[Advisors] TLD governance (was Re: CIRA elections -- no my turn this time)

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hi Marita.

I won't belabour the point as it may be getting more in-the-weeds than may
be useful on this list. Unless really pressed this will be my last reply,
though I'm happy to follow up offline (on email, or I can be found on
Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.)

> But, as hard pressed as it is it is to be effective, civil society does,
> at least, play an official role there. You suggest that it is all a grand
> illusion?
>
When I first became involved in ICANN At-Large in 2007, then ALAC liaison
to the Board Wendy Seltzer took me (and Darlene, who joined about the same
time) aside and told us that we were wasting our time, that At-Large was an
expensive but effective display that enabled ICANN to pretend that it was
paying lip service to to the public interest. Darlene and I belittled the
thought at the time, but in hindsight I am forced to admit there was more
truth to Wendy's observations. As the inaugural Chair of NARALO and an ALAC
member (and Vice-Chair for many years), I look back on the thousands of
person hours by me and my colleagues spent fighting the good fight, and I
really have a hard time coming up with a substantial list of
accomplishments. In my advancing years I can say without hesitation that
ICANN has been the most inefficient use of my volunteer time (measured by
good done per hour spent) in my life.

Perhaps. Time will tell. But there are a lot of people working very very
> hard, volunteers putting in thousands of hours, in order to mitigate some
> of the effects you noted.
>
I am reminded of the quote, often attributed to Einstein, of the definition
of insanity as the doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
different results. I am seeing nearly-complete repetition of the work of
your burnt-out predecessors.

> I think these people deserve our respect. They don't just do it for travel
> chits.
>
As someone who flew to ICANN's meetings on its dime for about eight years
(and still occasionally do, as recently as last year as a substitute at the
Abu Dhabi meeting), I know this all too painfully well. I earned every
travel cent they spent on me, just as you and your current colleagues do.
But never forget that we are detested by the rest of ICANN's constituencies
because of that subsidy, even (maybe especially) our civil society friends
at NCUC. I have heard first hand from the mouths of the domain industry
that ALAC is ICANN's charity case, that spends "their" money just to come
to meetings to complain. That attitude remains common, even now. The
situation would be far worst were our complaints to actually lead to action.

And, with respect to your criticism of At-large, I just spent dozens of
hours working on policy concerning community applications for new gTLDs.

Been there, done that, multiple times. I was co-Chair of ICANN's first-ever
cross-community working group, that had the ALAC and GAC working together
to create ICANN's Applicant Support program. Thousands of person hours.
Massive obstacles, and a Board that needed to be squeezed by the GAC to
consent. And yet not a single successful application once it rolled out.

I've seen many legitimate community applications (.nyc, .music, .gay) get
burned to a crisp the moment a commercial entity took interest in their
effort, and the people behind those efforts humiliated. If you think you
have the formula that eluded some of the community's best minds in multiple
constituencies in making community applications effective the next time
around, I wish you best of luck. But my cynicism has far more legitimate
rationale than I would like to admit.

And I am working hard with others on protecting some categories of geo
names from being scooped up by investors so they can turn around and sell
it back to the rightful owner. So I am feeling a little slighted by
your "fearful
of losing its travel allowance that it spends nearly zero effort on
proactive ICANN policy and even less on public education" description.

I said what I did deliberately. ALAC has a massive role to play, and one in
which it can wildly succeed, which is why I haven't just given up and
walked away. But that role doesn't resemble anything like what it's doing
now. ALAC should be involved in public education and advocacy, ensuring
that end users everywhere know how this world of domains affects them and
what they can do about it. And it desperately needs a research capacity, to
survey the public so that its feedback to ICANN can be based on a broad
sample of the global public interest and not the best guesses of 15
well-meaning people (one-third of which are NOT chosen by the At-Large
community).

I tried. Even planting the seed of such a dramatically changed strategy --
totally within the bylaw mandate -- was a non-starter. People are far too
comfortable just reacting to ICANN public comment solicitations, or making
minor tweaks to industry-driven policy, than proactively determining and
then asserting what end-users want from the DNS.

So for now I will sit in the back of the virtual room and launch spitballs,
reminding people that all the current battles have already been fought and
lost, ready to talk to anyone who wants off the ICANN
hamster-wheel-of-futility. and towards something with the actual chance of
fulfilling ALAC's mandate.
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