Letter from Mike Roberts (ICANN) to Jim Rutt
(NSI)
on gTLD Constituency Group representation on the
DNSO's provisional Names Council (July 9, 1999)
July 9, 1999
Mr. Jim Rutt
Chief Executive Officer
Network Solutions, Inc.
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, Virginia 20170
Dear Jim,
Thanks for stepping into the current controversy concerning representation on the DNSO Names Council from the gTLD constituency. You can appreciate, given my prior correspondence with Don Telage, that ICANN is attempting to reach and maintain a position of fairness to all the parties concerned in this matter.
As NSI's representatives at the Berlin ICANN meetings have surely informed you, there appeared to be a near-unanimous sentiment expressed at the public ICANN meeting on May 26 that no one company should be able to place more than one representative on the Names Council. The peculiar situation of the gTLD Constituency Group -- at the moment, NSI is the only member -- means that, absent compliance with the Board's request, a single company would select one-seventh of the members of the Names Council. It seemed clear in Berlin that the community consensus, with which I and the Board agree, was that no one company should have that level of influence in a body that is designed to be broadly representative of the various worldwide communities of interest that constitute the DNSO.
Your letter of last week, which nominates an employee plus two of your lawyers to the Names Council, is not consistent with the views of the community. Since this is the second letter from Network Solutions which does not accept the consensus view, the ICANN Board must now do what it is supposed to do: follow the community consensus. In this case that means to proceed with its stated intention to amend the pertinent portions of the Bylaws in the absence of your voluntary agreement to limit your representation to one member.
In the next few days, we will post the following proposed amendment to the ICANN Bylaws for public comment in accordance with our normal procedures:
RESOLVED, that Section 2(a) of Article VI-B of the Bylaws of the Corporation is hereby replaced in its entirety with the following:
"The NC shall consist of representatives, selected in accordance with Section 3(c) of this Article, from each Constituency recognized by the Board pursuant to the criteria set forth in Section 3 of this Article. Any dispute about whether any such representative is a proper member of the NC shall be resolved by, or at the direction of, the Board."
FURTHER RESOLVED, that Section 3(c) of Article VI-B of the Bylaws of the Corporation is hereby replaced in its entirety with the following:
"Each Constituency shall select up to three individuals to represent that Constituency on the NC, no two of which may be, except with the consent of the Board, residents of the same Geographic Region, as defined in Article V, Section 6. Notwithstanding the foregoing, no Constituency may have more representatives on the NC than there are members of the Constituency. Nominations within each Constituency may be made by any member of the Constituency, but no such member may make more than one nomination in any single Constituency."
FURTHER RESOLVED, that Section 2(f) of Article VI-B of the Bylaws of the Corporation is hereby replaced in its entirety with the following:
"Unless shorterned by the Board in its recognition of a Constituency, the term of office for each member of the NC shall be two years, subject to earlier removal by the Constituency that selected such member or by a three-fourths majority vote of all members of the Board."
The other members of the ICANN Board and I do not believe that amending our Bylaws to eliminate avenues for the pursuit of special interest objectives is a useful exercise. All of us have more important things to do. As a new player, and one committed to making the system work for everyone by your recent public statement, it would be a valuable contribution to making the DNSO successful if you accepted the consensus view and voluntarily agreed to name only one member to the Names Council.
Sincerely,
- Mike
Michael M. Roberts
Interim President and Chief Executive Officer
cc: DNSO Names Council
DNSO General Assembly