All,

I fear that here I am with my "keep it simple" hat on again. Working 
with organizations that had to carve the globe up into regions, two easy 
lessons learned are: One borrowed from design => Form follows Function. 
Why does the organization need regions and what does the organization 
intend to do on a region-by-region basis? The other is that no scheme is 
perfect. Some regions will have no home (usually for geopolitical 
reasons) and some will be settled in a home with less than full 
consensus (for practical or geopolitical reasons). One source of 
conflict is that regional designation may come with entitlements, for 
example funds or votes from the designating body. Struggles over 
entitlements should not dominate the core issues of why and what for.

For the remit of ICANN with regard to, for example, data retention 
issues, the nature of local legal structures need not be an ICANN factor 
in designating regions. When an issue such as data retention policy in 
the European Community boils to the top, the stakeholder regions 
self-organize to represent themselves around the issue, irrespective of 
how ICANN has organized the regions. As well, appealing to a law based 
scheme is problematic. For example, even figuring out where to put 
Canada in a law based scheme is difficult. Parts of Canadian law come 
from the English (and Scots) common law system*. *Independently Quebec 
retains a civil private law system. The responsibilities of public and 
private law are separated and exercised exclusively by the Parliament 
and the provinces respectively. Canada's engagement, as a country, in 
any ICANN issue,will be determined by the nature of the issue, not by 
it's ICANN regional designation. If its position is based on ICANN 
conflicts with national laws, so be it. That is the issue to be addressed.

Lastly, if there were no ICANN entitlements would there still be a 
regional designation issue?

Sam L.



On 31/03/2016 4:11 PM, Ayden Férdeline wrote:
> Hi Kathy,
>
> Thanks for your comments. I just wanted to pick up on something; you 
> mentioned that (similar, presumably) legal structures should be one of 
> our guiding instruments in the new geographic regions framework. What 
> were you thinking of here? That in the GAC, ICANN should be measuring 
> how many members have common and civil law along with, say, Sharia law 
> provisions, in relation to the total number of countries in the world 
> with those legal systems? How valuable would that be?
>
> I am not a lawyer so my understanding of this topic is very limited: I 
> thought every country's legal system had its own identity - though 
> some have been inherited from or influenced by colonialism, or another 
> factor - so I'm not certain as to what we would be trying to achieve 
> here. What type of diversity would you like to see in terms of legal 
> structures?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Ayden
>