Thanks Sam,

I think the one thing we mostly agree on here at NCSG, regardless of where
we stand on what to do about "public interest" terminology, is that ICANN
should have a narrow remit and stick to that as a matter of course.

This is about network names and numbers, not the kitchen sink.

It'd be a good thing if we always remember to start there, whenever we're
talking about various strategies and tactics.  If we remember what we're
aiming for, other considerations will tend to fall into place more easily,
especially if we pay attention to the details of a particular context.

Dan


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At 3:30 PM -0500 12/25/14, Sam Lanfranco wrote:
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>Hallelujah! Attribute it to the holiday season, the religious season, or
>the winter solstice. NCSG dialogue may have produced a gift for all. It is
>the gift of focus and clarity. It is the possibility that ICANN (all of it
>including us) reaffirms ICANN's core values, re-acquaints ICANN with its
>rights and obligations, and helps ICANN become capable, strong and secure
>within its remit.  Trying to be more, everything to everybody, means, in
>the end and despite sometimes heroic effort, being little to anybody and
>being eaten as somebody's dinner. ICANN deserves a better fate.
>
>ICANN is not the only Internet issues game in town. The NCSG community is
>present in many of those other games. As stakeholders in ICANN  we, or
>other forces within ICANN,  push ICANN  to join more games that it should,
>or push it to draw their issues into ICANN's game. That is not good. It
>compromises ICANN's focus on covering its own obligations within its
>remit. It also nurtures a false belief around many Internet issues, the
>belief that they can be dealt with within ICANN, when they cannot. The
>risk is under engagement in the other Internet issues games in town, and
>the result that issues, policies and regulations are handled badly. A
>healthy Internet ecosystem carries the obligation to engage the right
>issues in the right venues. All policy roads to not run to ICANN, and
>ICANN is not the Internet's emergency first responder, although it may be
>an important early issues detector and alerts site. When I am the first to
>see a house fire I alert the fire department, I don't first try to
>extinguish it, although there may be things I can do to help.   
>
>In our discussions the words used frequently elude operational meaning.
>For example, Public Interest and public good [used apart from its
>technical economic definition], have no intrinsic meaning. They are short
>hand for things linked to one's (or a community's) core values in areas
>were issues get resolved in political, legal, regulatory or other social
>process. It has been noted that Public Interest is largely a term in U.S.
>policy dialogue. Even there it is just a starting point in a
>social/political/legal process where conflicting interests are resolve.
>Such terms should not be used to allow ICANN remit creep.
>
>There are similar concerns around human and individual rights, within and
>beyond the context of the Internet. The Universal Declaration of Human
>Rights (UDHR) is a statement of core values around the rights of humans,
>but it is left to distributed process to codify that into individual
>rights in particular settings. The US considers the right to possess major
>personal firearms an individual right, and other countries do not. The
>UDHR does not rule here, but it does ask for reflection on the
>consequences of such positions through the lens of the core values of the
>UDHR. There is an important lesson there for dealing with both human
>rights and public interest perspectives.
>
>What is the lesson for the ICANN community here? An ICANN role in the
>management of the Internet ecosystem does not mean that it should be
>involved in all of the issues that arise within the ecosystem. Outside
>ICANN's remit it could still do as many of its stakeholders do and take
>Internet policy positions through comment windows, or by submitting amicus
>curiae (friend of the court) briefs to the deliberative processes. ICANN's
>weight in such deliberations would depend on the quality of its
>submissions and the general respect for ICANN, both of which would be
>greater if ICANN did not try to be, and was not pressured to be, all
>things to everybody, and everywhere at once.   
>
>Let us not squander the gift NCSG has given itself here. Yes there is the
>work on tasks within ICANN's remit, with the ongoing ICANN agenda of
>policy and operational issues, and with the opportunities of (and threats
>in) the IANA transition. However, the central task should be ICANN (all of
>it including us) reaffirming what are ICANN's core values, re-acquainting
>ICANN with its rights and obligations within its own remit, helping ICANN
>become capable, strong and secure within that remit, and establishing
>ICANN as a wise and competent partner in the health of the Internet
>ecosystem. No more, no less.
>
>Sam L.