[governance] NTIA announcement on JPA

[Ian Peter]

My assumption is that if ICANN wants to be an international body, it has to
make itself one. Not rely on USG to do it, who have no such interest.



Ian Peter
Ian Peter and Associates Pty Ltd
PO Box 10670 Adelaide St  Brisbane 4000
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Tel (+614) 1966 7772 or (+612) 6687 0773
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www.internetmark2.org
www.nethistory.info
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch]
> Sent: 03 April 2008 17:02
> To: Mueller, Milton; Governance
> Subject: Re: [governance] NTIA announcement on JPA
> 
> Hi Milton,
> 
> Agree with most of your post, but one comment.
> 
> On 4/3/08 5:25 AM, "Milton L Mueller" <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> 
> > The answer should be obvious: NTIA is not looking for information about
> what
> > needs to be done, but seeking confirmation of its prior tendency to do
> > nothing. Government agencies, in the absence of strong leadership from
> their
> > political superiors, are lazy and prone to inertia. NTIA is not going to
> take
> > any initiatives on its own and clearly the lame-duck Bush Presidency has
> no
> > vision or plan in this area. The US is reasonably comfortable with the
> status
> > quo and won't move until someone makes them very uncomfortable.
> 
> Saying the problem is laziness is equivalent to the standard practice of
> attributing failed international negotiations to a lack of "political
> will."
> There are of course structural forces at work that constrain the space for
> movement.  The US has a strong society and an institutionally weak state
> (save in the military sphere).  NTIA's Office of International Affairs is
> just nine mostly mid-level people (all of them women, coincidentally), 3
> of
> whom have any involvement in ICANN matters.  They work for a Commerce Sec.
> and administration committed to the Alfred E. Neuman school of economic
> policymaking, and are down the street from a multiplicity of massive
> companies, industry associations and government agencies, plus think tanks
> and CSOs, all of whom oppose sharing sovereignty.  You know all this, so
> why
> dump on "lazy bureaucrats"?  You can't really believe that if NTIA
> staffers
> just pulled up their socks and sat up straighter they could tell all the
> assembled forces for the status quo, sorry, suck it up, ICANN goes free
> into
> the wild because we think it's a good idea that might make IGP and some
> non-voters in distant lands happy?
> 
> > community and even ICANN itself is clearly unhappy with its role, and
> anyone
> > with half a brain knows that it is not a austainable position in the
> long
> > term.
> 
> In the long run we're all dead, so that's not much comfort.  Prior to
> that,
> I've got fifty bucks that says the next administration won't change
> anything, at least not in its first term.  Who'd want to throw read meat
> to
> right wing blogosphere etc before the 2012 election?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
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