[governance] host country agreements considered dangerous

[Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law]

I wish someone would explain to me in simple words why on earth one would 
want ICANN to have the sort of status implied by a host country agreement.

The history of ICANN is replete with examples of its misbehavior, and lack 
of budget discipline.  It suffers deeply from a lack of accountability. 
Giving it protection from law -- which is what host country agreements 
mostly do -- hardly seems like the right reaction unless we first craft an 
alternate accountability mechanism.

Has everyone forgotten that until the US Government stopped it by amending 
the MoU, ICANN was refusing to process zone file changes for ccTLDs that 
had not signed agreements promising to obey ICANN, pay its levies, and 
allowing ICANN to raise the fees by 15% per year?

Adult supervision is essential.  Or at least the threat of it.

I fully understand why people might think the current arrangement is 
deficient: the US has been an erratic steward at best, and the current 
administration does not inspure trust.  But the alterantive being proposed 
does not seem any better, and in fact is worse in that if things go badly 
wrong at ICANN some day there will be darn little we can do about it.

-- 
http://www.icannwatch.org   Personal Blog: http://www.discourse.net
A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin at law.tm
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
                        -->It's warm here.<--
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