On Thu, 1 Dec 2016, Milan, Stefania wrote:

> Dear all
> Ed Morris and I have worked today on a last-minute public comment to the 'Proposed Amendment to .XXX Registry Agreement to Transition to New Fee Structure and to Adopt Additional Safeguards’, posted for public comments on October 12, 2016. We submitted it at the deadline of today December the 1st midnight UTC, thanks to a deadline extension requested by the NCSG. We enclose the text below, and are happy to answer any question you might have.
> Stefania and Ed

Thank you Stefania and Ed for the clear, respectful, and hopefully persuasive
argument for following normal procedures in the MultiStakeholder spirit.

As ICANN has become richer, and especially bigger, the range of tasks that
can be accomodated grows without limit.  So it's important to point out the
limitation of volunteer bandwidth with complex and multi-referenced and
overlapping processes simultaneously scheduled, and with the changing
mechanisms of studies to determing the scope of future studies and agreements
to participation rules that make volunteer participation much less effective,
since the staff and long-term representatives from commercial entities with
support from their respective organizations have moved the non-commercial
interests to increasingly less effective counter to the more powerful forces
that leave the public users of DNS marginalized.   Thanks for including
the comments

This is a tendancy not only in ICANN, but also in local and regional 
government, where public meetings that affect the governed are multiplying
to where there are several simultaneous "public" meetings that affect
each individual, thus the appearance of being able to represent individual
interests at these meetings becomes virtually meaningless.   When the
decisions were made by elected officials the meetings were effective,
but now the officials delegate to other bodies, or to staff, and this
is where an individual is expected to comment not only at the sub levels,
and intermediate levels, but also when the final "recommendations" come
up for adoption.     ---     And in ICANN's case, putting the new or
changed policies in contract negotiations takes the public completely
out of the loop.

Again, Thanks, Thanks, Thanks, for bringing this up in the comment and
pushing for consideration that this is rapidly moving the spirit of
ICANN, and now IANA away from the ideals upon which it was founded.

-ron