Carlos, I agree with your argument here. I am mainly concerned with 
anticipating the challenges that will confront a body charged with 
independent accountability oversight, not whether or not there should be 
one. Their has to be such a body for whatever structures result, in 
order for them to have legitimacy and adhere to principles.  As you 
mention, in addition to a properly constituted body (proper in terms of 
the task at hand) this would hopefully remove the grounds for continuous 
speculation about handing the task off to an existing, or proposed, 
multilateral body. At the same time, there is enough going on within 
ICANN's work and remit to justify retaining an ombudsperson office.

Lastly, although I sound like a musician playing the same note over and 
over again, I do caution that we pay more attention to the multilateral 
treaty negotiations taking place (Trans Pacific, and European) since, 
from an economists perspective, they are only a little about trade per 
se, and a lot about how to handle intellectual property, and extending 
the rights of commercial interests over those of government legislative 
policy. Those processes would view trampling on ICANN policy as easy as 
a walk in the park. There is a real risk of tipping the playing field 
there, even with regard to the DNS system.

As you know, at the moment a global tobacco company is hammering 
Uruguay's position on tobacco products, using such non-transparent and 
unaccountable "trade treaty" mechanisms. Canada has similar tobacco 
policies but global corporate giants always pick in the smallest players 
as their opening move. If they had to put ICANN in their sights, they 
would probably simply view ICANN as collateral "road kill".

Sam L.

On 05/05/2015 1:16 PM, Carlos A. Afonso wrote:
> Sam, your list of issues to be dealt with for the oversight issue (last
> paragraph) is one I agree with. But I do not see why we miss the
> opportunity of creating an international oversight body (if the
> separability trend wins and a separate oversight is created) -- which
> does not need to be under the USA laws to hold ICANN accountable.
>
> Unless the international nature of its services is "flexible" enough to
> become national when convenient for the insiders who do not wish to risk
> being under true independent accountability oversight. I do not have to
> mention examples of this in other areas (for the bad or good of it),
> multilateral or private. I would dare to say there is not much to be
> done for NRO to become an international oversight body of the IANA
> function "IP addressing system", for example.
>
> This would politically be a tremendous advance (if approved, of course)
> in the face of the group of governments who keep advocating for a UN
> takeover of the addressing system. With international, pluralist
> oversight in a body based outside of the USA (I vote for Uruguay), this
> would help defuse a lot of this unending campaign to move addressing to
> the purview of the ITU or similar other multilateral schemas.
>
> Some of us (many?) cannot see anything of this sort being possible
> outside of the USA. But reducing it to an office within ICANN? Sad joke.
>
> fraternal regards
>
> --c.a.
>
>