Sorry about the short notice but i only just giot this in my email and if you have time to respond it might be worthwhile to have a Kiwi voice or two in there.

Invitation to Sign Petition Supporting Noncommercial Stakeholder Group Charter at ICANN via IP Justice

NCUC invites noncommercial civil society members to consider signing this petition to support NCUC’s proposal for a Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) at ICANN. Note: Deadline is today 15 April (5pm in California) to sign-on to the joint civil society statement.

Background

The Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is the organization that represents non-commercial interests and advocates for the protection of digital rights including free expression, privacy, due process of law and other non-commercial interests in ICANN-GNSO policy discussions. As part of ICANN’s GNSO Restructuring efforts, the 6 “constituencies” are being replaced by 4 broader “stakeholder groups”, including a Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) to represent the interests of non-commercial users of domain names in the GNSO policy arena at ICANN.

NCUC has submitted a petition for the charter of the NCSG that intends to encourage broader civil society participation at ICANN and aims to increase the relative power of non-commercial interests in ICANN policy negotiations. Noncommercial individuals and organizations are invited to participate in the NCSG, which will be governed by stakeholder group wide elections under the petition.

All of the proposed stakeholder group petitions are in the midst of a Public Comment Period at ICANN (until 15 April 5pm in California) so the ICANN Board of Directors can receive input from the general public on the various stakeholder group petitions.

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