[governance] Oversight

Sun Jul 1 08:19:08 EDT 2012

John,

You provide a good view of how some public policy issues that get 
encountered in various tech coordination activities get addressed. There 
indeed are some existing ways in which the concerned public policy 
considerations are soaked in from the environment, if in an ad hoc 
manner, which, I understand is also how you see it. You do rightly 
stress 'ICANN's limited mandate of technical coordination.   
Increasingly, it appears to me that the concerned public policy issues 
are becoming more important and at the same time more complex, and the 
manner in which they get incorporated in the technical coordination 
function may increasingly be inadequate. (I think that this has happened 
in the case of new gtlds, producing very unsatisfactory results, 
something that I will take up separately.)

The oversight issue is about developing an appropriate and adequate 
method for incorporating the relevant public policy concerns in 
technical coordination functions. But doing it in a manner that is not 
ad hoc, based on proper law and policy frameworks arrived at through a 
transparent and participatory process, and employing duly laid out 
procedures and methods.

At present there is a kind of schizophrenia whereby ICANN is caught 
between its own and other actor's assessment of it being basically a 
technical coordination body with limited capacity of dealing with public 
policy considerations (which is inter alia also NCUC's stand) and the 
increasingly important and complex public policy considerations that are 
implicated in many technical coordination functions. How to solve this 
conundrum is the main issue that we are facing here.

parminder

On Saturday 30 June 2012 11:50 AM, John Curran wrote:
> Ian -
>
> Good point... (I was reading and replying via a mobile phone and 
> misread the level of quoting.)
>
> In any case, I hope the information is useful.   ICANN as a simply a 
> mechanism for technical
> coordination of Internet identifiers is relatively understandable;
> i.e. a body which performs that sole task, while taking accepted
> social and public policy norms into
> consideration and working
> under broad and transparent oversight by the Internet community
> in its greatest sense (individuals, governments, civil society,
> business, etc.)
>
> /John
>
> John Curran
> President and CEO
> ARIN
>
> On Jun 30, 2012, at 12:15 AM, "Ian Peter" <ian.peter at ianpeter.com 
> <mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com>> wrote:
>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> You are actually responding to Parminder’s query here, but thanks for 
>> the input!
>>
>> Ian
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From: *John Curran <jcurran at arin.net>
>> *Date: *Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:54:51 +0000
>> *To: *Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com>
>> *Cc: *"governance at lists.igcaucus.org" <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
>> *Subject: *Re: [governance] Oversight, was [liberationtech] Chinese 
>> preparing for a "Autonomous Internet"  ?
>>
>> On Jun 28, 2012, at 10:47 PM, Ian Peter wrote:
>>
>>     This then brings us to the issue of how to deal with the
>>     'oversight' function - defined as dealing with public policy
>>     issues concerning CIR management (which includes names, numbers
>>     and protocols). This issue also pointedly comes to the fore from
>>     the discussion in the FBI-DEA-IPv6 thread. I am a surprised at
>>     the lack of clarity even among veterans of this space about who
>>     deals with such a key public policy issue and how, with clear
>>     opposite views whether ICANN should be dealing with it or not. We
>>     know that important public policy issues connecting directly to
>>     CIR management will keep on arising in the future, and perhaps,
>>     multiplying in number. We need to foresight  how to deal with
>>     this situation. It is not possible to sweep this important issues
>>     under the carpet.
>>
>>
>> Ian -
>>
>>   Without passing judgement on the current system for technical 
>> coordination
>>   of Internet addresses, I will attempt to describe how it 
>> accommodates public
>>   policy issues as they are encountered.
>>
>>   Public policy issues do indeed come up in the policy discussions at 
>> the
>>   Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), but these issues are taken 
>> along with other
>>   factors (such as technical ability to route IP addresses, business 
>> concerns
>>   about availability of IP addresses for service providers, civil 
>> society concerns
>>   about privacy, etc.) and all are considered in the formation of 
>> policy.  This has
>>   led to policies which consider various public policy issues (for 
>> example, in the
>>   ARIN region, residential privacy concerns cause that information to 
>> be redacted
>>   from the public Whois directory per community developed policy.)
>>
>>   Each RIR has its own community which considers policy proposals, 
>> and those
>>   that are supported are adopted via the processes in the region. 
>>   While that can
>>   (and does) lead to slightly different policies between regions, it 
>> is also a strength
>>   in that policies that are felt to be important can be adopted by a 
>> region without
>>   having to await a global policy process.  "Good" policies do tend 
>> to get adopted
>>   in multiple regions, and global policies are indeed possible if all 
>> of the regions
>>   agree to the same policy text.
>>
>>   At present, there are no policies in the ARIN region which directly 
>> address the
>>   matter which the FBI raised regarding potential lack of incentive 
>> for accuracy in
>>   future IPv6 Whois information.   In fact, there are already 
>> policies which require
>>   accurate information to be present, but the issue being raising is 
>> whether such
>>   industry-led self-governance policies will suffice for insuring 
>> that the Whois
>>   information remains accurate (in the absence of need to obtain new 
>> address
>>   blocks as exists today with IPv4.)
>>
>>   Considering the public policy issues involved with the potential of 
>> a top-down
>>   or "regulatory" approach might be necessary, but that type of 
>> solution could
>>   easily be beyond ICANN's limited mandate of technical coordination.
>>
>> FYI,
>> /John
>>
>> John Curran
>> President and CEO
>> ARIN
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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