Formal Meeting between At-Large and the NCUC – Cairo ICANN Meeting
(Held November 03, 2008)
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List of Participants
Important Note: Please note that this should not be considered to be an "official" list of the attendees. This is just a list of the participants that we were able to identify during the transcription. There may have been others present that didn't speak and some people may have participated that were not on the official list of attendees published on the internet.
Aguirre, Carlos (Meeting Chair)
Aizu, Izumi
Bachollet, Sébastien
Brendler, Beau
Greenberg, Alan
Langdon-Orr, Cheryl
Leibovitch, Evan
Mueller, Milton (NCUC)
Preston, Cheryl (NCUC?)
Samuels, Carlton
Scartezini, Vanda
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Milton: …we believe the constituencies should be relatively easy to form and we outline this four-step process in the proposal that you’ve seen. And we think that constituencies should be represented somehow, although we don’t know exactly how, what the structure is yet, and that’s what the diagrams are in this… which I could pass around or something.
Carlos?: Can I just read this? 00.27 Can we?
Milton: Oh, you have that. Great.
Carlos?: No, there’s a bunch copies.
Milton: Okay, great. Yeah. There’s two of them, two different options that are on those diagrams.
Izumi?: One diagram but two options.
Milton: So that was the basic structure that we within the NCUC could agree on. And then what did we not agree yet? One of the interesting issues was posed by Cheryl Preston here, do we want a cumulative… or maybe that’s not the precise term for it, but a form of voting that could give six votes to each member and then they can distribute those votes council candidates in any way they like? And the good point about this voting is that minority viewpoints could concentrate their efforts and maybe get one of the six councillor members on, and the bad point is that council members might spend all their time appealing to minority groups and get themselves elected, and then you wouldn’t have a homogenous common view of how non-commercial stakeholders should be represented in the council. So there’s advantages and disadvantages, and that’s an issue that we think should be discussed.
And then the other question is how should the constituencies should be structurally represented, which I mentioned before. We had questions raised in our discussions about the scalability of my original proposal, which was just whenever you form a constituency you get a representative on our representative committee. Somebody said, “Well, what if there’s like a whole bunch of these constituencies and the committee gets too big?”
The other question was do want them on an executive committee or the policy committee? In other words, do we want to give constituencies administrative representation or administrative power, or do we want to give them policy-formulation responsibilities?
So that’s what the two diagrams are. In one of them you have the constituencies going onto a policy committee, and that’s a committee that’s kind of formally responsible for representing the NCSG on the policy development processes, on working groups, and that would advise the council members on how to vote. So that would include the council seats, the chair, and one representative for every constituency.
The other alternative is to have both an executive committee and a policy committee, but we’re concerned about that straining the ability of the group to have that many people in that many positions.
So that’s the basic concept. Again, the concept of constituencies which has been sort of released here – this is the earlier proposal – you know, let’s take an example that you have, the Egyptian Bloggers’ Constituency, right? You’ve got… That means that there’d have to be five people in the stakeholder group, five members who wanted to be representing the interests of Egyptian bloggers. And so they would go through these four steps – they would first of all notify; and then when you get five people volunteering to join it, it becomes eligible to schedule a meeting, which could be online or in-person; and they hold the meeting and they draft a charter which defines its grouping principle, eligibility criteria, and procedures, and they could designate a chair or representative; and then they submit it to the executive committee or policy committee, depending on how we solve that problem, for some kind of ratification.
So as you can tell, this is not all airtight and probably shouldn’t be at this stage. We have more time than we thought. We haven’t heard your opinions in any formal sense, so now I think it’s time to hear from ALAC.
Carlos: To be sincere, Milton, I read the document but in some parts was for me very difficult to understand, especially when you talk about the threes – sorry – the three kinds of organization. Large organizations, small organizations, and in the middles. What are each one?
Milton: Okay. That one for us is pretty easy because in our current charter we have these distinctions and we have the provisional individual membership which describes how we define and vet individuals. So I think the small org, the large org… I think I can pull this up real quick. pause
Carlos: The question is important because it’s necessary to define the first step, no? With a consequ-… 06.11
Milton: Well, I don’t think it’s all that important because basically it’s going to be an arbitrary distinction between “large” and “small,” obviously. And there aren’t that many large organizations that are really actively involved and insisting on something. But let me see if I can find it.
