[governance] NTIA announcement on JPA

[Milton L Mueller]

> The role of the JPA is overestimated in the debate. I fully supported to
> terminate the JPA as soon as possible and I supported also ICANNs
> statement. But if it is terminated it does not change things too much. It
> would be an important symbolic act and stimulate self-confidence of
> numerous constituenices, involved in thre broad ICANN community. And it
> could create unexpetced positive side-effetcs which can come from reduced
> self-censorship of decision makers within the various constituencies. And
> it would be something like win-win. It would cost nothing to the US
> administration. A clever new USA administration could turn this into a big
> public and communication success telling the world that the USA becomes
> more open to international concerns.

Good points, Wolfgang, about the lack of a real US national interest in the JPA, it is very close to my own position, and why I am optimistic the JPA will end in 2009 if ICANN makes the right structural changes. 

But I think you overstate "the light handedness" of the JPA. The JPA is an act of delegation from USG and while I agree with you that the US gains little meaningful benefit from it, the main obstacle to getting rid of it are the IPR interests who think they can leverage the USG/ICANN nexus to gain more regulatory control over the internet. Or any other stray interest group (e.g., registrars and the VeriSign case) who think they need a mommy to cry to whenever ICANN does something they don't like.

 
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