NCUC and PIR Support Partnership

2004 - 2007

This document sets out a long term plan for regular and modest funding support for the Noncommercial User’s Constituency. We submit it to the PIR Advisory Council in the hopes that it will receive their unanimous endorsement and can then be presented to the PIR Board.

The Important role of NCUC in ICANN

ICANN is an unprecedented experiment in international governance. It combines industry, civil society, and governmental input into a policy making entity with global scope. Within this framework, however, the forces representing private industry and governments are very strong. Businesses send full-time, professional lobbyists into the ICANN arena and back them with significant resources, due to the high economic stakes they have in the game. Governments also have budgets devoted to participation in international organizations and full-time employees for handling the tasks associated with influencing and monitoring policy.

Nearly everyone would recognize that the viewpoints and interests of noncommercial organizations need to be represented in ICANN. The .org TLD, one of the most important recognized homes of noncommercial Internet users, constitutes about 8 percent of the gTLD registration share. Many country code TLDs have “.org” equivalents. Moreover, the Internet was originally built by universities, research centers, and the entrepreneurs who emerged from them. These organizations need to be well-represented in ICANN’s policy making processes. But they rarely have the time or the resources to devote to participation in an international governance authority like ICANN.

NCUC is virtually the only organized place for noncommercial entities to coalesce to influence, shape and discuss ICANN issues. As one of six constituencies within ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization, it is the only one devoted to the representation of noncommercial interests and perspectives. All the others represent the domain name supply industry (registrars, registries, ISPs) or commercial interests (trademark holders, business users). Unless NCUC can function as a strong and effective representative, the entire policy development process of ICANN will be biased.

In short, it is essential that ICANN’s policy development processes and officer elections benefit from the presence of an organized noncommercial constituency.

The PIR proposal for .org Reassignment in 2002

Responsiveness to and support of the noncommercial community within ICANN was one of the key criteria in the reassignment of the .org TLD in 2001. The .org reassignment Call For Proposals asked applicants to “describe in detail the mechanisms you propose for ensuring that the policies and practices followed in your operation of the .org registry are responsive to and supportive of the noncommercial Internet user community, and reflect as much of its diversity as possible.”

PIR won the .org reassignment in no small part because of its strong commitment to leverage the .org asset to support noncommercial Internet activity. PIR’s bid was particularly strong in this regard, because of its links to the Internet Society’s nonprofit technical standardization activity, its creation of a broadly representative Advisory Council, and its commitment to support the noncommercial constituency within ICANN’s Domain Names Supporting Organization (now renamed the Generic Names Supporting Organization). PIR’s application said:

“ISOC recognizes that an ongoing problem with the ICANN DNSO Non Commercial Constituency has been a funding short-fall. …ISOC would like to explore various funding solutions through its .ORG Advisory Council to come up with a long term funding solution for the Non-Commercial Constituency or its successor organization.”

NCUC’s Improving Capacity

Prior to Fall 2003, NCUC was hobbled by an open mailing list that allowed anyone in the world, whether they were a member or even eligible for membership, to interfere with its deliberations, and by a dysfunctional organizational structure that gave everyone and no one responsibility for basic administrative functions. As of November 2003, the Noncommercial Users Constituency successfully completed a reform and reorganization. The constituency has left behind old conflicts and embarked on a new period of effective engagement with the policy development process of ICANN.

·        A new charter was drafted and ratified by the membership in August, creating a completely new governance structure. Elections were completed in November 2003, placing an active, stable, and representative core of officers in place as an Executive Committee.

·        A Chair, Dr. Milton Mueller, and four (4) regional representatives (based on ICANN geographic regions) were elected by members. (The fifth region, Africa, appointed a member.) The Executive Committee held its first meeting December 5^th and its second meeting February 7^th using economical but effective Internet relay chat format instead of expensive teleconferencing. The minutes are visible here (Dec. 5^th) and here (Feb. 7^th). Three new representatives to the GNSO Council were also elected. The Council representatives were highly qualified, articulate and active participants in the ICANN process: Dr. Jisuk Woo of Seoul National University, South Korea; Carlos Afonso of Brazil, and Marc Schneiders of the Netherlands.