Okay. So a large organization has a membership of a thousand people or more or more than 200 employees. So in our case, you know, American Civil Liberties Union which has hundreds of thousands of members would be a large organization, ACM which at the time was a member would be a large organization, EPIC has joined as a large organization, you know, Consumer Federation or Consumer’s Union would be large organizations – they’re gigantic organizations by those standards. And so they get four votes.
Male: Alan.
Cheryl LO: What a surprise.
Beau?: I’ll fill out that application and send it in.
Male: Yeah.
Alan: I’ve got a couple of ques-… or several questions. The first is on constituency formation. My understanding from the Board action to date and the current bylaws is constituencies will have to be approved by the Board. Your document implies that constituencies are self-forming and purely at the discretion of the NCSG.
Milton: Yeah, that’s a very good point. I think the… I tried to make this point but didn’t really have time to make it this morning when we were talking with Denise, and I think that they are confusing everybody in the sense that they’re talking about recognizing new constituencies six months before the ground changes completely on the whole situation.
So what are they going to do? I just talked to somebody today, they want to form a new constituency with… let’s say just to pull a rabbit out of a hat that has something to do with multilingualism, right? If they form a new constituency, under the current GNSO they would just be a new constituency, they’d have three seats on the council, and there would be seven constituencies instead of six. But as soon as we go into the two-house, bicameral proposal, then you have to decide what house they belong on. And that means since the voting ratios are defined, that means that those new constituencies would be either fitting into an existing stakeholder group… Well, they’d have to be fit into an existing stakeholder group, right? And that means that whoever this new constituency is will be in effect in a zero-sum game with another existing, you know, constituency for…
Alan: If I can interrupt, I’m not really worried about the transition period over the next seven months, I’m talking about whether someone gets approved today for the new GNSO or they get approved next September for the GNSO, that’s the situation I’m talking about.
Milton: Okay. So the point, the reason I’m talking about the transition is I am assuming that the Board will no longer… I’m assuming that we will send to them a proposal for how the NCSG should be organized, and as part of that proposal it will say, “Constituencies should be easy to form, it should not go through the Board, and should be done this way,” and the Board will say, “Yes, you’re right.” If the Board says, “No, we want to handle every application for a constituency,” then we go back to the drawing board, basically, but I hope they’re not that absurd.
Alan: In my mind, the term “constituency” right now is a magic name in that it gives you the right to submit positions and opinions on the various policy issues as they come around – in other words, one asks for “constituency statements.” Therefore clearly I don’t think we want 473 constituency statements, that would just make that process untenable. So…
Milton: But even PDP…
Alan: Okay. Okay. My assumption was the Board retains that responsibility, yours is not, so obviously that needs to be resolved before we can have this discussion.
Milton: But even what you said about the constituency statements, that’s part of the existing PDP. And the PDP is going to be redefined, we all know that, so…
Alan: Indeed. Okay, next point. You’re describing that an NCSG member may choose to become one, or maybe more depending on how the rules fall out, of a constituency. Does that imply they could also be none – that is, they could just be a free-floating NCSG without a constituency?
Milton?: Yes.
Alan: Okay. And lastly, you talk… although you said, you know, it needs to be refined, you talk about how council members are elected, selected, whatever. Once selected, are these free agents, or must they go back to the NCSG in some form to get opinions on things before voting should things come to a vote? Because as I see it, membership on the council has several different values. One is the opportunity to speak. The second is when things do come to a vote, the opportunity to vote. So the question is, in your mind, and it’s not mentioned here at all, are they free agents or are their votes directed by the stakeholders group?
Milton: We would like to work with you to define the details of that within two… We want to avoid two extremes – we don’t want them to be completely free agents and we don’t want them to have to come to the entire stakeholder group to ask them how to vote. We think those two extremes are unreasonable. And we’ve had many bad experiences as the NCUC in the past. Well, actually before, when it was the Non-Commercial Domain Name Holders Constituency. Back then, you know, before you could make any kind of a statement or submit anything, the councillors had to come back to the constituency, which meant basically that you missed all the deadlines, you know? You just, you were paralyzed.
