Re: [ga] The news at the Lisbon meeting

["Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ICANN will use the US government refusal to agree as an excuse to move to 
Geneva.

On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, Karl Auerbach wrote:

> Danny Younger wrote:
> > Hello Dominik,
> >
> > I participated remotely, but the most important
> > strategic paths signalled by the PSC in my opinion
> > were:
> >
> > (1) changing ICANN's legal status to that of an
> > international nongovernmental organization
> > (structurally akin to the International Red Cross)...
> > this does, however, raise accountability issues)
>
> We had a few rounds of discussion on this point on Susan Crawford's blog - 
> http://scrawford.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/3/28/2841988.html#882117
>
> Generally I think that ICANN is doing a lot of wishing and not a lot of solid 
> thinking on the question of a new legal status.
>
> The documents that were cited were written by a Swiss person not skilled in 
> US law or politics.  And given that the status ICANN wants will almost 
> certainly require Congressional *and* Presidential action, it will be a 
> political decision here in the US.  And I can't say that the internet 
> community here has a positive view of ICANN and would we willing to 
> relinquish even the thin control and accountability that now exists.
>
> I gave a talk a few years ago about how entities gain international 
> legitimacy, and how ICANN is not following that road ... See "Why Louis XIV 
> Would Have Loved The Internet" at 
> http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/issue_7.htm
>
> In addition ICANN has given no thought whatsoever how such a new legal entity 
> would become the successor in interest to the present ICANN. ICANN has 
> created a spider's web of contracts that could be hard to unwind and transfer 
> to another body, even if all parties involved were willing.
>
> Moreover, I expect ICANN to be soon facing several lawsuits, such as from the 
> .xxx folks, on various grounds ranging from contractual issues (such as the 
> RegisterFly class action) to claims that ICANN is an illegal combination in 
> restraint of trade under the laws of the US, EU, or somewhere.
>
> 		--karl--

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