[governance] Egmont Group granted International Organization Status

[Karl Auerbach]

Robert Guerra wrote:

> There has been the start of a discussion about changing the status of 
> ICANN from a California based 501c3 non profit

Just a minor nit - ICANN is indeed a California corporation of the 
public-benefit/non-profit type.  The 501(c)(3) is US Federal tax 
exemption classification.  These two things are quite different from one 
another.

There are officials in California who are aware of ICANN and who have 
expressed concern about endowing the benefits of the California status 
upon a body that much more resembles a typical trade protection body 
than a typical public-benefit body.

> As such, thought it would be worthwhile to discuss on this list what 
> examples ICANN could borrow from. The International Committee for the 
> Red Cross (ICRC), has been mentioned as have several other organizations.

I wrote a note on this topic some years back.  The point of that paper 
was that the most prominent and broadly accepted of such organizations, 
the Red Cross being a prime example, obtain the foundations of their 
legitimacy by doing a good job of doing good things over a long period 
of time.  The legal structures develop later.

Of course it is also done the other way around - a body is created by 
treaty or some other multi-national/international process - and it then 
the organization might, or might not, live up to its birthright.

ICANN would be dreaming if it were to believe that it could follow the 
first of these two courses.  Outside a relative small circle of direct 
beneficiaries the sense of ICANN as an electronic-era analog to the Red 
Cross is not present.  Indeed, I would suggest that the broad perception 
is rather to the contrary.

Such a change would require a substantial reconstruction of ICANN. 
ICANN is a body that exerts its control mainly through a hierarchy of 
private contracts.  How those contracts are shifted and made enforceable 
is not a trivial matter.

All-in-all, however, I find the notion of ICANN "going international" to 
be a flight of fancy.

The US government has its tendrils far too deep into ICANN for anyone to 
think that this change would not entail major political changes in the 
views of the US gov't - views that may not necessarily change after 
November 2008 when the next major election occurs.

And also, ICANN is based not on a broad technical foundation but rather 
an a very thin technical ledge.  The DNS that ICANN manages can slip out 
of its control in an electronic instant, and there are signs that that 
is happening with the advent of root system fracturing (occurring) and 
more decentralized p2p style naming systems (occurring).

It is not unlikely that ICANN will find itself in the position of a 
hypothetical body that oversees the color of the wire used for telephone 
handsets in an era of wireless phones.

		--karl--

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