Alan: There’s a difference between saying, “I’m speaking on my behalf/I’m speaking on behalf of my constituency stakeholder group,” and in the case of actual voting, doing which, and those are different situations. I mean, you know, when I sit on council as liaison, I’m very often speaking on my own behalf because something comes up and I’ll give my opinion. There’s times when I am coming there and presenting an ALAC opinion and do it with being explicit.
Cheryl LO: Milton just… And I’m not chairing, it’s very useful for me to not be chairing meeting because we always let the liaison do that – but I’m here to help, don’t you worry – because I do want to be very clear that I’m now speaking absolutely not as the ALAC chair, I’m speaking 110% from my At-Large Structure. Now I’m back at grassroots, okay? As an ISOC-AU representative to the Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organization, my country… and I do mean “my country” because I’m talking about a new peak body country-wide representing every single consumer of communications has been formed. Where does the AC-… – I’m so sorry about these numbers, the letters – the Australian Communication Consumer Action Network – yes, it’s “ACCAN.”
laughter
Cheryl LO: However, the ACCAN, as opposed to the ICANN, where does ACCAN, who clearly in their international work want to be in this space representing not 200 employees and a thousand members but every damn member of the Australian population, fit in? How…
Male: There’s no such 14.35 inaudible.
Cheryl LO: This is a whole new game that might come to play. I’m not asking resolution here. I’m just saying we can get peak bodies of peak bodies as well, this is an example of one, and I think we need to think about that because I can tell you one tiny, diluted voice, vote fed back to something that is perhaps a combination of the size of Beau’s organization and the size of what my ALS wants to bring to the GNSO table, is going to need a whole lot of work.
Milton: I would say again… I wouldn’t make too big a deal about that because I suspect that it’s not going to be votes in the end that wins the day, it’s going to be arguments. And if we’d already be giving them, say, four… if they were just simply classified as a “large” organization and we don’t try to make all these fine, categorical, and status distinctions between organizations, our lives are going to be much easier, and you can come in and say, “We represent all of these organizations and you’d better listen to us,” and probably, you know, the way things work I hope is that people will, and even if they don’t, you’re going to have four times as many votes as any, you know, ordinary individual and twice as many votes as a small organization so that, you know, if you’re actually paying attention and voting you’re going to have quite a bit of influence.
So it’s not that complicated a distinction. Of course, you could argue whether it should be four votes or six votes, but I think once you start getting to that point… laughter
Cheryl LO: It’s just that my point is I would very much argue that bringing something like ACCAN to the table qualifies as a “large organization,” but in fact what we have is 60 members. Those 60 members represent every single member of the Australian population using communications that are consumers – everything from business right through to the disability sector. It doesn’t work, the math doesn’t work.
Alan: I’d have you bring all 60 in and have 60 times 4 votes.
Cheryl LO: laughter No. But no, that our aim is to not do that from a national perspective.
Alan: Can I ask, just as a point of order, we talked about votes. What are the votes used for? Is it only for electing councillors, or are there other things you envision voting for on a regular basis? Because it’s not clear.
Milton: Yeah. It… It depends also if we continue to have an executive committee that makes administrative decisions like budget allocations, or it could also… you could set up a process, you know, regarding how people, how councillors vote, as we discussed earlier. That’s undetermined at yet, so we’re opened to advice on that. Again, my bias is towards simplicity.
Carlos: In the same sense that the question before, Milton, here.
laughter
Cheryl LO: Oh, he’s already retired from the inaudible 18.06.
Alan: Then we should go to the new chair.
Carlos: No, no. The question about the large organization or medium organization or small organization is in this sense, no? Organizations who have 20 employees is a large organization, but the organization who have 8 million consumers, but anyone, employee or any employee, is a small organization. It’s a contradiction for me.
