Fellow NCSG members,

One thing that I had previously missed caught my eye just now:

At 2016-06-07 14:07:25 +0200
Niels ten Oever <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On 06/03/2016 08:13 PM, Ayden Férdeline wrote:

...
> > it isn't. It is possibly one of community culture, but if we accept
> > that, we can't just push this back to ICANN to somehow deal with. I
> > don't want a return to the Victorian moral panic of the 1880s, I don't
> > want ICANN inhibiting anyone's free speech to satisfy a few special
> > interests.   
...
> > Helsinki. If anything, I feel like WE are more at fault here than ICANN
> > as an organisation is. WE are not respecting the processes already in
...
> > ICANN has been very responsive to the concerns raised by the community,

All of these statements share a similar tone: ICANN is something that
we interact with, but we are not a part of ICANN.

Perhaps I am confused, because I come from the IETF and RIR
communities, which allow anyone to join and participate. While there is
a distinction between the ARIN community and the ARIN not-for-profit
company (for example) or the IETF and the IAB (as another example), for
the most part direction comes from the wider, open community.

You know, in a kind of bottom-up, open, inclusive way.

So... if this is not how ICANN works, then I feel like the ICANN
experiment has gone off the rails and is in serious danger of failing
completely. If "ICANN" is something different from, well, us, then what
is it?

Are we not ICANN?

Cheers,

--
Shane