Nominet announced: “The RAC will be live in June.”
Let me correct that.
The RAC will be live in June, IF the new leaders of Nominet want it to be, but alternatively they may ask members to propose what kind of member representation they want.
This RAC concept was the brainchild of a leadership that is desperate to control and contain member output, filter it, and channel it through their own ‘in house’ mechanism, which I predict will be dominated once again by the largest registrars.
There is also a danger that when the RAC has been properly installed, that might in the future be used as a pretext to remove NED directors from the Board, “as we have the RAC now, with balanced representation for all the segments” (they might say).
At such a point, about 4000 members would get 1 of 4 places on the RAC, with the other 3 of 4 going to other segments - and all this in a body which is purely advisory, leaving the good ship Nominet to keep sailing gaily on its way, regardless of where members actually want it to go.
If Nominet genuinely want to listen to members, then why are they vilifying the reasoned voice of members for this EGM?
I just don’t think they want to hear what members are actually saying. I think they want the ‘appearance’ of engagement, but in fact they want to be able to keep going the direction they choose and, as such, the RAC is a potential trap and rubber stamp to say engagement has been done.
At the very least, Nominet should have run a consultation of members to ask *them* what structure they wanted for the representing of their own views, and what interface they preferred for interacting with them.
Instead of having the RAC imposed on members to suit Nominet’s methods of controlling engagement, the vast majority of members might prefer to develop their own Members’ Constituency for themselves, on their own terms, even electing their own members to represent them if they want, and making that the interface Nominet needs to use if it wishes to engage. The point is: we were asked our opinions AFTER the company had decided to build the RAC. Why weren’t members consulted BEFORE the structure was adopted?
The reality, I think, is that Nominet wants to diminish the voices of the vast majority of members, because they are perceived as “trouble” (how I think Mark has been portraying the 419 signatories of the EGM). The RAC will use the ‘segmentation’ language to justify making sure that the vast majority of members (1000s of them) get sidelined in one tiny segment, while the powerful large tech companies and the Company carve things up together in their own best interests.
I respect James Tuplin for wanting to be an influence for good - that's honest and I 'get' that. Personally, I contributed to the opening request for views, and I guess I could have been invited like James, but my advice was obviously not what they wanted. I've been asked why I'm sceptical about the RAC: I don’t believe in disenfranchising myself and thousands of others, and being sectioned off in a tiny segment, while the usual suspects (like GoDaddy) end up calling the shots. And it lends the Board a front of engagement with members, while actually disempowering them further, in their 'segmented' subordination to the other segments in the set up, and the merely 'advisory' function, except for its chair, which looks like being James Bladel of GoDaddy, who is likely to be in that position and hence on the Board, even after he ends his NED 3-year period. It's pretty obviously as a control mechanism, to segment off the views of the members in a small corner of the process, which can always be over-ruled by the other segments. Yes, Nominet are letting one or two people tinker with the details of their own masterplan. But that masterplan was to control, filter, and channel dissent. Seen it all before at ICANN years ago.
If Nominet genuinely wanted to engage, they should have held a consultation before foisting the RAC concept on everyone. But then again, if Nominet wanted to listen to members, they wouldn’t be vilifying 419 of the most engaged members as if they were ‘enemies’ of Nominet threatening it's 'destruction' (as Russell said this week). But to the present leadership, they are. That's why the forum was deleted: they didn't want to face the dissent.
To associate with this, in the midst of an EGM, when the new leadership may choose to act differently, would have lent credibility to a process that is an instrument of the Russell/Mark regime: all the matters of membership engagement can be sorted after the EGM, because in all honesty - with the trashing of the members’ forum, and the criticism of 400+ members for disagreeing with them - what grounds are there for trusting the initiative under the present regime?
For all these reasons, I favour a member-run, member-framed, member-structured Constituency, run external to the Company, but representing the voice of Nominet members. If that is how we wanted to engage, then frankly Nominet should respect that, but they won’t. I’ve seen all these games play out before at ICANN. The name of the game is control and boxing in constituencies you see as threats to your Board autonomy.
But even if my own preferred approach wasn't adopted, I think it's best to resist participation until after the EGM. There's a collapse of trust in the present regime. A perceived malaise. And that goes back years, but now things have come to a head. At present, the RAC is a propaganda tool for the embattled Nominet Board (the same Board that trashed the forum of the members). But in many ways, what we're watching reminds me of that 'Downfall' meme. The downfall of a regime, and the desperate measures of an old order, operating from the Nominet bunker in their final days. 'Mein Fuhrer, Namecheap have surrendered, Iomart is not answering the phone, and the enemy are only 2 kilometers away.'
The EGM is the issue right now, not the RAC.
My assessment could be wrong, but that’s my analysis, take it or leave it.
