[governance] ICANN stumbling on a hornet nest

[Karl Auerbach]

For economy I've addressed two emails in the comment below, one from 
mueller at syr.edu the other from salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com

On 09/04/2012 01:13 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:

> If you look at California public benefit corporation law, it is all
> about how these corporations should be held accountable to their
> members. The current form of At Large was devised as an ESCAPE from
> that.

Here is ICANN's own analysis.  I note that ICANN worked very hard to
escape the obligations of accountability and transparency that are
imposed by the California laws governing non-profit/public-benefit
corporations.

http://archive.icann.org/en/meetings/santiago/membership-analysis.htm

The exception to these obligations lays in the distinction between a 
membership organization and a non-membership organization with the key 
element being "elections".  Apart from the fact that ICANN rather 
transparently tried to escape - or evade - these obligations by 
characterizing the voting in year 2000 as a "selection" rather than as 
an "election" one might ask why does the law have this distinction?

Consider that there are public-benefit/non-profits such as performing 
arts groups.  Those often hew to the vision of a particular artist and 
it would not make sense to call those "membership" corporations.

ICANN, clearly, is not a performing arts corporation - although 
sometimes the meetings may take on that flavor.  ;-)

Perhaps an apt model for what ICANN seems to be trying to accomplish is 
found in a book by Jonathan Swift.  In that book Swift envisions an 
island floating in the air, independent of the earth, and populated by 
philosopher kings. (Pardon the crudity in some languages of the name 
that Swift chose.)

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa

--------

> salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com wrote:


> At Large in itself is not an accountability mechanism ...

I would substantially differ with that assessment.  If ICANN is not 
accountable to those for whose benefit it exists, i.e. the public 
community of internet users, then to whom is it accountable, and how?

As it currently stands the only person who clearly has the power to hold 
ICANN accountable is the Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris.

It strikes me that in these matters of internet governance that a body 
of governance should be subject to a clear, unambiguous, and viable 
chain of accountability to those for whose benefit that body exists.

I would recommend that you take a look at the accountability mechanisms 
that California does impose on California public-benefit/non-profits 
that, unlike ICANN, have not tried to use semantic handwaving to try to 
evade those obligations.  Here's the URL again to ICANN's own staff report:

http://archive.icann.org/en/meetings/santiago/membership-analysis.htm

I do not find these obligations unreasonable.  Nor are these obligations 
unique to California; many, perhaps most, places impose similar 
responsibilities upon those who claim special legal and taxation 
privileges and immunities (such as those that accrue to non-profit 
corporations).

	--karl--


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