Re: [Ianaplan] What's happening at ICANN?

[Jefsey <[e-mail]>]

At 08:28 11/10/2015, Richard Hill wrote:
>Please see embedded comments below.

Richard,
there are two accountability frameworks.

- one is within ICANN-IETF-RIR-Stakeholders community
- the other is to the world

They have been amalgamated since 1977 via the US Executive Branch, 
using FCC and then ICANN. Also due to a single technology. This is 
the BUG of the US military-industry wanting to Be Unilaterally 
Global. This ended on Dec 14, 2012 in Dubai. The US/NSA was defeated 
by other State NSAs. Today ICANN is the US proposed patch and as such 
is a key stakeholder. Its internal disaray is worrying for all as (1) 
being a major risk of instability and (2) testifying that its 
strategists have not accepted that they are not anymore in a radical 
monopoly but in a competitive context, however competition is only 
building up under new forms. Unless they responsibly manage to 
welcome and coopete with the new comers, these new commers will have 
to curb the incumbent. They have the capacity, the legitimacy and a 
strong political and financial incitement to do it. The decision lies 
with the incumbent.

I am not sure the CCWG is the appropriate place for it.
jfc


>Thanks and best,
>Richard
>
>From: Ianaplan [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Eric 
>Brunner-Williams
>Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2015 00:57
>To: [e-mail]
>Subject: Re: [Ianaplan] What's happening at ICANN?
>
>Plus N for JCK's note, and ...
>[snip]
>
>
>So, the topic is ICANN accountability. The claim is that as long as there
>was the NTIA contract on IANA there has been a backstop on ICANN's
>decisions, especially the board's.
>
>Well, that is one of the consequences of the NTIA's delegation of 
>rule making authority. Another is found in references made by 3rd 
>parties, here a court considering some claim, which wrote "This is a 
>perfectly logical decision, and one that ICANN, through its contract 
>with the DoC, had full authority to make." [1] Absent the third 
>clause, a perfectly logical decision requires some other source of 
>authority in order to be made.
>
> >>RH: Indeed, one of the goals of the transition was to replace 
> NTIA's oversight role with oversight by the "global 
> multi-stakeholder community".
>
>
>SNIP
>
>
>The main accountability mechanisms discussed have been spilling the
>complete board, removing a board member and control/veto the ICANN budget
>and bylaws changes.
>True, the "accountability mechanisms" vigorously championed by 
>various actors within the CCWG, for possibly divergent reasons, are 
>removal of all or some of the Board, and inter alia, were the Board 
>"spilled", the NomCom would seat a majority of the next Board, so 
>one "mess" leads to a worse "mess" (since when was the NomCom 
>"accountable"? and to whom?). To further mess things up, the 
>potential for SO and/or AC selected members, but not NomCom selected 
>members, to be removed for SO and/or AC defined "cause", would 
>create two classes of Board member -- those who vote without risk of 
>removal, and those who risk removal, for SO and/or AC specific 
>cause, and who therefore may not act in the interests of the 
>Corporation as a whole, but rather as conflicts of SO and/or AC 
>interests allow. Finally, the meta-proposal requires some form of 
>"membership" -- a problem we attempted circa 2002 in the Membership 
>Implementation Task Force and found absolutely intractable: Who 
>could be a "member of ICANN"? Who could not be a "member of ICANN"?
>
> >RH: I don't see why this is intractable, except for the fact that 
> any version of the membership model would threaten the power 
> currently exercised by the narrow special interests that dominate 
> the ICANN Board.  The Just Net Coalition made a concrete proposal 
> that was not considered, much less seriously discussed, in the 
> current process, see paragraph 23 of the proposal at:
>
><http://forum.icann.org/lists/icg-forum/pdfXXrCnTxCwW.pdf>http://forum.icann.org/lists/icg-forum/pdfXXrCnTxCwW.pdf 
>
>
>
>The "work-around" is simply to recast the " group of participants 
>that engage in ICANN's processes to a greater extent than Internet 
>users generally" [2] as a "single member".
>
> >RH: Indeed, see the comment from the Just Net Coalition at:
>
> 
><http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-ccwg-accountability-03aug15/msg00002.html>http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-ccwg-accountability-03aug15/msg00002.html
>
> >RH: The current proposal does not replace NTIA with some version 
> of the global multi-stakeholder community, it replaces NTIA with a 
> subset of the organizations that select the current Board.
>
>
>
>There is pretty much consensus that in some form or
>another these are reasonable requirements.
>As the CCWG is structured as "members", selected by SO and AC bylaws 
>entities, the parties who might form some "consensus" need not 
>include "observers", contributors who are not selected by SO and AC 
>bylaws entities.
>
>
>SNIP
>
>In the IETF, we have a bit different approach to these things. I wouldn't
>think we would have ever the discussion the IETF community should be able
>to take the IESG or IAB to court. Interesting thought, though... ;)
>What we do as individual contributors to an open standards 
>organization which has no "members" and no "secret handshakes" has 
>wicked little to do with how a California Corporation may be 
>improved in its execution of the notice and comment 
>responsibilities, aka "transparency and accountability", delegated 
>to it by an agency of the federal government.
>
> >RH: Correct. And if IETF screws up, the RFC won't get implemented 
> and/or some competing standards body will produce a standard that 
> does get implemented.  Whereas ICANN is, at present, a de facto 
> monopoly, so whatever it does goes get implemented (e.g. ".sucks").
>
> >RH: And yes, I know about alternative roots, but they have not (at 
> least for now) achieved any significant market penetration, so at 
> present ICANN is the only game in town.
>
>
>Eric Brunner-Williams
>Eugene, Oregon
>
>[1] 
><https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2015-07-31-en>https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2-2015-07-31-en
>[2] 
>https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/affirmation-of-commitments-2009-09-30-en
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