·        A new email list, limited to members, was implemented, and the web site updated. The archives are accessed through the website, which is at www.ncdnhc.org. The constituency is in the process of implementing the website at www.ncuc.org

·        New membership is being recruited via the World Summit on the Information Society and other channels. In particular, two key international NGOs, one of which had disconnected from NCUC during the organizational problems of 2001-2002, have committed to join or re-join. NCUC currently has 36 organizations as members, not counting the most recent additions. Nine (9) are classified as large organizations including for example ACLU, Educause, Renater, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility; the rest are diverse small organizations.

·        The constituency has raised funds from EPIC’s Public Voice project to send a representative (Kathy Kleiman) to the Carthage, Tunisia ICANN meeting on October 2003. Because of the physical presence at the meeting, NCUC was able to be represented on panels dealing with Whois and play an advocacy role. The constituency representative was also able to mobilize additional sources of funding, notably a contribution from Afilias. That money is being used to support the travel of four members to the ICANN Rome meeting. NCUC plans a major presence at the Rome meeting. It will hold a program and workshop at the Rome meeting and may be collaborating with ALAC on WSIS-related informational sessions.

·        NCUC has exerted policy leadership in key areas. Two years ago, NCUC’s GNSO Council member chaired the working group that developed policy for the .org reassignment. The NCUC assisted ICANN’s CEO with an evaluation study of the applicants for the .org reassignment. In the Whois/privacy policy development process, NCUC’s representative on the Whois Steering Committee was instrumental in ensuring that a Task Force on data collection was created. NCUC was initially the only constituency calling for a Task Force focused on which data elements needed to be collected, and faced stiff opposition from certain other constituencies. Via persistent advocacy it prevailed on this issue, however.

Funding Needs

In this section, we describe the funding needs of the constituency and formulate a request. In total, we ask for an annual commitment of US$ 11,000 per year over a four year period.

Travel Support

The most important support need of the constituency is travel funds. These are needed to sustain participation. Travel to meetings makes it possible for elected officials and policy development task force members to participate. Although a great deal of work is conducted through teleconferences and email, the fact remains that it simply is not possible for any constituency to be a viable actor in the ICANN process without being represented at face-to-face meetings. Support for travel to these meetings also provides some relief and reward to active officers and members who devote so much uncompensated time to the constituency. (NB: Because the current NCUC chair has other sources of support for some travel and activity, he has pledged not to make any requests for NCUC funds during his term. This pledge was made in order to eliminate any concerns about conflict of interest in the allocation of constituency funds, and to conserve funds for others who might need it more.)

At the past two ICANN meetings, NCUC has provided full support to one or two key activists who could not afford to go otherwise. Starting with the Rome meeting, it has also provided a number of smaller, partial support grants to individuals who can use the NCUC grant to obtain matching funds from other sources. Using this very cost-effective model of travel support, we have found that we can get three to five people to attend ICANN quarterly meetings with about $4000 per meeting. Thus, with 4 quarterly meetings a year, an adequate level of support in this area would be $16,000/year.

Secretariat Services

Most of the current infrastructure of the secretariat is provided for free by the Chair’s home institution, Syracuse University School of Information Studies. This includes email list support, web site support, and some labor. This can continue for at least another 18 months, although extensive use of graduate student labor will need to be supported. This is especially true if the current Chair is not re-elected or chooses not to run; few other institutions will be willing to devote as many resources to NCUC. Thus, we ask for only $2000 and $3000 in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and $5000 per year after that.

Communications.

This budget item refers to any expenses involved in designing, writing, translating and duplicating brochures or reports, and to any expenses associated with telephone calls, conference calls, and mailing documents or money transfers. Expenses here are modest, only $1000 per year, as the NCUC is very efficient in its communications, relying on free online chat and toll-free calling, and donated labor, services and duplication whenever possible.

Other Sources of Funding Support

Over the four-year period of this proposal, total NCUC expenses are projected to be $75,000, or $18,700 annually. We do not, however, want to rely exclusively on PIR for the entire amount. In recent months NCUC has shown a capacity to raise donations from other sources. It also charges its members dues. Membership dues are conservatively estimated to bring in about $3000 over the four-year period; donations from other sources are (perhaps optimistically) projected to bring in $29,000. Thus, we request an average of $11,000 per year over the four year period.

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