All,

I think the nuances of the concerns are being missed. There is something much, much more than the mere transition of the US Government out of its current role. As Avri pointed out earlier today:  "This was linked to improvements in ICANN accountability.  We fought for that and got it. Upfront we agreed to this process be divided into two parts."

I think everyone agrees with the transition -- Bret certainly said he did at the hearing. But it is those improvements of ICANN Accountability that people are questioning. Are they fair? Are they balanced? Are they understood by all who will be impacted by them?

I have to tell you I am concerned because there seem to be a lot of "gotchas" -- meaning every time I hear someone testify about the details of the Accountability & Transition plan, someone else (involved with the process) says that he/she/it did not understand it that way. There was certainly a lot of last minute changes and maneuvering.  There is not, frankly, a lot of knowledge or understanding about the details of how this restructuring and reorganization is going to work. 

Rather than name-calling, or picture discussion, let's talk about the details (the devil's always there, right). Can a consensus policy really be appealed to an Independent Review Process proceeding by one of the multiple stakeholders involved?  Isn't that going to give those stakeholders with the most time and resources a third, fourth and fifth bite at the policies we are negotiating? Isn't that going to undermine our months and years of work in the policy development process and working groups?  That's one question that no one has been able to answer for me.

Kathy

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From: David Post [mailto:[log in to unmask]]

But that's not the goal, in my eyes. The goal is to create an institution that can manage these resources in a reasonable way, for the next [many] years.

MM: As Avri noted, the goal of the stewardship transition was to…transition, i.e. get the US govt out of its current role. I am flabbergasted by the fact that you do not see the US oversight role as a broken part of the institution.

 

MM: As someone who has written about early post-revolutionary America, I wonder how you would respond to my argument “all these new democratic government models are new and untested. We don’t really know how well they will work. Why doesn’t the United States retain its status as a British colony under the King for a few years, and let him decide if the experiment has worked?”

 

All I'm suggesting is that it would hardly seem unreasonable, to me, if the USG took the position that while it is signing off on the transition, it is doing so subject to a kind of probationary period that will enable us all to understand better whether and how it actually works. Perhaps other countries will view that as a terribly untrustworthy move, perhaps they won't - I do think it helps that it is, fundamentally, quite a reasonable position to take.

MM: So you assume that the USG is NOT part of the machine, it is a deus ex machina that we can invoke at any time to insert an entirely rational, undistorted corrective action on whatever happens?