[bestbits] Civil Society Letter on IANA Transition

[George Sadowsky]

Independent of the discussion that is going on here, I strongly share Deirdre's comment about the term "community."  It is often used, without appropriate qualification, in different ways and on the same discussion, so that it can be and often is interpreted in non-consistent ways.

Even the phrase 'the ICANN community' is used in disturbingly vague ways.  Is it the formal apparatus of supporting organizations and advisory committees?  Is it the people who are active in policy discussions?  Is it everyone that comes to ICANN meetings?  Is it all registrants?  

It's not clear what to do about this, except to insist upon adequate qualification of the word whenever it is used.

This problem bleeds over into discussions of what is "the global public interest," and more to the point, who defines it.  In particular, who defines the global public interest with respect to ICANN's mission?  That's a larger discussion that I'm attempting to launch here, but it's a very important question for at least a part of Internet governance.

George



> On May 25, 2016, at 9:03 AM, Deirdre Williams <williams.deirdre at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Pranesh,
> I also have a concern - serious at least in my view. The third paragraph of the statement begins with this sentence "When the Internet community came together in Marrakech in March 2016 to endorse and forward the IANA transition package to NTIA, there was consensus that the product of two years of challenging hard work was robust and credible and met the key NTIA criteria." I have noticed, and questioned publicly, the spreading "loose" use of the word "community" which is leading, again in my view, to a rather dangerous conflation of concepts. To my mind it is incorrect to suggest that the ICANN community, which met in Marrakech in March, is the same thing as the internet community of which the ICANN community is a subset. This - deliberately? - confusing use of the word "community" has been going on for several years.
> I wonder does anyone else consider it to be a matter for concern?
> Best wishes
> Deirdre
> 
> On 25 May 2016 at 04:11, Pranesh Prakash <pranesh at cis-india.org <mailto:pranesh at cis-india.org>> wrote:
> Dear all,
> I recently came across this:
> http://bestbits.net/iana-transition/ <http://bestbits.net/iana-transition/>
> 
> However, I never saw its contents being discussed on this list.  Did I somehow fail to receive those messages?
> 
> I am quite concerned about the way the letter takes an uncritical global North approach to the IANA transition, and refuses to contend with the power dynamics at play.
> 
> The undersigned civil society and public interest groups believe that the IANA transition is a positive development for the Domain Name System and for the Internet at large, and that the process to develop the transition proposal has been a successful expression of multistakeholder approaches to Internet decision-making.
> 
> I have pointed out in the past that this IANA transition process fails the requirements of the NetMundial Statement, and was primarily led by corporate interests in the US, and men:
> http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-multistakeholder-community-neither-global-nor-multistakeholder <http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-multistakeholder-community-neither-global-nor-multistakeholder>
> 
> Regards,
> Pranesh
> 
> -- 
> Pranesh Prakash
> Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society
> http://cis-india.org <http://cis-india.org/> | tel:+91 80 40926283 <tel:%2B91%2080%2040926283>
> sip:pranesh at ostel.co <mailto:sip%3Apranesh at ostel.co> | xmpp:pranesh at cis-india.org <mailto:xmpp%3Apranesh at cis-india.org>
> https://twitter.com/pranesh <https://twitter.com/pranesh>
> 
> 
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