[bestbits] Re: [governance] Your key ICANN issues as a user

John Curran jcurran at istaff.org
Thu Jun 19 20:39:03 EDT 2014


On Jun 19, 2014, at 5:51 PM, Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:

> John, the focus is very much on the narrow “internet community” rather than the broader community of internet users. I think that should change.

If you are referring to "the participants involved in matters within ICANN's remit" (e.g. 
coordination of Internet names and numbers, DNS name policy development, operation 
of the IANA registry) then I fully agree with you.
 
> There is very little that suggests to me that the current expenditure on “facilitating global participation in the policy development process” (largely travel assistance for insiders) results in either better policy, more globally inclusive policy development processes, or more efficient processes.

That is unfortunate, and probably a topic that folks should advocate to change.
  
> However, I appreciate that many people here think ICANN is wonderful.

"ICANN is wonderful" is a rather large encompassing statement which I doubt very
many could universally embrace.  I think ICANN has done an excellent job in some
areas, but there is always room for improvement.   However, how well ICANN 
performs its tasks is not necessarily even relevant to to the issue you raised, i.e. 
whether ICANN should be devoting a percentage of its considerable income to
addressing Internet-related social issues (and possibly issues unrelated to its
mission of coordinating the Internet's systems of unique identifiers?)

> But even if it were efficient, and ICANN could be held up as a shining light as to how to engage stakeholders from all over the world, I would still argue that devotion of a percentage of its income to dealing with wider internet related social issues would be a worthwhile step.  

There are quite a few participants in the Internet ecosystem, including Internet service
providers, online content providers, parties involved in Internet registry coordination, etc.
Many of these are for-profit, some are not-for-profit.   You've asserted that there should
be a tax on the Internet registry system to address Internet-related social issues; is this
because that is the appropriate place to levy such taxes, or simply because it is a matter
of convenience to tax the single centralized not-for-profit entity rather than the globally
diverse for-profit entities located in hundreds of jurisdictions?    

/John

Disclaimer: my views alone.



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