[governance] "Oversight"

[John Curran]

On Jun 3, 2012, at 4:21 PM, Fouad Bajwa wrote:

> ICANN and Verisign are both corporations registered under US law
> despite one being a non-profit corporation and the other a commercial
> one. Since the addressing is being managed in the US, any compliance
> to law enforcement will be done in the US and thus the unilateral
> decision to take down exists and that is the argument.

Please elaborate or restate the above point... I do not understand how 
it relates to ICANN being involved in law enforcement orders that ICANN 
never receives.

> Thats why US based non-profits or custodians of the Internet cannot
> ensure freedom of expression when it itself is bound to restrictions
> under a single country's law. Should the need arise, it has the
> possibility to take action.

Sorry, that is not a US constraint... that's a constraint of any organization 
operating in any country.  If you want to prevent governments from taking 
certain actions, you'll need to get the governments to collectively agree 
not to do so.  It is possible that such will occur in the future, through
any number of initiatives or forums but it has not occurred to date.  

Until/if you get agreement from governments, then they will continue to act 
as they see fit for their policy objectives, and that includes actions against
the parties in their particular country that operate pieces of the Internet 
infrastructure.

>>  Again, your issue is that (in general) nation states feel that
>>  it is acceptable for various reasons to directly impact Internet
>>  infrastructure to protect certain policy objectives.
> 
> Unilateralism stands as a threat ...

If, by unilateralism, you mean the USG/ICANN relationship, then you
are conflating something which is entirely unrelated to the takedowns
which occurred, and your statement that "It takes one judicial order 
to get ICANN to shut down any website" remains inaccurate. We have not 
seen such an order, nor are we aware how ICANN/DoC would respond to such. 
Suggesting that ICANN is somehow complicit in the domain name takedowns 
is sufficiently far from reality that it erodes the strength of your 
otherwise cogent points.

/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.  A focus on reality-based discussions
should not be considered an endorsement of any existing governance
structures.




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