Re: [ga] Bemusement from the UK

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael and all former DNSO GA members,

  Your right in your comments and remarks below that ICANN's
real authority comes from it's contractual relationship with
DOC/NTIA.  However that fact has been known for some
time and recognized by in large by every participant on this
forum.  Hence ICANN as a contracted agent for the USG
DOC/NTIA is a good thing for many reasons which have
been discussed and debated many times and at length.

  What is really poor or wrong is that many of the same
ICANN BoD members [Board squatters] along with their
"Friends" and still in charge.  If the NYSE can begin to
do some house cleaning as has been reported of late,
why cannot the DOC/NTIA cannot "Clean House" with
the requested resignation of most of the ICANN BoD
and staff members?

Michael Wild wrote:

> Watching the ICANN / Verisign exchanges from the UK is a bemusing
> experience. I idly wondered how the equivalent UK system operated -
> "could this happen over here?" - and found it interesting. It may be that
> this is all old hat to most on this list, but the UK system does seem
> better .... the registry is run by Nominet, a non-profit organisation
> which anyone can join for £100/yr. Many but not all members are
> registrars. It currently has 140 staff, ~2800 members, and manages ~4.5M
> domains. UK domains can be registered for as little as £3/yr. Nominet has
> created a highly competitive registrar market and has an open and
> seemingly fair domain name dispute procedure which uses principle-based
> arbitration and does not attempt to determine IP issues.
>
> There seemed to me to be just one critical difference between Nominet and
> ICANN. Nominet receives domain registration fee income directly from
> registrars, and decides how to use it to manage the UK domain. This gives
> it significant authority deriving from that financial power, which it is
> able to exercise in the interest of the internet community as a whole.
> For the moment it operates the registry itself, but there's no reason in
> principle why it could not be outsourced. Legally, it is a private
> company limited by guarantee. So the UK domain is privately operated, but
> has community-based governance mechanisms with teeth that allow proper
> direction of technical operations.
>
> ICANN has of course an international aspect which makes its life more
> difficult than that of Nominet. But the current problems with Verisign
> stem not from that but from a fundamental governance problem - the
> perennial difficulty that the US political process has in injecting
> proper consideration of the wider public interest into commercial
> operations. This is of course seen not just in ICANN, but in many other
> areas such as electricity deregulation, spectrum allocation, GM foods,
> privacy, and so on. From the perspective of a complete outsider, too
> little attention has been paid to these problems of governance in ICANN.
> Now the crunch has come.
>
> The current dispute is a critical test for ICANN; if it fails to behave
> according to its avowed principles it will be sidelined as irrelevant, to
> the extent it has not been already. Regardless of past shortcomings, to
> be at all credible in future it must now use what authority it has to
> instruct Verisign, regardless of any financial or other power Verisign
> may hold over it. If this fails, it will plainly expose the inadequacy of
> the governance structure, but that might well be preferable to a
> continuing lame duck. To be fair, the IAB and ISSC reports give hope that
> ICANN is preparing to make a stand based on the "consensus policy"
> section of the ICANN-Verisign Agreement. But this dispute goes to the
> core of what ICANN is about. ICANN is supposed to act in the interest of
> the internet community as a whole, but has not really been given
> sufficient power to do so. The only antidote to this is an ICANN which
> behaves as if it has the power to act, and actually acts, and is seen to
> act, in the interest of the whole community. The governance structures
> ought to ensure that the wider interests, determined by as fair and open
> a process as can be devised, take precedence of narrower interests - they
> don't really do that, but ICANN must act as if they do.

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 131k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" -
    Pierre Abelard
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CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security
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