Re: Don't screw up our ICANN (was RE: [ga] RE: issues that are long closed?)

[JFC Morfin <jefsey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Very interesting and pertinent exchange. Thank you.

It reflects three different cultures/visions of the Internet and 
reality (if one considers the allusion to Paul Twomey's efforts which 
lead to another well expected ambition - Elisabeth, UN is not here to 
oppress Hackers, but to protect them from commercials - cf. RFC 3869 
IAB evaluation). May I suggest Lessig's last book to be read ? There 
are interesting points to think over in regards of this exchange.

However, the fear of a legal responsibility of ICANN comes from its 
pretence that it _operates_ the Internet, instead of accepting that 
the only possible stable position for ICANN is to _serve_ the 
Internet national, global, and specialized communities, being 
accountable to their Trustees (who also happen to be their ccTLD 
Managers). ICANN for years try to contract the de facto transfer of 
that financial responsibility to these Trustees. This calls for their 
Governments to be involved because the Internet economic risk 
represents considerable amounts of money and/or image loss. So 
considerable that even the USG may not be ready anymore to warranty 
it, moreover the development of ROAP and the lack of presentation 
layer to support languages and national/industrial innovation (look 
at the 2005 NTIA Statement of principles and the attention paid to the ccTLDs).

A lean ICANN as a secretariat of the Internet communities' Trustees 
keeping an Excel table is what users need. And the world implied in 
Tunis  with the IGF as its "mission creep" complement.
jfc

On 23:45 04/07/2007, Karl Auerbach said:
> Elisabeth Porteneuve wrote:
>
> When mentioning the words "member" and "ICANN" in the same context 
> it is worthwhile to revive and review the document that originally 
> put "the fear of being held accountable" into ICANN:
>
> http://www.icann.org/santiago/membership-analysis.htm
>
> To my mind the things noted in that document that ICANN so feared, 
> most particularly derivative lawsuits, are actually well grounded 
> and historically sound mechanisms to improve corporate transparency 
> and accountability.
>
> It was amusing how ICANN tried to use Humpty Dumpty's logic to evade 
> the obligations of these California laws by labeling what were 
> clearly elections in year 2000 as a "selection".
>
> (By-the-way, I wouldn't lump individual members of the internet 
> community, not all of whom own domain names, in with "Civil Society" 
> under the list of stakeholders.  Individuals act equally through 
> governments, businesses they own (virtually all large corporations 
> are ultimately owned by individual people), non-profits, etc, etc.
>
> Moreover your analysis did not include an item regarding the 
> intended beneficiaries of ICANN's existence: the users of the 
> internet.  Those beneficiaries don't seem to be getting a seat at 
> the ICANN table.
>
> Second by-the-way, I'm not necessarily in favor of a recall 
> provision of elected directors (it's not that I'm against, its just 
> that I haven't really thought about it that much) - so the furthest 
> I've gone so far would be to say that if an elected director does 
> spend 3 years on the beach, that he/she might find it hard to be re-elected.
>
>                 --karl--