Marty Scwimmer posted this message to the discuss list because I asked him to. Before posting this, he sent me a personal reply to my message to Kent, in which I accused Marty Schwimmer of not presenting the INTA proposal at the Monterrey meeting in order to avoid subjecting it to the approval of the participants, and I suggested to Marty that the open discuss list would be a more appropriate place for this debate, since it's the participants who must decide on the motives of the INTA, not me.
In Martin Schwimmer's message to me, he gives a somewhat different history of the INTA proposal from the one portrayed in his message to this list. To me he said, in effect, that he had in his possession an early draft of the INTA proposal at the time of the Monterrey meeting. He also says, curiously, that that early draft was for bylaws and therefore not much use to him there. Let's analyze all this a bit, starting with his cryptic remark about bylaws, which we'll come back to later.
This whole thing about bylaws versus application has been going around in a circle for some time. It's not really an issue. The ICANN doesn't care what you call it. If you incorporate, it becomes bylaws. If you don't, it's a committee or council charter. For the time being, the ICANN wants to see how the SOs are going to run themselves. That's all that matters. Call it duck soup if you want.
Martin Schwimmer knew that dnso.org was working on an application for recognition as the DNSO, and in any case the INTA proposal was eventually produced as bylaws, not an application for recognition, so the fact that it may have been considered by the INTA as bylaws at the time of the Monterrey meeting is a moot point. It wasn't turned into an application afterwards, so what difference does it make that they saw it as bylaws at the meeting?
Now, as everyone knows, and as was stated and restated over and over again at Monterrey in the presence of Marty Schwimmer, the dnso.org process is an ongoing process of continually changing and revised drafts. A bunch of people around the world who have other jobs to attend to are spending (I won't say wasting) their time revising these drafts of proposals and consensuses and whatnot, people who are getting slammed all the time for doing it and who are getting a little pissed off for being attacked for doing what the White Paper and the IFWP say should be done. But let that lie. The point is that Marty Schwimmer saw this in person. He was there. He was present during this process, which even a cynical person like me had to admit was more or less what was supposed to be going on and which I hadn't expected to see: the continuation of the IFWP. Martin Scwimmer saw that no one was presenting a finished product, no one said they had an application clause or a bylaw all wrapped up!
!
in its final wording ready to be railroaded through. That's not what was going on at Monterrey. It was a a particpatory consensus process. If it hadn't been, I wouldn't have wasted my time with it. The cute Mexican chics downtown were there waiting, if you see what I mean.
So Marty knew this. He was there. All ideas for the DNSO application were made tentatively as suggestions submitted for discussion. Knowing this as Mr. Schwimmer did, and having with him a first draft of INTA positions on different things being discussed (which I suggest is not likely to be much different from what was submitted to the drafting team later), and knowing that the INTA like everyone else would have to submit their proposals for discussion and consensus, what could keep him from bringing them up at the meeting?
Martin Schwimmer is the representative of the INTA to the DNSO. Would he have us believe that he was unaware of the INTA's position on such things as the membership structure of the DNSO/NewCo? Ignorant of the INTA's position on the duties and responsabilities and power of the Names Council, the leadership committee of the DNSO? Not informed about the INTA's position on the criteria for membership? Left aside in the INTA's discussions about creating an executive independent of the membership and answerable only to the Names Council? Do you believe this? Marty Schwimmer, as the INTA's delegate to the DNSO, after twelve months involvement in international conferences with WIPO, didn't know these things?
Yet the INTA's positions on these matters are vastly different from the consensus positions of the participants at Monterrey. And Marty was there and had a first draft of the INTA positions in his pocket. When a consensus was reached or a vote taken on some point in the apllication/bylaws, a point on which the INTA's position was different (and Marty must have know it was different, being their representative on DNS matters and having their draft in his pocket), why didn't he speak up and tell the participants that the INTA's position was in conflict with theirs, and what the INTA's position was? There can be only one answer. He feared the participants' response. Their rejection of his position.
That the author of the INTA proposals was writing bylaws is immaterial. He knew we were working on a proposal to ICANN. If there were any possible argument against presenting at Monterrey positions on bylaws rather than an application, the same argument would have held true three weeks later when their position paper was submitted.
Marty Schwimmer did not present the INTA's positons, even in their preliminary form, to the participants at Monterrey because he knew they would be rejected as unacceptable. There was no need to hold back until a full bylaws or application proposal was available for publication. This process has never been one of competing proposals and, if it were, the INTA could have waited until February 5th and submitted theirs in competition with the DNSO's. They knew it was an ongoing process. Why didn't he speak up at Monterrey? From reticence at presenting an unfinished proposal, which is sent three weeks later to the DNSO drafting team for negotiation?
No. Marty Schwimmer felt no reticence at Monterrey for presenting the provisional proposals of the INTA that he had in his pocket. What he felt was fear of the rejection of his agency's intolerable attempt at turning the DNSO into a corporate oligarchy. The participants at Monterrey would have laughed at him, or thrown him out.
Instead, he waits. He talks to few of the more easily impressed members of the drafting team (Marty has no illusions about who the drafting team is), tells them a few jokes, maybe takes them to dinner. I hope they kept their receipts.
I'd like to hear what Ricardo Sawon, the CABASE delegate to Monterrey, has to say about this. What Olivier Muron, the France Telecom representative to Monterrey, has to say. What Dr. Eberhard Lisse, who built the Namibian NIC single-handledly and is the chairman of the West African Internet Association, has to say about giving all power in the DNSO/NewCo to an executive of presidents and vice-presidents appointed by the people paying the INTA, to tell him, Dr. Lisse, who will be a member of the DNSO and who won't.
But he can't say. Marty Schwimmer didn't feel free to mention the INTA's proposals in his pocket at Monterrey.