In the second point, in what manner, in what… yes, the At-Large Committee or end users, you think that they can participate in this new constituential Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group?
And the third point, what is the system, election system that you thought for this? Because it’s… I read the document and for me it’s very complicated also I think. But I’m not an example because I’m not smart, but…
Female?: inaudible 19.57
laughter
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Milton: Can you repeat those questions?
Izumi: If I may…?
Cheryl LO: Well, I would like to know does Milton actually want to answer those questions? Does he need them repeated or not?
Milton: Yes. I started writing down, “How can the At-Large Structures participate in this structure?” and then I kind of missed the second one. Or the third one, actually. The third one.
Carlos: The third one? The election system.
Milton: Oh, the voting system.
Carlos: Yeah.
Milton: So that gets to the issue of cumulative versus one, you know… Okay.
Okay. So it’s very simple, I think. An At-Large Structure, any organization that currently is part of ALAC can join the NCSG if it’s eligible as a non-commercial organization. And if it’s an individual, you could look at our provisional individual membership criteria, and basically we’re asking you to not be a member of a commercial stakeholder group and we’re asking you to sign a pledge that you are, you know, going to be advocating public interest positions. And that’s basically kind of an accountability mechanism so that we can… if we find out that you’re a paid lobbyist for AT&T, we can come back at you and say, “What’s going on here?” and kick you out.
So it’s… the only question people in the current At-Large Structures would have to ask themselves is “Do I have time to do both?” That’s all, and that’s the problem we all face, is one of time scarcity.
To move on to the voting question, again I think there are interesting cases to be made for a cumulative or a non-cumulative system. And it might be that some smart political scientist has figured out a way to combine those two characteristics, but again I fear getting too complicated at this stage. You have to have people understanding what they can do when they vote.
So again, the bas-…
Alan: Excuse me. For those who aren’t political scientists, what’s a cumulative versus non-cumulative voting system?
Milton: Okay. So “cumulative” means that you get six votes, Alan, and there are six candidates. You can assign those six votes to… all of them to one candidate, you can give three to two candidates, you can give two to three candidates, or you can give one to six candidates. The non-cumulative is just you got six votes, you vote for six candidates.
Alan: Thank you.
Milton: I’m sorry. I didn’t… I thought that… You don’t have this document, so I’m… I thought…
So again, you know, it’s a question of how… do you want to try to vote in solidarity, or solidaristically, or do you want the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group to be completely, you know, the representatives to be responding to narrower constituencies exclusively? That’s the question essentially.
Izumi: If I may, after 6:30 my brain usually stops working, like many others.
laughter
Cheryl LO?: inaudible 23.49
Izumi: And in some nominative language, it gets worse, like “you” and “me.” What’s the rela-… What’s I’m puzzled is the what is a “constituency” versus “organizational member”? Do you mean a constituency is composed of several organizations? Am I right?
Milton: There’s individuals. 24.11
Izumi: As well as a few individuals. So minimum, you have five people, real peop-…
Milton: Five members. Five members.
Izumi: Five members, but individual five members can create a constituency if they like?
Milton: Yeah.
Female: Yeah, okay. Same thing.
Izumi: And organizations of 20,000, and five organizations gather together and form one constituency – am I right?
Milton: It could be, yeah.
Izumi: And the constituencies do not have the voting, per se, except they go to the ExCom?
Milton: Or the policy committee.
Izumi: Or policy committee. But voting is done due to the size of the organization and the individual members?
Milton: Right.
Izumi: So there are two sort of different functions, right?
Milton: The constituencies would get together and make, say, a statement. Like let’s say the freedom of expressi-… cuts out 10 sec
When you’re talking about the Registrar Transfer Agreements, the freedom of expression constituency might be completely uninterested and just let somebody else handle it – maybe the consumer protection constituency. And of course constituencies could be opposed to each other. There could be a pro-censorship constituency, there could be an anti-privacy constituency.
Izumi: So it’s like a working group.
Male: Mmm… No.
Izumi: Or standing… The constituencies should be a standing thing?
Milton: Yes, standing.
