[governance] DMP} Statement on Process and Objectives for the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance

[Karl Auerbach]

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On 11/29/2013 05:49 PM, Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
> For those interested in the subject of internationalisation of 
> ICANN - and the broader subject of the types of structure one can 
> use to incorporate governments and non-governments that doesn’t 
> give governments the only governance seat at the table, ICANN had 
> Hans Corell, the noted jurist, develop a report on the subject
> some years back. It is still quite relevant reading as food for 
> thought.

Through the haze of intervening years I do somewhat remember seeing
this report, and others like it that may not yet be public.

My feedback to ICANN at the time was that every one of these had its
head in the clouds and rather forgot the practical issues that ICANN
is an existing body that has money and property and sits atop a
hierarchy of existing contracts.

One can not simply transfer property, money, or contracts - at least
not if one wants to avoid being accused of some modern form of the old
crime/tort of "conversion".

And particularly, a body such as ICANN that has received US and
California tax protection for a decade and a half, is under a
collection of restrictive laws and regulations about what it can do
with its wealth and obligations.

What always bothered me about much of this "internationalization"
speculation is the presumption that the grass is greener outside of
California and the USA.

Being a resident of California and a citizen of the US my perspective
is necessarily somewhat colored - but every one of us will have a
similar tendency to prefer their own local place.

I do not see much reality in the proposition that other locations are
better or that ICANN will achieve greater transparency or
accountability by relocating.

And changing to something negotiated between governments... well, then
ICANN will just become a new way to spell "ITU".

ICANN's non-transparency and non-accountability is the work of ICANN
itself.  ICANN's non-transparency and non-accountability is not the
result of its place of existence.  ICANN itself chose to pretend that
California laws did not obligate it to election of directors or many
other forms of transparency and accountability.

An ICANN in any other place will be just as willing to wrap itself
with opaque veils and dig moats between itself and the community of
internet users.

It seems to me that as for ICANN that it really ought to live up to
its obligations under California law, obligations that it has worked
tirelessly to avoid:

Here's a note on this topic that dates from nearly 14 years ago:

  http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm#full-members

When we look to the larger scope of internet governance rather than
merely at ICANN we should remind ourselves that we have been far too
lax about clearly defining the jobs that we want to be done.

We should no build structure of governance without knowing quite
clearly what we want it to do.

If we took the time to recognize the jobs to be done we would
recognize that many of those jobs are things that are non-contentious
and essentially clerical in nature.  For those kinds of things we can
build tightly limited bodies that have little discretion and operate
by a simple notice-and-comment process with appeal to a superior body
for claims of abuse of discretion.

There will be remaining issues that involve contentious issues for
which we can design specific governance bodies.

It is dangerous to build governance bodies that have multiple
discretionary jobs.  We can be certain that any governance body that
has multiple roles will soon invent ways to dance between those roles
to evade responsibility and accountability.

	--karl--

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