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

[Jeff Williams]

Mikael and all stakeholders or other interested parties,

  We are in agreement with you here to and extent Mikael.  ICANN is
supposed to be a technical advisory body, nothing more.  With respect
to political or non-technical issues, the ICANN BoD is contracted to
work with the stakeholder community, this would include governments.
A hand in Hand relationship with various governments is necessary.
I believe this is why the GAC is in place.  However that body has
not been very forthcoming with interfacing with various governements
in assisting in determining policy issues in a open and transparent
manner.

Mikael Pawlo wrote:

> ./. 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
>
> _________________________________________________________________________
>
>   ICQ:35638414                                mailto:mikael@pawlo.com
>   +46-70 421 58 25                            http://www.pawlo.com/

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
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