[ALSC-Forum] Comments on Study: ""ICANN and the Problem of Legitimacy"

[Bruce Young]

(Note: sorry for my brief absense from the forum.  Life got in the way! :) )

Comments on Study: ""ICANN and the Problem of Legitimacy"

This was a hard one to get through!  The document could eaily be renamed "A
Lawyer's Opinion About ICANN,"  since many of its arguments are based in US
administrative law (and appropriately footnoted!  Some pages had more
footnotes than text!).  The first section of this document is an excellent
historical treatise on how the Internet and ICANN came to be as they are.
For that reason alone, it is well worth reading.

The rest of this document uses arguments under US administrative law, in
excrutiating detail (also copiously footnoted!), to point out the trouble
ICANN has using same to justify itself.  But this document, and indeed
ICANN's current leadership, miss the point:  if ICANN is truely going to be
an independant, international body it cannot root its legitimacy in *any*
nation's laws.  As such, only ICANN directors appointed from the Internet
community at large -- with all users in every nation given an equal voice --
carrying out the will of their constituents, will give ICANN the its
legitimacy.



Bruce Young
Portland, Oregon
byoung651@home.com
http://members.home.net/byoung651/index.html