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

[Thomas Roessler]

On 2001-07-17 16:32:43 +0200, Mikael Pawlo wrote:

>With a responsible government I do not need to care about the 
>development of agriculture in Poland eventhough it will affect my 
>enviroment in Sweden. If the government is irresponsible, the 
>opposition will "destroy" them in the next election and I will not 
>vote for them. 

Except if there are other (possibly more significant) fields where 
the opposition would be far worse, and "destroying" the government 
would have a negative net effect - as positive as it may be for the 
Internet policy field.  That's the policy package problem Alexander 
mentioned: National governments aren't elected based on their stance 
on Internet policy nowadays.

Thus, leaving Internet policy to national governments would in the 
best case mean to leave it to consultations of government officials 
with those affected.  That is, you end up at "stakeholder 
participation" with several layers of indirection and complexity 
added.  I'm not sure this would actually improve the process.

>In my opinion the same thing should apply to the Internet issues. 
>Most democratic governments will use their participation in an 
>utilitarian way, trying to achieve good and utility for the vast 
>majority of their citizens.

Not precisely - they try to achieve what they _perceive_ to be good 
for their citizens, economy, etc.  This perception does, of course, 
depend on the input the decision-makers are supplied with.  Thus, 
the process leading to this perception might be highly intransparent 
(in particular in such arcane fields as domain names) and _far_ 
worse than what we are used to from ICANN nowadays.

>This could be argued in a philosophical way, but it will also be 
>the result of realpolitik. Few governments are prepared to make 
>decisions in the international community that will lead to them 
>loosing the next election.

See above: Internet policy activities are most likely irrelevant for 
elections, unless they severely break things.



As for your other arguments, I do agree that some of ICANN's fields 
of activity should better be left to governments or 
inter-governmental organizations.  Certain kinds of anti-trust 
considerations and any regulations imposing a single kind of 
mandatory dispute resolution upon registrants come to mind. 
Ultimately, I'd argue, these topics should be considered out of 
ICANN's scope.


However, there are still lots of other fields which (1) do have 
side-effects on individuals and small users (making their feed-back 
and involvement necessary ), and (2) don't fit well with 
governments. 

Think, for instance, about TLD assignments and much of the 
management involved.

Or think about self-regulation of registrars and registries (to be 
understood in the sense that registrars' and registries' communities 
formulate and enforce best practices for their members).

Think about all the technical coordination to be done between the 
players.  (Which can, in turn, have policy implications!)


Maybe one could classify the jobs which ICANN should or should not 
do like this (taking the mathematician's approach of restating the 
problem and selling it as a solution ;-):

- ICANN should do everything which is necessary to fill out the role 
   of the natural monopoly on the root zone market, and fulfill the 
   demands of registrars, registries, and registrants. Since 
   decisions made in filling out that role may have lots of effects 
   on end users, end user participation and feed-back is necessary. 

   (In particular, since we are talking about a natural monopoly 
   which is the effect of extremely strong network effects, the 
   natural feed-back channel provided by the marketplace is missing.)

- ICANN should leave everything else either to governments and 
   intergovernmental organizations (where regulation is needed, but 
   out of ICANN's scope), or to market forces (where no regulation 
   is necessary).

(Of course, this is equivalent to saying that ICANN should follow 
the principle of subsidiarity.  Also, one could certainly debate 
whether (for instance) dispute resolution policies should be left to 
market forces (yes, if we have more than one, so registrants have a 
substantial choice) or whether they should be left to governments 
and parliaments (yes, if there's a regulatory monopoly, so users 
don't have a choice).)


Bottom line: ICANN should try to focus on those issues it can 
reasonably handle (that is, behave stoically ;-), and it should do 
so with user participation and feed-back.

Finally, since nobody has presented a better approach, electing part 
of the board sounds like a good idea. ;-)

-- 
Thomas Roessler                        http://log.does-not-exist.org/