Complete text of Michael Sondow’s Jan. 11 comments on "Should there be a permanent ICANN Membership Committee, whose function would be to admit members to the At-Large membership?"

Proposal for a Permanent ICANN Membership Committee

At the end of his welcome message to participants in the M.A.C., George Conrades wrote: "What questions are missing from our list?". Taking up that challenge, I would like to pose the following question, and then suggest an answer:

Should there be a permanent ICANN Membership Committee, whose function would be to admit members to the At-Large membership?

Someone, or some group, will have to act on applications for membership. Who will they be? Under what crieria will they decide on applications? Will they be responsible to the membership or to the ICANN BoD? Will there be an appeal procedure for their decisions?

In keeping with my proposal to the incipient DNSO for a Membership Committee independent from the DNSO's Names Council and responsible directly to the membership in order to ensure that the membership application process does not become a means by which the Names Council (in the case of the DNSO) reinforces support for its decisions, I would like to propose the establishment of a permanent ICANN Membership Committee, on the following lines:

1. A Membership Committee will be established for the purpose of acting on applications to the ICANN At-Large membership.

2. This Committee will admit applicants into ICANN membership, acting upon the criteria established by ICANN for membership in the At-Large Membership.

3. The Membership Committee will be responsible to the entire membership of ICANN, not to the ICANN BoD.

4. The Membership Committee will be composed of one person from each of the SOs and two from the At-Large membership itself. Initially, the two committee members from the At-Large membership will be appointed by the BoD, but these will be replaced as soon as there are ten At-Large members, who will select two of their number to become the At-Large members of the Membership Committee.

5. The Committee will circulate applications for membership among its members, or otherwise perform its function, with as little expenditure of time and effort as possible and by employing Internet-based communications.

6. It will be understood that the Committee's function is to include in the At-Large membership of ICANN as many entities with an interest in domain names as possible, so long as they meet the criteria established by ICANN, rather than to exclude any entities or parties by devising restrictive practices or by exerting personal prejudice, and that cases of rejection of an application for membership will be unusual, the onus of defending such rejections bearing on the Committee. There will furthermore be no investigation of applicants beyond the ascertainment of their personal identity and the minimum information necessary to determine whether they fulfill the established criteria for membership, nor any other measures restrictive to individual freedom and the right to privacy.