[governance] oversight

[Milton Mueller]

Avri:
We may agree, but, if there is a difference it may be rooted in the
fact that the term "oversight" denotes very different meanings in our
minds. 

If you think oversight means a sitting Council of govts that can poke
its fingers into ICANN whenever ICANN or other Internet actors do
something the Council members don't like, then I agree with you that we
don't want it! 

But one can also think of "oversight" as a set of enforceable rules
regulating ICANN. And for those rules to be truly enforceable, a
significant number of the world's governments have to agree on them. How
else will they come about and obtain any binding authority over ICANN? 

If properly defined, these rules can constrain governments just as much
as they constrain ICANN. I.e., they might say that ICANN can be reversed
or checked only according to certain procedures and only in the
following areas: x,y,z. 

I think we would emphatically agree that the nature of these rules must
be defined by civil society and private sector, not just governments. In
other words, the concept of "oversight" has to be conceived in a way
that makes its purpose _the protection of the rights of the general
population of Internet users and suppliers_, not simply a matter of
giving governments their pound of flesh qua governments. 

While the immediate threat is national governments, veterans of ICANN
can only repeat their warnings that ICANN itself can be captured, can be
indifferent to users and individual rights, can ignore its own stated
procedures, etc., etc. ICANN now seems nice only by comparison to
traditional intergovernmental processes. And ICANN's "niceness" has been
greatly enhanced by the threat of WSIS, who knows what will happen once
that threat is gone and it is cut loose. So prima facie, there is a need
for ICANN "oversight." 

>>> Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> 10/11/2005 5:44 PM >>>
Hi,

While I support advocating audits and appeals mechanisms I would  
prefer not to call them oversight, but proper ICANN governance.

I am dead set against the idea that 'all governments in oversight is  
better then one.'  One is hopefully a temporary thing that might pass 

in time, e.g. with a new US administration and a mature  
multistakeholder ICANN.  'all governments' would, to my mind, be a  
permanent evil.

a.

On 11 okt 2005, at 17.13, Milton Mueller wrote:

>
>
>
>>>> Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu.org> 10/11/2005 1:54 PM >>>
>>>>
>> I think that our only possible common objective is to have no
>>
> government
>
>> in charge of "DNS oversight" (that is, root zone file changes).
>> Otherwise, we will part into those who say "USG oversight isn't
that
>>
> bad
>
>> in practice" and those who say "USG oversight is unacceptable on a
>> matter of principle", which are two non-reconcilable views.
>>
>
> I think the only solution lies in one's definition of what is
> "oversight." The IGP has addressed this months ago in its paper on
> ICANN. If "oversight" means the kind of undefined, open-ended,  
> arbitrary
> power the US currently holds, then it's no better, and may be worse,
> when multiple governments hold it.
>
> If "oversight" means what it SHOULD mean, namely a kind of audit and
> appeal power that prevents ICANN itself from abusing its authority, 

> then
> of course it should be internationalized.
>
> The problem is one of institutional design - creating a limited,
> lawful, rule-bound oversight procedure/authority that cannot devolve
> into the kind of arbitrary top-down oversight council that some
> governments are advocating.
>
> That said, if we can't get that, I think that "oversight by all
> governments" still is much, much better than "oversight by one
> government". And personally, I don't think that the particular
country
>
> to which that one government belongs makes too much of a difference:
> governments have different styles and ranges of censorship and  
> control,
>
> but all of them try to exert them.
>
> P.S. To Paul:
>
>> my employer (ISC, operator of F-root) is located in the United
>>
> States,
>
>> and yet i can't fathom the law or directive under which USG could
>> successfuly demand or even ask that the servers responding to
>> 192.5.5.241 and 2001:500::1035 be reconfigured.  perhaps if martial
>> law were declared first, or something?
>>
>
> There are plenty of technical parameters that are mandated by law,
> usually through generic laws that say that devices of the X type
have
> to
> abide by technical regulations approved by the Y institute, which in
> turn mandate technicalities. For example, my cell phone is
configured
> to
> use certain frequencies as per technical regulations ultimately
> deriving
> from laws. I don't see why there could not be a law that demands to
a
> given authority (say, ICANN) the authority to determine the root
zone
> that a DNS server must use to be legal.
>
> Then, of course, you can change the configuration to use a different
> root zone, much like you can alter the frequency of a radio  
> transmitter
>
> and use a prohibited one... but if they get you, you'll be punished.
> -- 
> vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a]
> bertola.eu.org]<-----
> http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
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