[ga] Registrars Draft Proposals are unacceptable
Reading the Draft Registrars proposals, I'm struck
by this extraordinary assumption that Registrars and Registries should have so
much executive authority on the Board of ICANN - notwithstanding obvious
commercial conflicts of interests that exist if they participate in
decision-making processes and have the right to vote.
Surely commonsense and honesty would dictate that
if the Registrar and Registry communities want their expertise and interests
represented in the way the DNS is administered then their place in the ICANN
structures should be reserved for advisory capacities - not voting and executive
roles when many of their commercial interests are at stake.
Furthermore, the Registrars draft makes no protest
at ICANN's abandonment of elected representatives for the millions of ordinary
worldwide internet users. It is extraordinary that when there are hundreds of
millions of ordinary internet users and a handful of mostly small registrar
companies, their proposals offer much more executive influence to this tiny
vested interest than to the real internet community for whom the internet should
really be administered.
Looking at the Registrars draft proposals,
individual registrants (who are by far the largest constituency of internet
users) are listed as only ONE out of 14 categories for possible "nomination" to
ten proposed 'At Large' places on the Board. If interpreted and projected in
this way in real terms, this might result in only ONE ordinary registrant on a
Board of 15.
And even that ONE individual would not be publicly
elected but would have to be approved by a "Nominating Committee" where
registrars/registries hold a third of the positions.
Why? Particularly given the potential for conflict
of interest, shouldn't Registrars/Registries be limited to merely advisory
capacities? And why should they have any voting powers or say in the kind of
ordinary user or individual registrant that is "nominated"?
The Proposals from the Registrar Constituency (if
adopted) re-inforce ICANN's determination to keep out elected representatives of
the public who in their hundreds of millions invest in the Internet, finance
ICANN, develop the Internet, and use the Internet.
This Registrars Draft embraces the idea of
"Nominating Committees" to "vet" the kind of people who are acceptable for the
Board. And at the end of the day, it seems to offer the mass of ordinary users
about ONE out of 15 places (a carefully "vetted" ONE) who can be easily
marginalised, outvoted and rendered powerless.
This Draft Proposal is therefore unacceptable. The
Registrar community should be limited to "Advisory" capacities. Their commercial
interests should exclude them from executive positions inside ICANN. The
millions of internet users among the general public have a right to a central
role and representation at the heart of ICANN.
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