Izumi: That can dissolve, but…
Cheryl LO: A working would be towards and… 25.45
Izumi: So that means that you will have or we will have a sort of working group in corresponding to the policy issues also, right?
Milton: I’m sorry. You were talking…
Izumi: You may have the working group if there is some issue coming from ICANN Policy Development Process and you have a respond as NCSG, then you will form for the IDN without being a constituency, right?
Milton: Right. So for example, let’s suppose there’s a Chinese language-speaking constituency, and they would be very interested in any policy developments on IDNs. And so if there is an ICANN GNSO working group on IDNs, that constituency would really want to be represented on that and they might lead the NCSG policy committee into doing something on that whereas the other ones would be sitting back on their butts and saying, “Who cares?”
Izumi: Okay. I think I understand that now.
Male: Basically a working group can have multiple and changing membership according to the issue.
Milton: And let’s keep in mind with this structure is that it is no longer even necessary to be a member of any stakeholder group to be part of an ICANN working group in the future. So people who think that they have to be somehow represented through this process to be in a working group are incorrect – they can get on a working group no matter what.
Carlos?: You, inaudible 27.18.
Izumi: One of the issues we are grappling at the moment at ALAC is that with the ALAC Review Report by the Board Working Group, that they are suggesting that ALAC is only channel for the voice of individual internet users, and I’m not too sure if it’s mutually exclusive with this proposal or not. If this constituency is pretty fine that it’s also a channel or a constituency of the individual users, then it may have a direct sort of conflict at least perceivingly 27.54. Or not. What’s your view about that?
Milton: Yeah, I think it’s another one of these fake issues that people can stumble over and waste a lot of time on. The concept of a voice of individual internet users is really to my mind an oxymoron, so that, you know, ALAC is the place for individual internet users to collectively work out policy decisions. And by having individuals join a Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, we are not asserting that they are the voice of anything but themselves, right? They’re not the voice of individual users in ICANN, they are individual members of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group who can then join constituencies and formulate policy positions within that stakeholder group. So I just don’t see that as an issue. I think it’s not something that really creates any problems at all.
Izumi: For all. laughter
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Male: Carlos, you’ve got people waving their hand at you.
Carlos: Sorry. Sébastien.
Cheryl LO: Sébastien needs to speak but he needs the roving mics. Okay.
Sébastien: Just it seems to me that the… to be member of a constituency and to be a constituency, something must be different. If five people want to join together, they form an association even if it’s a virtual one and they become a member of one constituency. If the constituency starts at the level… If the constituency, it’s at the level of five people, then we will miss something. It’s already complicated with these house, with these stakeholders groups, and with the constituency, if we have a constituency could be set up by five people, then it will not work. That’s my point of view. Thank you.
Milton: Just to clarify, you’re saying the threshold should be increased? Or you just don’t like the idea of constituencies at all?
Sébastien: I think this… five people, it’s a virtual organization and it must become a member of one constituency, not be a constituency.
Milton: Well, keep in mind that those five members might rep-… some of them might be organizations that have 100 members or 5 members or 20 members. pause It’s membership, 5 members form a constituency, not 5 individuals.
Cheryl LO: Can I just clarify? Because I think I know what Sébastien is picking up on, and that’s in your steps where you talk about “five or more members volunteer to join,” they become… It’s the idea that a member… You’ve got individual members, so he’s envisaging five people meeting in a bar and becoming a constituency the following day after going through a public list exercise, and you are saying that they would be in some case s representing 100 people, 1000 people. The 100- and 1000-people representatives isn’t an issue, it’s if it’s only five individuals suddenly forming a constituency. And on reading of this, in first reading of that, it’s easy to read it that way. It would be nice to have clarification whether five individual members who are there just as individuals can form a constituency. So n equals five people, equals one form of constituency? Yes or no.
Milton: I would say five members. It’s what it says there. So…
Vanda?: Individuals can be m-… cuts out 32.19
Milton: It could be five individuals, it could be five organizations. It could be either one. And again, we deliberately wanted to make it relatively easy to form a constituency. And bas-… I hope this doesn’t sound flippant, but in my experience in the GNSO process, if you actually have five likeminded people willing to work on an issue or a project, you’ve got a lot.
