[governance] NTIA announcement on JPA

[Carlos Afonso]

Obvious, dear compa Ian, and nearly impossible with the current ICANN
admin -- the exec staff and a majority of the current ICANN board's 
major motivation to consider internationalization is to escape from 
litigation in the USA, as the "president's commission" led by the 
current chairman implicitly wanted (see their report recommending a sort 
of internationalization of ICANN) -- the report, incidentally, was 
diplomatically ignored by the board in practice.

The ICANN admin's motivation is "what is best for the gTLD business?"
and "how can I best fulfill my contracts with the USG?" (very
objective), not much more. My feeling is whatever ICANN currently does 
to supposedly end the formalities with the USG is cosmetic. But what
external pressure (or even internal, through ALAC, NCUC, or even, the
gods forbid, the GAC etc) could have any significant effect?

In light of this, what are the alternatives, what is really worth
fighting for in the global logical infrastructure governance scheme of
things, if we genuinely (not the case of most of the ICANN "dirigentes" 
today) want global multistakeholder governance of the whole thing?

frt rgds

--c.a.

Ian Peter wrote:
> 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
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>  
>> -----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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