[council] Restructuring the DNSO

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

To:  Alejandro Pisanty, Lyman Chapin, Phil Davidson, Hans Kraaijenbrink, and 
Nii Quaynor 

Dear members of the Committee on Restructuring:

As you are charged with monitoring and providing reports to the Board on 
restructuring issues, and must evaluate and make recommendations to the Board 
concerning any specific proposals that could affect the structure of ICANN, 
please be advised of the following:

The General Assembly through the review process has submitted well over 3500 
comments to the Council regarding the need to restructure the DNSO and to 
attend to the issue of misrepresentation.   Our comments have been ignored by 
the Names Council.  

The General Assembly has voted upon and passed a motion regarding the 
restructuring of the DNSO.  
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/2001.GA-DNSO-Motion-Reorg-vote.html  
This motion has also been ignored by the Council.

This Council has responded to the community voice by willfully failing to 
address these issues within the Council Review Task Force, by failing to 
place such matters within the Terms of Reference of the Council Structure 
Task Force, by twice failing to place this issue on the Council Agenda 
subsequent to the GA vote, and by finally submitting a recommendation to the 
ICANN Board that ignores the views of hundreds of active DNSO participants.  

I am of the opinion that at every step in this process the Council has acted 
to deny the bottom-up view.  It chose to terminate the Review Working Group 
as consensus was emerging to eliminate the DNSO constituency structure.  It 
repeatedly has stonewalled efforts to allow for the establishment of an 
individuals constituency, and now seeks to thwart any attempt to seat 
registrant representatives on the Council's Transfers Task Force.  This 
Council has repeatedly denied the membership of the Assembly their right to 
full participation by turning down every single request to establish an open 
working group.

We no longer have a system in which the Council "manages" consensus.  
Instead, this Council seeks to unilaterally "declare" consensus arguing that 
working groups cannot be used as a vehicle to determine consensus because 
"DNSO working groups as currently formed are by construction not a 
representative sample of DNSO stakeholders because they are open to 
participation by anyone who chooses."  
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc06/doc00018.doc 

Such convoluted logic well illustrates the sorry state of affairs within the 
DNSO.  

The Board has accepted the principle that representation must accompany 
participation.  The membership of the General Assembly supports this 
principle and seeks such representation.  I ask you to review the record of 
commentary provided through the Review Working Group and to act to protect 
the interests of the unrepresented.  

At this time, the current practices of the Council make a mockery of the 
concept of bottom-up participation and deny the prospect of representation.  
Only you can put an end to this abuse of process.  

As a group we have resolved that "Members of the General Assembly believe 
that the DNSO dysfunctionality requires direct ICANN Board intervention".  We 
look forward to whatever assistance you may be able to provide.

Best regards,
Danny Younger