[bestbits] Civil Society Letter on IANA Transition

Wed May 25 11:05:22 EDT 2016

Dear All,
My reason for concern about the word "community" is that it is a very
loaded word - it carries extra connotations of shared interests, agreement,
togetherness. I'm not sure how far non first language English speakers
would be aware of this. Therefore when I (as a remote participant) heard a
female ICANN employee (I'm sorry I've forgotten her name) refer to "the
community" in a presentation that was part of the launching of the new
gtlds in London (2012) I asked which community she was referring to. She
replied "Oh the ICANN community" as if this were perfectly obvious. Perhaps
some of you were "there" in the chat and may remember.

George: " In particular, who defines the global public interest with
respect to ICANN's mission?" - my answer is that it should of course be the
global public, but I have a strong feeling that that is NOT what is
happening.

Seun: "Yes that's right; the ICANN community is part of the "internet
community" but as to the March meeting, and the entire transition proposal
development process, it was the "internet community" developing the
proposal but facilitated by ICANN who was assigned the task by NTIA." What
you describe is what the initial proposal appeared to be. The process was
supposed to be carried out by "the internet community" and ICANN was
instructed to identify an appropriate agency to carry out the transition
process. What in fact happened was that ICANN identified itself as the
appropriate agency. This seems to run counter to the original intention,
but perhaps it doesn't?

And yes, Parminder, "community" has been compromised throughout the system.
You fought long and eloquently over the highjacking of the word "book" as
one of the new gtlds. The time has come for all of us to fight against the
takeover of individual words - I can see what is happening in English, but
is it also happening in Hindi, Spanish, French, Urdu, Mandarin ...?? Our
language is at least in part how we think; it has a large control of our
perspective. We need to protect it as far as possible as a common good, a
free space.
Deirdre

On 25 May 2016 at 09:13, George Sadowsky <george.sadowsky at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>> I recently came across this:
>> 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
>>
>> Regards,
>> Pranesh
>>
>> --
>> Pranesh Prakash
>> Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society
>> http://cis-india.org | tel:+91 80 40926283
>> sip:pranesh at ostel.co | xmpp:pranesh at cis-india.org
>> https://twitter.com/pranesh
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> “The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
> Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
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-- 
“The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
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