ICIIU went so far as to include the ETSI representative, Roberto
Gaetano, on this ad hoc committee, even though he is a member of
CORE. What more could we do, except to give ISOC and David Maher the
NCDNHC on a plate?

> and the two proposals were as follows:
> 
> 1) (Sondow/Mueller proposal): The committee would be Sondow, Mueller,
> Heath, and Gaetano.  No elections; just picked by fiat.

What fiat? Mueller, Heath, and I were the submitters of the three
constituency proposals. In every other constituency, those who wrote
the proposals negotiated the compromise guidelines submitted to the
board. By what logic would the organizers of the NCDNHC be denied
that same right?

> 2) (The Heath proposal): The committee would be elected by the
> founding members of the NCC.

If there wasn't sufficient justification for accepting the ICIIU
supporting organizations as the founding members of the NCDNHC (even
though they were only asked to adhere to the NCDNHC and not to the
ICIIU), there is even less justification for accepting the ISOC
supporting organizations, who were told untruthfully that ISOC was
the only organizer of the constituency.

The only possible solution to the impasse was, and remains, the
extension of the constituency to more non-commercial organizations,
so as to ensure that no one group captures it. This is what the ACM
proposed and the ICIIU accepted as a compromise, and what was
rejected by David Maher and Don Heath for fear they would not be
able to control the new members.