Re: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN

[Mikael Pawlo]

./. This message was crossposted: GCLN and ALSC. Sorry for any duplicates ./.

Dear Esther et al,

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001, Esther Dyson wrote:
> sorry, I meant that politely, as a compliment to your government.

Some offence taken, but already forgotten .-)

Still, I would be interested in some elaboration on the subject. Why are
you opposed to a governmental solution, through one of the so called
ordinary channels like the UN, the EU, TRIPS, GATT or something alike?

One common argument is speed, but why would ICANN need to be a
fast mover? Do you think the role and function of ICANN should be exapnded
beyond the top level domain area? If so - in what respect?

In my opinion the Internet is a common, hence everyone and everything is
affected by it. Therefore, it is simply not good enough to have a
user-based participation. Much greater interests must be considered. I
think this is a valid point, although I do not think that ICANNs function
or role should be expanded in any way. As Lawrence Lessig has put it
(even though I think Lessig might still think that ICANN should have a
greater impact on the Internet than I do myself):

"ICANN's job is not to become the trademark police; it is not to be the
tool of intellectual capital; its job is not to set policy for the 
Internet generally."
(---)       
"ICANN's role is to be a tiny, coordinating body for technical standards 
made elsewhere; its function is to assure those standards sustaing and support the stability and diversity of the Internet."

(see http://www.lessig.org/ )

The late Dr Postel stated in RFC 1591 that:
"The IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a
country."

Dr Postel concludes that the selection of the ISO 3166 list "as a basis
for country code top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that
ISO has a procedure for determining which entities should be and should
not be on that list."

Dr Postel also notes that there are generic TLDs (EDU, COM, NET, ORG, GOV,
MIL, and INT), and the two letter country codes from ISO-3166.  According 
to Dr Postel in RFC 1591 "it is extremely unlikely that any other TLDs
will be created."

Today we have new TLDs and with them some issues to be resolved. These
issues could in my opinion be dealt with through an ICANN-like
organization. While the considerations are at first hand political and not
technical, it is, in my opinion suitable to involve governments in the
decision process. Individuals, corporations and non-profit organizations
are represented by their governments respectively through the democratic
process. This will of course not be a perfect solution. Not all states are
democratic. However, it is hard for me to grasp that non-democratic states
would allow their citizens to participate in ICANN elections, so I do not 
think that this problem wuold be solved on any of the possible roads
ICANN could travel.

Finally, I think the criticism towards ICANN has been too severe for the
organization. A fresh start should take place with a new board etc, no
matter what the future looks like. It is of course important in such a
scenario that "one" refrain from living the classical line:

-Meet the new boss - same as the old boss.  

(Unfortunately I do not know from where the quote is originally, I heard
it from Jonathan Zittrain, but it is not his words.)

Feel free to cross-post your answer to the ALSC Forum. I think - and I
hope the moderator will agree - the discussion is on topic, since it has
direct bearing on the best method for representing the world's Internet
users (the objective of the ALSC).

Best Regards

Mikael Pawlo

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