[Chapter-delegates] Who's going to visibly participate in the big ISOC webcast next week?

[Dave Burstein]

​Vint is of course right that the battle is very active in D.C. and I was
obviously unclear​ if he read me saying that.

On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 7:33 AM, vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think this is a premature assertion - the US Senate is attempting to
> write "must pass" legislation (Continuing Resolution) that will have a
> rider enjoining NTIA from terminating the contract with ICANN for IANA
> functions.


​My comment, "about to tone down," wasn't meant to suggest it will be over
this week or even in a few months. I am sure it will not be.

After the next few weeks, however, there will be a limit to how much ISOC
can add to the discussion. Our main points have been made by literally
dozens of public interest groups, giant corporations, and political
figures. Even the New York Times has chimed in, below, making our same
points. ​I chose the say "tone down," because it will not end. Kathy Brown,
ISOC CEO, is a world-class policy advocate who will certainly continue to
play a role. But repeating our point of view yet more times will have
limited additional effectiveness.

Ted Cruz is a bleeping idiot thinking ICANN could be dominated by the
Russians or Chinese. ICANN's Chair is Steve Crocker, who has worked
alongside Vint and others to build the Internet since earliest days. Also
on the board are George Sadowsky, who had a distinguished career with the
U.S. government; Marcus Kummer, who served the Swiss government and then
was ISOC's policy lead; Thomas Schneider, currently of the Swiss
government; Ron de Silva, of Time Warner Cable in the U.S.; Jonne Soininen
of Nokia; and a half dozen others with generally concurring views.

These folks will maintain the current system with very few changes. In
addition, they will choose their successors, almost certainly like-minded.
The ICANN rules make it very hard to impose change from outside. The U.S. +
Europe has an effective veto over any government initiated changes.

--------------------

So I believe we should be thinking how we should spend out $30M/year dot
org subsidy in our policy advocacy work. (We do other good things, of
course. We bring those without funds to International meetings, provide
administrative support to IETF, etc.)

So I'm encouraging us to think about what comes next, instead of drifting
to do more of the same old, same old.  Our bureaucracy is small, but all
bureaucracies are resistant to change.

It feels good to be part of a large consensus. It is good marketing to
study what our members think is important and be visible in those causes, *even
if we add little and don't have much of an impact. *(We do a lot of that,
and our multimillion dollar "communications" budget works so that members
know we were on the right side.)
l.
I feel we will be most effective concentrating our efforts where the needs
of Internet users are *not* being served.



The Internet is for Everybody




-- 
Editor, Fast Net News, 5GW News, Net Policy News and DSL Prime
Author with Jennie Bourne  DSL (Wiley) and Web Video: Making It Great,
Getting It Noticed (Peachpit)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20160919/5e2c7f92/attachment.htm>