Thanks Andrew,
I understand and appreciate your clarifications - no surprise for me and I generally agree with your stated views here.
Indeed, we all have multiple "personalities" and I'm no exception! I also understand the "expert" argument. I think experts should feed the dialogue not necessarely always lead it...
Regarding my statement of interest in this, and to be transparent, I'm in the process of requesting NPOC membership for CECI - see
http://www.ceci.ca/fr/ - one of the oldest and largest NGOs in Canada. I sit on the Board of CECI since early October.
The issue I guess I'm struggling with is "who speaks for whom"? I do not think individuals like myself or academics like yourself or IP lawyers for that matter can speak for the global NGO/NFP community... no single federations of NGO/NFPs like the Association for Progressive Communications or the Global Knowledge Partnership Foundation and many others can neither....Increasing the voice of NGO/NFPs in ICANN is very important and if experts are to lead or feed their inter-stakeholders' dialogue, it should be to inform the larger community on the practical concerns regarding the internet and its consequences/impact on their daily work.
In relatively stable environments like Japan or Canada, just to name a pair, NGO/NFP work is facilitated by a powerful and very accessible internet. In environments like Ecuador and The Gambia, NGO/NFP work is a life sustaining but also risky and even dangerous activity... I personally strive to get thousands of NGO/NFP members into NPOC, because there can only be real representation if there are sufficient numbers and democratic representation. So I do not know who speaks for the NGO/NFP in ICANN really until we have enough such organizations involved... a critical+ mass if you wish.... NCSG has maybe 100 to 120 institutional members right now at best, probably much much less if we require a corporate decision to join (NPOC does that by the way), and creating NPOC was a struggle to begin with and the subject of much tension and mistrust, which still is a wound that has not yet healed... Meanwhile, I think we can only be taken seriously inside and outside ICANN and do meaningful work, if we have hundred more if not thousands of NGO/NFP members... so arguing about this NGO or this NFP being a "real non-commercial" seems counterproductive to me!... You will surely agree with me that academics support evidence-based decisions and the definition of an NGO/NFP is not rocket science neither...
Yet, self-interest is core to human nature, can lead to great achievements and drives most - I simply postulate that self-interest must take back seat to the institutional/organizational vision and mission we work for, inside and outside ICANN...
Best, Alain
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Andrew A. Adams
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Alain wrote:
[snip]
> In fact, there is a significantly different membership culture between NPOC=
> and NCUC... because NPOC is only interested in NFP/NGO organizational memb=
> ers while NCUC mixes memberships from NFP/NGOs, academia (some could be for=
> profit) and individuals (who may also have for profit motives or even be i=
> nvolved in two organizations, one for profit and one not for profit).
Alain,
Please note that your statement here conflates individual academics and
universities. Yes, one could be an academic working for a forprofit
university an be a member of NCSG-NCUC. However, that would only be as an
individual. Even academics orking for for-profit institutions generally have
a non-profit interest in the domain name system. No aademic would be
permitted to represent a for-profit university within NCSG-NCUC membership
rules, only themselves.
Yes, people have multiple identities and an academic with a non-commercial
interest in domain names could be an NCSG-NCUC member on that basis and also
perhaps represent (their own spin-off commercial company perhaps) a
commercial entity in another SG.
The role of academics is to provide expert insight and (mostly)
non-self-interested analysis. Most academics do not claim or want to
represent their universities. Universities (the vast majority of which are
non-profit, whether private or public universities) would generally be better
represented in NCSG by computing staff rather than academics, usually,
although sometimes senior academics are also senior computing service
managers/directors (I know of two so there are probably quite a few more).
--
Professor Andrew A Adams [log in to unmask]
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/
--
Alain Berranger, B.Eng, MBA