Count me in on awareness volunteers. Alex Gakuru On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 4:19 AM, Robin Gross<[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I remain in shock over the Board SIC (staff's) treatment of the Stakeholder > Group Charters and wonder if anyone from the board was even paying attention > to what staff did with the Commercial Stakeholder Group Charter. > In particular, under the SIC approved charter for the CSG, they are going to > allow any of the existing members of the IPR, ISP, and Commercial > Constituencies VETO any board vote creating a new commercial constituency in > the CSG. Amazing! The press should be having a field day with this level > of incompetence and favoritism. > "4.2 Membership shall also be open to any additional constituency recognised > by ICANN’s Board under its by-laws, provided that such constituency, as > determined by the unanimous consent of the signatories to this charter, is > representative of commercial user interests which for the purposes of > definition are distinct from and exclude registry and prospective registry, > registrar, re-seller or other domain name supplier interests." > We (noncommercial users) have really been asleep at the wheel over the last > year while the ICANN Board of Directors had their heads filled with > mis-representations about NCUC by relentless back-door lobbying. They get > it from the commercial/IPR crowd and they get it from staff, neither of whom > want to see noncommercial users effective in policy development. The fact > that we haven't engaged in backdoor lobbying the way our critics do is > coming back to haunt us by ICANN trying to take away our newly won 3 elected > council seats for noncommercial users and staff imposing its "stranglehold" > charter while ignoring all of work we did to develop one that was supported > by global civil society (63 organizations + dozens of individuals in public > comments). > We must push-back against ICANN injustice to get them to listen to > noncommercial users and to stop developing policy through backdoor > negotiations while ignoring the expressed will of the public and a bottom-up > process. > ICANN is accepting public comments until 21 July on their imposed charter, > so we have to weigh in loudly on their failure to follow bottom-up processes > and allow noncommercial users to govern themselves. More info on comment > period: http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#stakeholder > [Considering the simple fact that not a single comment was taken into > account by ICANN in the April comment period, one must ask oneself, "what is > the point in commenting again?" But we have to keep up the pressure and at > least alert the public of ICANN squeezing out noncommercial users in policy > development]. > We must raise awareness of this injustice to noncommercial users in the next > few weeks, including awareness with the press and political figures. Are > there any volunteers to work in a small task force with me to raise > awareness (help with blogs, press releases, email lists, etc.) in the coming > weeks? -- please let me know asap. > Thank you very much! > Best, > Robin > IP JUSTICE > Robin Gross, Executive Director > 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 USA > p: +1-415-553-6261 f: +1-415-462-6451 > w: http://www.ipjustice.org e: [log in to unmask] > > >