On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Keith Davidson wrote:
I guess the issue relating to members vs public are:
1. That there needs to be a benefit for members, otherwise we wouldn't have any. That would mean that *everything* InternetNZ does would be funded by .nz nameholders (sticks chin out for Peter Mott's sake :-) ), and the Society *would* be run by an exclusive little group.
I'm sorry, folks, about the non technical noise but I can't let this pass without some comment. InternetNZ has less than 200 ordinary members - people like you and me. (Some of you will no doubt feel highly insulted by that.) Membership subscription is $50 a year so that's less than $10,000 income a year. InternetNZ's budget for the year is many many times that amount. e.g. Salary and other costs for Executive Director and other staff Honoraria for all Council members Internal travel to InternetNZ meetings Overseas travel to ICANN etc meetings Office rental Sponsorship of conferences and other events .... You do the maths and take a guess. I'm not going to speculate as I know the answer as an ex Council member. To all intents and purposes InternetNZ is run from funds levied from nz nameholders. So this is an issue about "no taxation without repesentation" for those nameholders.
3. In the past, we have seen instances of the media picking up on topics being debated by InternetNZ members and claiming that these items are InternetNZ resolutions / policies or whatever. So I guess until some things sit comfortably with InternetNZ as a whole, they sometimes tend to remain available to members only.
InternetNZ has made a submission to a Parliamentary Select Committee on the issue in question. Seems pretty much like a decided policy to me. Michael Hallager complained about the idiots from the Consumers Institute in mail this morning but in the Herald article he cited "InternetNZ vice-president Rick Shera" was quite happy to discuss that policy. So why is this an issue for this group? Those of you who will end up having to implement for example the new "guaranteed delivery or your money back" mail systems and accounting regime that may result given the new legal status of email as 'goods' might like to know what InternetNZ is saying on your behalf. They seem to be saying the right thing so why the secrecy? - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog