[governance] JPA response - second draft for comments

[Willie Currie]

well it's obvious that ICANN is a dysfunctional and unaccountable 
organisation that falls short of the basic standards for an economic 
regulator. no one on this list is arguing that ICANN be transferred to 
the United Nationas. the question is what to do in the context of the 
JPA expiry to propose some form of accountability for ICANN that meets 
the priniciples set for internet governance at the WSIS - 
multilateralism, transparency, democracy and multi-stakeholder 
participation, which all governments agreed to. as i said earlier it 
would be good if the IGC statement made some comment on Qs 3, 4 and 5 - 
perhaps you could suggest some text on those questions that would help 
the submission in a practical way.

willie

Karl E. Peters wrote:
> Greetings all,
>     Pardon my abruptness here, but it appears you are all dreamers. Do 
> you REALLY believe that an ICANN that has been so resisitant to ANY 
> stakeholder influence, as opposed to major commercial interest, will 
> somehow become more responsive to stakeholder interests when turned 
> loose from its ONLY non-commercial responsibility?     
>     In my oppinion, looking at ICANN history that has been VERY 
> consistant, this belief is lunacy! Perhaps it is the ideal goal and 
> something we should demand, but DO NOT ever think it will happen that 
> way. It appears too many here work from ivory towers where it can be 
> believed that a leopard can change its spots if allowed sufficient 
> freedoms. I obseve an ICANN that grossly overpays its top leadership, 
> hires legions of people with no real understanding of the history of 
> the internet and the real challenges ahead, makes almost all TLD 
> decisions on a financial rewards basis and not on other potential 
> benefit to the community, has ignored one TLD operation to delegate 
> .BIZ to someone willing to pay them more than the original holder 
> (Leah Gallegos and the Atlantic Root Newtork) and then show their 
> "conscience" in refusing to delegate .WEB to its founder (Chris 
> Ambler), one who had actually gone though all the hoops and paid all 
> the overblown fees, under the guise that others had also tried to set 
> up .WEBs on other roots and it might not be "fair". These two 
> contradictory decisions came at the SAME meeting of ICANN, not over a 
> period of years and through policy changes.
>     ICANN does not work from a set of rules, it works to its own 
> pesonal advantage. Regardless of whether you may think the US 
> government and people should walk away from what it set into being, 
> you can not possibly believe that ICANN will be better run without 
> clear and forced oversight! Yes, we can say that the stakeholders will 
> somehow rise up and be more active, but ICANN's only reasn for even 
> pretending to listen to us in the past and to today is that it is 
> required of it by the JPA. Even with this requirement, ICANN has been 
> effectively unresponsive and irresponsible.
>     Turned loose from non-copmmercial responsibility by the US 
> government, it will simply continue to play that it listens to us, 
> give lip service to all of its contributing think tanks like this one, 
> and then seek the best ways to afford its leadership the exhorbitant 
> salaries and all of its conferees the highest luxury possible in 
> "seeking the public good".
>     Does anyone here REALLY believe ICANN will change? Some may say 
> that putting it under the UN or like body
> will give it sufficient oversight. I suggest that putting ICANN with 
> the UN will multiply the problems because the UN is the perfect model 
> of bloated, self-serving bureaucracy, corrupt and inefficient to the 
> core.
>     I am sure my post will be officially ignored on this list as only 
> those posts that go along with well-established norms of thought here 
> are actually responded to, but at least the questions have been asked 
> and whatever you do, it will be with the knowledge of what will 
> happen, based on all history we have to study. There is nothing more I 
> can do here.
>
> -Karl E. Peters
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20090529/6eb973a2/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance