)Following the US Senate Commerce Committee hearing on new TLD expansion on December 8 2011, Dr. Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the At-Large Advisory Council (ALAC), which represents the views of Internet users within the ICANN multistakeholder process, and Beau Brendler, Chair of the North American Regional At-Large Organization (NARALO) have written to Committee Chair Sen. John Rockefeller to depict the testimony of former ICANN Chair Esther Dyson as “out of date”.
Their letter states:
we found Ms. Esther Dyson’s description of the ALAC circa 2003 extremely out-ofdate. Her testimony depicted the ALAC prior to the establishment of the five Regional At-Large Organizations (RALOs) which are designed to provide a structured input first to the ALAC and then to ICANN from Internet end-users around the world.
and
Today, the ALAC is able to comment on any aspect of the new gTLD program, which it has on several occasions, as well as any other program or process at ICANN.
It’s not all criticism, though..
However, we fully support her overall message for the public to pay attention to the workings of ICANN, and that ICANN’s door is open.
The letter goes on to emphasize that public interest should be the touchstone of Internet policy, and appeals to the Senator for assistance in strengthening that priority by encouraging membership in At-Large by interested parties. (One way would be to join ISOC-NY since we are an At-Large Structure! However NARALO, uniquely amongst the regions, does accept individual members.)
When ICANN, at their Singapore meeting in Jun 2011, 
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