[governance] Ideas that this mailing list has agreed to

[Hans Klein]

I made some minor contributions to Milton's paper, so I am not a co-author.

In my reading, the paper proposes to maintain US unilateral political
oversight but to constrain it, in two ways.  First, unilateral political
oversight would only be in the area of "narrow governance," i.e. ICANN.
Second, unilateral political oversight would be reduced from current levels:
the MoU would be ended, leaving only the IANA contract.  The IANA contract
gives the US control over the root, but it does not allow the US to specify
detailed policies that ICANN must follow.

So, the question to consider is, would such 1) narrow and 2) reduced
unilateral political oversight by the US be acceptable?

I think it is an easy question to answer: it would not.  To many policy makers
and stakeholders in WSIS, unilateral US political oversight of ICANN is
categorically not acceptable. (Or at least that is the gist of their public
position.)

I found the paper surprising for at least tacitly endorsing unilateralism.

On the other hand, such a proposal may be a pragmatic solution to the
political realities of the day.  I have less insight into the political
realities that are being negotiated.

Hans



Quoting Milton Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>:

> Just had time to catch up with this.
>
> >>> "Parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> 11/9/2005 11:01:09 AM >>>
> >The new paper by Milton and others concludes that a
> >reformed ICANN be left without political oversight - which is
> >unacceptable -  and also quite at variance with earlier outputs
> >form the IG project.
>
> Not inconsistent at all. The point of separating "narrow" and "broad"
> oversight is precisely to solve this problem. Governments can pursue a
> framework convention and establish principles and norms for broader
> internet gov, which would by definition include ICANN at a very high
> level. But there is no reason to inject governmental political oversight
> directly into the process of Internet identifier resource allocation and
> assignment. That is too close to the "day to day operation" that
> governments themselves agree they shouldn't be involved in.
>
> >The recent paper by Milton speaks of narrower oversight and
> >broader oversight - and promises to deal with the broader
> >oversight issue later. There is a big problem here. The narrow and
> >broader oversight areas are horizontal divisions, and not vertical
> >components, and therefore can not be considered separately
> >form one another.
>
> Here is where we disagree. Narrow and broad oversight MUST be separated
> and dealt with separately, otherwise you mess up both terribly.
> Injecting highly political concerns into the techno-economic processes
> of root server management, number allocation, TLD creation, etc. would
> be a disaster. Likewise, the process of formulating broad policy
> principles for the Internet - thebroad oversight - would be crippled if
> it gets bogged down in the details of technical coordination.
>
> > The interface between the two is the whole issue -
> >and if the narrow oversight is not defined in a manner that it
> >has a workable interface with the broader oversight - than there
> >is no point in determining the mechanisms of broader oversight
> >later. How will the broader oversight then be enforced on the
> >realm of the narrow oversight.
>
> Governments as a collectivity have to define what principles and norms
> they want to enforce on the Internet, in general terms, before they can
> be allowed to get anywhere near the detailed mechanisms of identifier
> governance. They have not yet done so. They may not ever be able to do
> so. But if you tell them, hey you can veto TLD selections, grab address
> resources, fiddle with language standards, etc., etc., they will do so
> opportunistically and in the short term, playing out little political
> games. So I think it is quite consistent and reasonable to say to the
> world's nation-states: you don't get any more power over ICANN and its
> activities until you figure out what you really want for the Internert
> as a whole. And yes, that applies to the USG, more than any other.
>
>
>
>  I
> have found the attempt to separate the two - in this manner - always
> problematic. An analytical separation soon becomes a political
> separation.
>
> Can we instead try to build a consensus around IG project's response to
> WGIG
> report. (Internet Governance Quo Vadis? A Response to the WGIG
> Report)(http://www.internetgovernance.org/)
>
> Parminder
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org
> [mailto:governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of Adam Peake
> Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 8:41 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] Ideas that this mailing list has agreed to
>
> We seem to be struggling with "oversight" at the moment.
>
> I suggest that the caucus endorses the paper by the Internet
> Governance Project and use that as basis for our discussion about
> ICANN.  Personally, I think it's an excellent paper.
>
> This is *not* about Internet Governance broadly (i.e. the working
> definition provided by WGIG and adopted during prepcom 3). Only about
> ICANN, what the paper calls "Narrow oversight refers to the policy
> supervision of ICANN and its administration of Internet identifiers."
>
> I would be interested to hear opinions on this.
>
> Can you support this paper?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Adam
>
>
>
> At 11:47 AM -0500 11/1/05, Milton Mueller wrote:
> >=================
> >Political Oversight of ICANN
> >=================
> >
> >The Internet Governance Project releases a new paper clarifying the
> >controversies around "oversight" of ICANN.
> >
> >  http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/Political-Oversight.pdf
> >
> >We explain why WSIS must separate discussion of governments' role in
> >setting policy for all Internet issues from discussion of the
> narrower
> >problem of ICANN's oversight.
> >
> >An analysis of the contractual instruments used by the U.S. to
> >supervise ICANN shows how the problem of U.S. unilateral oversight
> can
> >be addressed in a way that is both politically feasible and avoids
> >threatening the stability or freedom of the Internet.
> >
> >The paper can be downloaded here:
> >http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/Political-Oversight.pdf
> >
> >www.internetgovernance.org
> >
>
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