Beau: My question is maybe a little philosophical for the hour, so perhaps…
laughter
Beau: …perhaps it can be discussed or debated online, but I’m trying to come to terms with, in the year and a half I’ve been with the ALAC, it’s… when I first started there were really not any ideas about users appearing anywhere in the baroque structure of ICANN besides ALAC, and now there’s discussion of users in the GNSO structure, there’s discussion of users, individual internet users in NCUC as there’s always been, there’s the debate over the role in the ALAC. What is best for the users? It would seem to me that the more varied places they are represented, the better it would be overall, but I don’t know that. So, you know, from people like Alan who’ve had a lot of experience with the GNSO or Milton who’s been doing this a lot longer than I have or other people, I would really like to try to understand that because I think that’s something really important to either advocate for or against based on the user community that we represent. Does that make sense?
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Female: So you’re asking is it better to have more forums to have users represented, or less? Well, speaking personally, I would say more absolutely. I mean…
Beau: Some people don’t agree, which is interesting.
Female Oh.
Beau: I personally agree.
Male: Mic! Mic!
Beau: Some people don’t agree with that, which I find interesting. I happen to agree with you.
Female: Yeah, I think those who don’t agree with that might not be an individual user under these categories.
Alan: I hedge because I’m not sure the question is up for grabs right now. There has been comments within the ALAC review. The Board is asking for input on where should users fit. We’re using terms like “user representative” or “representing the views of users” or various other forms, and almost saying that slightly different grammatical constructs are completely different types of entities. I think people have not really thought the issue through.
Someone implied before, and I don’t remember who it is, you know, that we keep on saying we want user input. We don’t want user input. Really, I don’t think we do. ICANN… I think ICANN needs input with respect to what users need, but that doesn’t necessarily come from your grandmother. It doesn’t come from a user, it comes from someone who can straddle the uninitiated users’ domain and world with the technical vernacular and buzzwords that we use in ICANN. And I think we need to come to grips with what we want and then look at the various constructs that could be used to present those views. I’m not sure we’re going to do on the very short term before we make these decisions, however.
So I’m not even sure what the question is, but a lot of people are asking it.
laughter
Carlos: Thanks, Alan. Evan, please.
Evan: I just want to pick up on where Alan and Beau left, in the wonderful world of the philosophy of why this isn’t working at all. ICANN has bounced back and forth between user definitions, and we talk to the community and it’s ill defined. And, you know, we had this situation, we had the PSC come to us yesterday, it’s the first time we’d ever laid eyes on them since they’ve formed, and yet they’re charged with getting from the community something about how to improve community awareness or confidence, you know? And it’s all so badly defined, and it allows them to talk to everybody and nobody at exactly the same time. And we’re going through the exercises and GNSO is defining what’s “user” and ALAC Review is redefining what’s a “user” and PSC is pretending to… you know, they have their list of users. Their “users” include AT&T, you know? And I really think that we’re all dancing in circles and there’s fundamental questions that have to be answered before any of this is going to make sense.
And, you know, just taking Beau and Alan’s point to one more level and saying I find it very frustrating, especially after 6 o’clock at night, of having to deal with some of these issues. And I’ve seen them happen at previous meetings and they’re going to happen at future meetings and they’re not going to get answered to anyone’s satisfaction, and the end result is you have the pretense of saying, “We’ve gone to the community. Look at all the money we’ve spent. Look at all the questions we’ve asked. Look at all the survey’s we’ve received,” when in actual fact nothing of substance has actually passed to happen.
Carlos: Evan, it’s a question or a comment only?
laughter
Evan: I said it’s after 6. You can’t expect much. I guess my question is, is there something we can do to address this rather than allow it just to keep churning? Is there something that we can do between us in this room to nail it down? If ICANN won’t nail it down for us, can we do it for them?
Cheryl LO: cuts out …Cheryl?
Carlos: Okay. Cheryl?
