The small working group created at the Paris meeting has come to an agreement about the voting distribution in ICANN’s policy making Council for domain names (the GNSO Council). It remains to the ICANN Board and staff to accept and implement this proposal, but the Board is expected to follow the consensus of the working group. (If it does not, you will hear about it here!)
The proposed solution is a victory for civil society representation. The new structure is bicameral and involves two distinct voting “houses,” one for the domain name industry that holds ICANN contracts (registries and registrars) and one for users or non-contracting parties (commercial and noncommercial users). In the user house there is an even number of votes for commercial and noncommercial stakeholders. IGP’s Milton Mueller participated in the working group as the representative of the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC).