[governance] RE: who does "public policy" then?

[Vittorio Bertola]

Dan Krimm ha scritto:
> I believe that Milton is saying that ICANN should also say "it's not my
> job" when it comes to substantive (i.e., non-technical policy) matters
> regarding gTLDs.  And I think I would agree, because ICANN is not
> structurally very accountable to a broad range of stakeholders with respect
> to such substantive policy decisions.  Better to leave those substantive
> decisions to individual sovereign nations for now, as we do not have an
> effective "world government" at this time beyond the UN, a patchwork of
> international treaties, and specific bi-/multi-lateral agreements, and
> ICANN is really not equipped to become a world government in and of itself,
> either in terms of resources or systematic processes of accountability,
> even for what may seem at present to be a relatively "narrow" policy
> domain.

Are you sure that this is really what you want? Because ICANN issues are 
global in nature, and if we weren't experimenting with ICANN and 
referred them back to governments, they would either fall back to no one 
(i.e., not be governed, or, de facto, left to individual decisions by a 
technical entity taking the role of Jon Postel... which, in the end, 
would possibly be an ICANN without non-technical stakeholders) or fall 
back to the US Government (and this is unacceptable to other countries 
and to most of civil society as well).

Trying to build a "new beast" like ICANN is, in my opinion, the only 
possible forward-looking solution that should be tried. We can discuss 
on how it should work, but I do not think that the way to go for global 
governance, especially on issues like these, is purely intergovernmental 
as you suggest.
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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