Cheryl P: I’ve a question. In the application for NCUC for an individual, the individual has to certify that they’re not represented in ICANN through another supporting organization or stakeholder group. Was I correct in reading… in interpreting what you just said is under your proposal for the new stakeholders for non-commercial users, you could have the same person with a vote in the non-comm-…?
Female: Yeah, that’s a inaudible 39.42
Cheryl P: It’s just ‘cause I’m looking at Milton who’s much cuter than this mic.
Okay. Okay. What I don’t understand about what you just said is are you presuming that in your proposal that the same person would have a vote in the non-commercial stakeholders GNSO structure and also be a representative or an officer in ALAC?
Milton: Yeah. I mean, it wouldn’t be banned, right? The supporting organizations means that they’re not in the ccNSO – and you’d be surprised at how often we bump into the ccNSO. We want… The people who want to run registries or do run registries come and say, “We’re a non-profit organization. Can we be in your…?” and we say, “No. Users, suppliers. You’re a supplier, go away.” I’m being very curt here because of the time constraints, so I’m normally much more polite than that as you know.
laughter
Cheryl LO: inaudible 40.48
Milton: Yeah. This is a kinder, gentler Milton. So we don’t want people who are in ccNSO and we don’t want people who are in the business… commercial users stakeholder groups and we don’t want registrars and we don’t want registries. But if they’re in ALAC, there’s no inherent conflict of interest, especially if they are declaring that they are non-commercial in their policy perspective – that’s about all we can do. So the thing is designed to minimize any… to facilitate the flow of people who have the energy and time and insanity to try to participate in both and to filter out anybody who does that who’s really a commercial perspective, they should go into the commercial users group.
Cheryl P: But you need to define “participate,” because someone could have a vote in the Non-Commercial Stakeholders and yet do all of their work in ALAC and not necessarily engage in the discussions there or look at the policies or consider the issues.
Milton: Well, it doesn’t matter if it’s ALAC because there’s no inherent conflict of interest with ALAC. It’s… But let’s suppose that they are a member of the registry constituency but they don’t participate very often, then there’s still a conflict.
Cheryl P: My question is when we’re looking at allocating votes in the NCUC, I wanted to stress that the people who are voting there and making decisions there are actually involved and reading the statements and understanding the statements. And sometimes if you are members of both constituencies, like you say, you’re swamped, and so you don’t necessarily have time to be involved in the non-commercial stakeholder issues, and so… but then they still have a vote.
Milton: Well, yeah. I guess, you know, if they’re members in good standing and they go to sleep every night and don’t read our mailing list except they have a little filter that says, “Now it’s time to vote for officers,” they still get to vote for officers.
Carlos: Ladies and gentlemen, the term is up, so the last word are… Ah, Carlton?
Cheryl LO: Carlton, I’ve been looking for you since this morning.
Carlton: I am a little perplexed. Is there any space in this discussion to recognize that one person could have different interests and represent different interests? Is there… In the part of the world I come from, I wear lots of hats, principally because there’s nobody else to do it.
Sébastien: Just change your name!
laughter
Carlton: So is there anywhere in this… I mean, and this is not something that is not widespread. It is… Where I come from, the part of the world I come from, that is a widespread situation. I act in different capacities in different arenas and I don’t have any problems switching hats and switching gear. So where’s that recognized in this?
Milton: I think you’re right, that mostly we’re designed to prevent those potential conflicts of interest. But what I would say to you is in your case, if those constraints are unbearable within the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, then work within ALAC because ALAC can address GNSO issue, it can address any ccNSO issue, it can address any addressing issue, and then ALAC seems to be the perfect place for you. If you really have time to participate fully in ALAC and the ccNSO and the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group and the Commercial Stakeholders Group, I want to know what food you’re eating and what you’re drinking, because… you know?
Cheryl LO: laughter More power to those who can do that indeed.
Ladies and gentlemen, the chair has asked me to close the session. However, we’re closing it on I think a dish of fodder that we now need to go away and chew up and hopefully not spit out too much. But thank you very much for putting so much into a small amount of time. We need to revisit this, but obviously we also have a lot of digestion and discussion. Pardon the pun – perhaps you’ll do it over dinner tonight. laughter Thank you all.
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