Sam,

I have to say, to the extent that public interest concerns in fact arise
within the jurisdiction of ICANN's remit, there does need to be
representation of the public interest in ICANN's policy deliberations.

Making the world an authoritarian dictatorship would greatly simplify
policy-making, but simplicity per se is not the highest priority of a
democratic political organization.

ICANN's jurisdiction will not cover *all* issues of public interest, and to
that extent ICANN need not be involved in the broadest range of such
issues.  But where the public interest is naturally involved in issues
addressed by ICANN, I think that public interest needs to be represented
within ICANN's names-and-numbers policy processes.

And sometimes at ICANN the public interest is served by simply getting out
of the way, and that is what public interest advocates push for: not
setting up formal, regularized, bureaucratized processes to impose
content-based censorship on TLD strings, for example.

ICANN can't be the public interest cop for every possible public issue, but
we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.  There is some overlap
within ICANN's legitimate policy domain, and the public very much needs to
be represented within that domain.

There will be gray areas that we encounter along the way and we may need to
discuss carefully whether certain issues fall within or outside of ICANN's
legitimate jurisdiction -- in fact, there have been such debates within
ICANN since the beginning, as I understand it.  These are healthy
discussions when engaged in good faith.

Dan


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At 12:13 PM -0500 12/22/14, Sam Lanfranco wrote:
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>
>David Johnson's blog argues that the democratic potential for ICANN
>membership is in danger of being co-opted by groups that want a very
>narrow and limited conception of who the members should be and a very
>expansive conception of what their powers should be. see:
><http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/12/19/icann-accountability-a-coup-or-a-contract/>http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/12/19/icann-accountability-a-coup-or-a-contract/
>
>It is important to go beyond the nature of this risk and look at the
>source of this risk, those pushing ICANN to be a public interest
>regulator. Johnson argues that "If ICANN took the "public interest
>regulator" option off the table, the "accountability" discussion could be
>greatly simplified." This touches on a deeper question of whether or not
>ICANN is even the appropriate venue for protecting the "public interest"
>here.
>
>Using the discussions around regulated professions gTLD (e.g. .health,
>.doc, etc.) it becomes clear pretty quickly that there is little ICANN can
>do to address the "public interest" concerns there, even if it had some
>regulatory power. See my blog "Rethinking, and Redirecting the Global
>Health Strategy on the Proposed .health gTLD" at
><>samlanfranco.blogspot.ca .
>
>Most public interest concerns will have to be addresses bottom up in
>struggles around policy at various levels within countries, within
>professions, and using appropriate regulatory tools and laws at those
>levels. ICANN cannot be all things to all concerns, and attempting to do
>so will compromise ICANN, while public interest concerns will still have
>to be addressed elsewhere.
>
>
>Sam L.