This is reassuring to hear.

Nevertheless, you seem to imply that ICANN is not a form of "government" of
some sort.  But rather, isn't it absolutely the case that it *is* a form of
government in its own right?  It has been granted formal governing
authority by a national government to address policy areas that the
national government feels unequipped to handle, for whatever reason, and so
it acts in effect as a partly autonomous branch of that government (not to
mention the GAC and its influence on policy-making).  Just with a little
less formal oversight from publicly elected representatives.

I think it's a useful exercise to examine what makes ICANN's governance
similar in some ways and different in other ways from other forms of public
governance, and to examine what is effective and what is ineffective in
these various forms of governance.  The institutional structures of these
governing bodies shapes how they govern, and I'm sure they both have their
different strengths and weaknesses.

Viewing public government as a joke, the way many in the tech community
habitually view it, implicitly prevents viewing alternatives as equally
humorous, which they generally are.  I mean, when you step back and take a
look at the institutional structure of ICANN's policy-governing apparatus,
does it look rationally designed to you, any more than, say the federal
government?  In my mind, the federal government at least has a core
strategic design (formal institutional separation and balance of powers,
and formal accountability down to the electorate) inside of all the ad hoc
structures that have been appended to it, whereas ICANN seems to be
entirely ad hoc with no strategic core so far as I can tell -- just the
Board with unilateral policy-making/judging power, according to the
often-vague parameters of the AoC, surrounded by this fluctuating
hodge-podge of advisory bodies.

Of course, in both cases the flow of wealth influences a whole lot in the
final results, and it may not matter that much what the institutional
structure is.

Dan


--
Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author alone and do
not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.



At 7:09 AM -0400 8/4/10, Avri Doria wrote:
>hi,
>
>For the most part  i do not believe this happens.
>
>i have been in many groups where changes were made in the plans because of
>comments.
>
>but as usual, not everyones comment changes things.  the people who worked
>in the groups discuss, and often have reasons to change what they are
>doing, but sometimes don't.  So when i make a recommendation and it does
>not change things i may decide they never listen to anyone, but they do.
>and in many case there are countervailing opinions.
>
>so it may be a cute new word, and i am sure it can be applied in many case
>to what governments do - when they even bother to collect the opinions,
>but i do not think it applies to ICANN in the majority of cases.
>
>a.
>
>On 3 Aug 2010, at 23:53, David Cake wrote:
>
>> 	A useful neologism for ICANN processes (via Lillian Edwards twitter
>>feed)
>> Crowdstamping - going through the motions in asking the public about a
>>policy but rubberstamping it anyway.
>> 	(term apparently coined by Uk web developer Stef Lewandowski in
>>reponse to UK government consultation that, in response to 9,500 public
>>submissions,resulted in every responding government dept uniformly saying
>>they should keep doing exactly what they were doing)
>> 	Regards
>> 		David