Amr,
Jon Zittrain made a post today that in refuting the right wings attack on
the Obama administration "giving away the internet to the UN " I think
encapsulates the gist of what is going on:
Jonathan Zittrain
"US gov't cedes control of Internet" announcement is 99% symbolic - and not
bizarre UN giveaway. It empowers ICANN, not UN/ITU.
A cynic would say that the Americans have decided that de jure control is no
longer tenable and by dumping the IANA functions to ICANN would empower an
organisation in which it has substantial leverage and control. As NTIA has
largely been hands off the practical consequences of the occurrence are
perhaps not as revolutionary as one might first think.
What we need to be careful about is the organisational structure and legal
position of ICANN coming out of these changes. This Board has shown a
propensity for empowering itself and it's friends at the expense of the
bottom up nature of MS most of us subscribe to. Since we filed our initial
Reconsideration petition eleven months ago there have been twenty nine new
reconsideration petitions filed, as opposed to three in 2011 and 2012
combined. Universally these petitions have been unsuccessful. This Board has
ignored it's own Bylaws, flaunted it's accountability processes, denied our
efforts to obtain documentation as we seek explanation for decisions made
and, as above, largely shown an unwillingness to reflexively and honestly
examine it's own decisions despite repeated requests by Community members.
NCSG member Rolf Weber co-wrote an interesting piece a few years ago
illustrating the "who controls the board" problem at ICANN, with a suggested
solution, a problem that may be exacerbated by this weeks US government
announcement: http://www.stlr.org/html/volume14/WeberGunnarson.pdf . Milton
has also written in the past about the concept of Members, ICANN's lack
thereof, and consequences under the current legal accord.
I have deep concerns about the maturity of ICANN and the commitment of many
in the organisation, particularly in legal, to an open, transparent and
accountable governance structure. In fact, the cynic in me conceives of new
oversight by Jones Day (ICANN's outside law firm) replacing that of the
NTIA. I don't think that would be progress.
There will be opportunity here, of course, to make positive change but let
us not be so overjoyed by the proposed internationalisation of IANA to
ignore the fact that ICANN itself has deep and abiding problems. There may
be possibilities in the current chaos to correct some of these problems,
foremost of which is sorting a way in which staff and Board are held
accountable to someone or something other than themselves or the nebulous
and poorly defined "community".
-----Original Message-----
From: Amr Elsadr <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 19:02:37 +0100
Subject: Re: US Government Announcement about transfer IANA functions
stewardship
I hope you’re right, Sam. However, this paragraph of the NTIA press
release is what prompted my question:
From the inception of ICANN, the U.S. Government and Internet stakeholders
envisioned that the U.S. role in the IANA functions would be temporary. The
Commerce Department’s June 10, 1998 Statement of Policy stated that the
U.S. Government “is committed to a transition that will allow the private
sector to take leadership for DNS management.” ICANN as an organization
has matured and taken steps in recent years to improve its accountability
and transparency and its technical competence. At the same time,
international support continues to grow for the multistakeholder model of
Internet governance as evidenced by the continued success of the Internet
Governance Forum and the resilient stewardship of the various Internet
institutions.
The paragraph somehow indicates (as I read it at least) that the “How to
do this” is associated with the “Why the changes”. So to rephrase my
question; I wonder wether after some 17 years, does the NTIA’s belief in
ICANN’s maturity and competence reflect its confidence in ICANN to simply
be the convener of a dialogue amongst the different stakeholders to
collectively reach some form of consensus on how to transition NTIA’s role
to a yet undetermined institution, or does it reflect confidence in ICANN to
coordinate this discussion in order to see how best ICANN can assume this
role without NTIA involvement?
Frankly, ICANN's “…, steps in recent years to improve its accountability
and transparency…,” still leave much to be desired. Yeah…, steps were
taken, but ICANN’s not quite there yet. In fact, several actors across
different stakeholder groups have recently been voicing discontent claiming
the exact opposite of this. One of the earlier examples is NCSG’s
reconsideration request of ICANN’s decision to expand the scope of the
Trademark Clearinghouse to include up to 50 confusingly similar variants of
brand names.
I still don’t know if my concerns are unfounded or not, but I do find it
difficult to simply dismiss them, but we will all see how things’ll unfold
over the next few months.
Thanks.
Amr
On Mar 15, 2014, at 2:36 PM, Sam Lanfranco <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Amr Elsadr poses the questions:
On the other hand, have any proposals suggesting that institutional
separation of the IANA function from ICANN been preemptively squashed??
Or is the principle still a viable option that can be promoted??
What this announcement does is set a deadline on what has to be done, in the
absence of delays by unforeseen forces at play. The key implication is to
shift the discussions from "What changes" and "Why the changes" to the "How
to do this" while honoring the four stated principles and producing a set of
viable and sustainable structures and processes. That will have ripple
effects in structures and processes across the Internet ecosystem. This is
more than just replacing one structure by another, and probably nothing has
been preempted. A successful outcome will call for heightened stakeholder
awareness and engagement, within ICANN, within constituencies, and beyond
ICANN.
Sam Lanfranco
|