[governance] Interesting story of the never ending ICANN Conflict of Interest. This time on .africa?

[Dominique Lacroix]

"/Corn cannot expect justice from a court of chickens./"

;-)

@+, best, Dom


Le 14/10/12 11:17, Louis Pouzin (well) a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> ICANN is both a regulator and a vendor of services based on its 
> regulations. This is just the same as a private standard body taking 
> patents on its own standards and collecting license fees.
>
> Rhetoric of equitable, neutral, accountable, transparent, 
> multi-stakeholder, public interest, bottom up (or down), belongs to 
> outreach (aka propaganda). We know the reality, and we know it cannot 
> change.
>
> The reason it cannot change is that ICANN's structure is by design a 
> locus of permanent conflicts of interests. A self proclaimed world 
> monopoly, without voting members, nor international statute, 
> collecting hundreds millions $, without paying taxes anywhere, is 
> already liable to suspicion. Are the costs justified by provided 
> services, or are services the by-product of a racket ?
>
> Humans not being angels, it would be very naive to believe that 
> ICANN's decision makers would stricly ignore their own personal and 
> future interests. And this is to last as long as regulation and 
> services provision keep hiding behind the smoke screen of a single 
> organization.
>
> Another flame (not from Kieren McCarthy).
>
> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20121013_the_draw_icann_severe_case_of_virus_infection/
>
> Louis
> - - -
>
> On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 7:58 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net 
> <mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>> wrote:
>
>
>     On Friday 12 October 2012 10:32 AM, Martin McOsieno wrote:
>>     Hi
>>
>>     Interesting story of the never ending ICANN Conflict of Interest.
>>     This time on .africa?
>     But isnt the problem of conflict of interest structural to
>     multistakeholder (MS) governance (not multistakeholder policy
>     inputs, but actual governance) because MS governance is about
>     those who have interest (or stake) being part of decision making
>     processes. ICANN board and its various decision making committees,
>     for instance, are full of people from the domain name industry, an
>     industry that ICANN is supposed to regulate. Could one, coming
>     from an old fashioned democratic tradition, even think of US's
>     Federal Communications Commission or Telecom Regulatory Authority
>     of India having a rep from Verizon or Airtel respectively! No,
>     certainly not, it would be unthinkable. But not so in the ICANN's
>     world of MSism.
>
>     Consequently most conflict of interest talk at ICANN is window
>     dressing, when the going, and the press, becomes too blatantly
>     bad, as in the case of their former Chairman's misadventures.
>     Otherwise, in the game as usual it is interested parties laying
>     global CIR policies all the way, and the public or the supposed
>     reps of the public sit in the gallery and clap enthusiastically
>     about the untold wonders of MSism.
>
>     This is what the outgoing CEO of ICANN had to say
>
>         “Icann must place commercial and financial interests in their
>         appropriate context,” said Mr. Beckstrom, who is scheduled to
>         step down from his post in July. “How can it do this if all
>         top leadership is from the very domain-name industry it is
>         supposed to coordinate independently? 
>
>     http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/technology/private-fight-at-internet-naming-firm-goes-public.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1332165645-IV28j+gNERC8I8kD5rURmA
>
>
>     See some examples of an endemic of conflicts of interest in ICANN
>     at
>     http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1072&doc_id=240923
>     .
>
>     Many of you may not have great positive thoughts about the
>     democratic system of governance in India, but I can assure you
>     that if any governmental/policy organisation in India approached
>     anywhere near the conflict of interest mess that ICANN is, it
>     would take one public interest litigation to the high court or
>     supreme court to get it folded up in a matter of days, even if the
>     government itself does not fold it up (which too I am sure it
>     would do on its own).
>
>     parminder
>
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