Re: [ga] gTLD Constituency

[Jonathan Weinberg <weinberg@mail.msen.com>]

On Mon, Apr 09, 2001 at 10:20:49PM -0400, I wrote:
> >  Back when the
> > DNSO constituencies were formed, as you remember, ICANN paid great
> > attention to the makeup and structure of each constituency.  The Board
> > directed that it would recognize the various constituencies only
> > provisionally, while staff worked with the organizers of each to ensure
> > that their makeup and structure were open, fair, inclusive and
> > procompetitive.

And at 09:35 PM 4/9/2001 -0700, Kent Crispin responded:
>Sorry, you are confused.  There was no requirement that each
>constituency represent every possible perspective, and indeed the idea
>is contrary to the whole notion of constituencies.  Constituencies are
>*expected* to represent a particular point of view.  That a constituency
>would have a particular interest is an expected result.  In particular,
>the gTLD constituency is *intended* to support the interests of real
>gTLD registries, the ones that ICANN really does have contractual
>relationships with, precisely because these registries are in a special
>relationship with ICANN.  There might possibly be a case for a separate
>constituency for "prospective registries" (though I doubt it), but
>current registries (both ccTLD and gTLD, in fact) are absolutely
>critical special cases.

         There was no requirement that each constituency represent every 
possible perspective in the world at large.  There was a requirement that 
each constituency represent every perspective within the constituency, as 
the Board understood the scope of that constituency.  That's why the Board 
refused to recognize constituencies until, among other things, the 
proposals were modified to broaden participation and to ensure that the 
organizers did not have too much authority over who could join.  See the 
Berlin meeting minutes.  ICANN staff, working at the direction of the 
Board, mandated exactly the result that Dave, below, suggests could never 
happen:

>The intellectual property constituency has shown entirely too much tendency
>to be biased towards protecting intellectual property holders, so we had
>better require them to admit the anti-IP groups...

Fact is, the IPC was required to include the Domain Name Rights Coalition 
as a member.

         This doesn't by itself answer the question whether prospective 
registries should be considered to be within the scope of the gTLD 
registry.  Your argument that the constituency should be limited to those 
who have a "special relationship" with ICANN by virtue of having signed a 
contract is worth considering, but it's not obviously correct.  Where I 
came into this discussion was in support of Bret's point that, in 
considering the proper scope of the "new" gTLD constituency, it's useful to 
bear in mind that including prospective registries would generate a more 
balanced set of views, and would include a group that would otherwise be 
unrepresented on the NC.  Still makes sense to me.

Jon

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