dear all,
While following seriously this debate, the consumers constituency,if so, can be consider as a catalyst vector. In fact which is
consumer and which is not? With my opinion, the consumers constituency reinforces and gives a very great opportunity to civil society entities to express their opinion.
Baudouin
I remain concerned about the way consumer organizations in NCUC have been left out the discussion entirely regarding the creation of a so-called "consumer constituency".It is fine for Beau to gather groups that agree with his pro-law enforcement perspective of how to protect consumers, but it isn't fair to exclude those consumer groups who do not espouse such a pro-law enforcement viewpoint of how to empower consumers. There are just far more perspectives to incorporate than this single narrow mindset to claim the entire label of "consumer constituency". We need to see more diversity of perspective among the groups who want to claim this broad label.RobinOn Oct 13, 2009, at 4:02 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:I totally support the position Avri is stating here.We certainly know that nonduplication will be used by the existing CSG constituencies when convenient; we also know that Beau and others can "claim" to be "talking to" lots of important organizations but when push comes to shove they didn't even comment in favor of his petition, so evidence of actual members is essential./-----Original Message-----From: Non-Commercial User Constituency [mailto:NCUC-[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Avri DoriaSent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 8:35 AMSubject: Re: [NCUC-DISCUSS] preliminary notes from 30 Sept. board meetingonlineOn 13 Oct 2009, at 14:06, William Drake wrote:i would recommend adding consideration of:c: That they have consulted with the consumer protectionconstituents already in the NCUC and can show why this is notduplicationd. That they be able to show that they are already viable in termsof having an active membership and an email list and have startedcreating postions and having enough people to start reallycontributing to the working groupse. That the new charter be again put out for review before finalBoard approval(these are the kind of things that i think should be standard forall new constituencies)I'm fine with these, but wouldn't adding more conditions (underwhich what, we won't complain?) invite more push back from board,staff, proponents? I was thinking timing and actually nonprofitwere a minimalist set of criteria it's harder to argue against. Iguess we'll see how it all plays soon enough.I guess I would have to recommend that all the reasonable conditionsfor accepting a new constituency should be laid out at the start.Adding conditions later on seems like the kind of tactic others haveengaged in too frequently in the GNSO environment. Better to have theBoard know up front what seems reasonable. If you go into thismeeting with a bare minimalist position, when you compromise in theend (and one always has to compromise to get anything in the end) youwill get less then your bare minimum.I do not think that we should present unreasonable requests, but Ithink the 3 I suggested are reasonable for all constituenciesanywhere, and I think of them as being a minimum. Lets put it thisway, if you wanted to form a working group in the IETF these kind ofthings are basic, and there they are only talking about ephemeraltechnical discussion groups, not permanent entities to form the policyfor the Internet in general. These are thing that should be simplefor any real constituency to show - again I use the citiesconstituency as an example. They have all of this and more.While the negotiating group has to be polite, reasonable and concise,it does not need to sell itself short. I think it is reasonable to bedetermined that a new constituency be real and a substantive entitybefore it becomes a constituency.(And remember, this is from someone who in general has alwayssupported the creation of constituencies within an SG structure withflat voting of some sort.)a.IP JUSTICERobin Gross, Executive Director1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 USAp: +1-415-553-6261 f: +1-415-462-6451