[governance] CSTD meeting on enhanced cooperation

[Milton L Mueller]

Some responses to Parminder's views on CIR oversight

It is important to do so, if we have to legitimately argue for safe-guarding existing distributed system of CIR management and technical standards setting.
[MM] Let me begin by pointing out that neither you nor your group has ever attended an ICANN meeting, nor have you sought membership or participation in the civil society representational organs of ICANN, despite many invitations and despite the many battles ICANN civil society has needed help to fight. Thus, it is surprising to see you eager to redefine the whole structure suddenly. One wonder whose agenda it is, as it is certainly not civil society's. Also, some awareness of the behavior of the Governmental Advisory Committee within ICANN might be sufficient to convince those with a reality-focused, objective perspective that the types of "oversight" you are calling for can be troublesome, to put it mildly. I'd encourage you to make better use of the many resources - experience, expertise, and networks - that already exist among ICANN-focused civil society, before developing yet another manifesto.
The other option is that developing countries lean towards the ITU, which can shift the terrain toward development of a new top-down, centralised and bureaucratic CIR management/ tech standards model.
[MM] Many developing countries have "leaned toward the ITU" for years. It is unlikely to affect anything. If the case for your proposed changes is fear of this alternative, it is a very weak case.
(1) Shifting oversight of CIRs from US gov to an international body
[MM] It should not be "international" it should be "non-national." To be "international" is to be an intergovernmental organization, which means _not acceptable to Internet freedom advocates_. A smaller club of governments (which has been proposed by European Commission at one time) could be even worse. Oddly, you seem to be completely unaware of the critiques of the whole notion of "oversight," and its sister concept of "public policy" that have been developed in the wake of WSIS.
The path toward accountability and legitimate process in CIRs is _not_ going to come from concepts of an additional (governmental or MS) committee providing "oversight" on behalf of "public policy" or "public interest" concerns. On the contrary, as we have learned from the end game of the new gTLD process, the concept of oversight inevitably devolves into a politicized battle among special interests to undo, or re-do, policies emerging from the bottom up process if they don't like the outcome. "Oversight" means arbitrary, politicized, unpredictable and hence unjust and inefficient  process. "Oversight" means imposing another unaccountable board on top of the existing ICANN board, when the problem is that the existing one is not accountable enough. Replacing US oversight with oversight by multiple governments compounds the problem we have, it doesn't fix it.
What is needed are clear rules - rules designed both to restrain and limit ICANN, and to restrain and limit the external forces, including especially governments, who might interfere with ICANN and its processes. IGP made a pretty good start at defining the principles underlying such rules in its filings on the ICANN "transition" back in 2009. http://www.internetgovernance.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/IGP-June09NTIAcomment.pdf (See section "Revising the model")
In those comments, you may find a great deal of common ground - we recognize the need for legally binding forms of accountability and that this may need to involve coordinated action among states to pass a treaty. The big difference is that you seem to want an "oversight" body with the arbitrary power to make policy from the top down and impose it on ICANN processes and communities, whereas our proposals are designed to prevent just that. We want the involved community to make policy, within very narrowly defined boundaries, and we want rules we need from governments, and liberal, freedom-enhancing rules - not a blank check to second-guess or re-do or control and regulate people's actions via the Internet.

Milton L. Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
Internet Governance Project
http://blog.internetgovernance.org


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