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