NCSG

This letter comes from nearly 150 individual and organizational members of ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC). It is also endorsed by public interest groups outside of NCUC. We are all deeply concerned about the July 30, 2009 ICANN Board decisions regarding the restructuring of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). We believe that the Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) chartering process has been seriously flawed on both procedural and substantive grounds. We appeal to you to address these problems before permanent damage is done to ICANN’s reputation, to the GNSO reform process, and to the interests of noncommercial users of the Internet....

Public comments on stakeholder group charters are in - again. Comments submitted to ICANN were overwhelmingly in favor of reinstating the consensus charter submitted by noncommercial users. The Internet Governance Project asks "Is ICANN Listening?" to civil society yet.

Over 60 Non-Commercial Organizations from all corners of the globe signed in support of the petition from the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) for a stakeholder group at ICANN including Article 19, Privacy International, EPIC, FreePress, Asociatia pentru Tehnologie si Internet, EDRi, Public Knowledge, CPSR, Electronic Frontier Foundation, ICT Consumer Association of Kenya, AGEA DENSI, Association for Progressive Communications, Knowledge Ecology International, University of West Indies At Large Structure, RITS, Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication, Alfa-Redi, Internet Society Mauritius, International Institute for Sustainable Development, FGV-CTS, Asociación por los Derechos Civiles, and many more NGOs

The essential elements of this proposal are: Noncommercial stakeholders join the NCSG directly, and the NCSG keeps track of membership and administers voting for Council seats by the membership as a whole. The NCSG is administered by an annually elected Chair and a Policy Committee. The Policy Committee is composed of the 6 elected GNSO Councilors and one representative from each Constituency. There are three classes of membership: 1) large organizations (which receive 4 votes), small organizations (which receive 2 votes) and individuals (who receive 1 vote). Constituencies are formed as sub-units within the NCSG. We have deliberately made it relatively easy to form and join constituencies; at the same time we have de-linked Constituency formation from Council seats so that NCSG participants do not have artificial incentives to fragment into competing groups. If the Board wishes to approve constituency formation under these terms we will embody this requirement in the charter. Constituencies are given special rights to propose Working Groups and assured that their positions are incorporated into any and all public comments submitted by the NCSG into the policy development process. To protect the voice of minorities in the policy process, we require all NCSG representatives on the GNSO Council to vote in favor of the formation of a Working Group if it has the support of 1/3 of the constituencies or 1/5 of the whole membership.....