[governance] IANA transition - BR Gov comments on the CCWG-Accountability Draft Proposal

[Milton L Mueller]

I’ve been watching this dialogue and it seems to cycle and recycle the same problematic.

ICANN and the Internet DNS are recognized to be transnational and critics of the US don’t like or don’t trust the “national legal anchor” in California to which ICANN is moored. But all they can put forward as an alternative are vague references to “international jurisdiction” or “international law.” It is then pointed out that there is no existing international treaty or law that applies, much less any courts with binding authority over ICANN at the international level. Then some say, “well, we will make them.”

What people seem to be missing in this exchange is that we are ALREADY making a transnational jurisdiction and law within the framework of ICANN. Far too much emphasis is being placed on the law and jurisdiction under which ICANN is incorporated, which is really not that relevant once the USG is no longer writing and awarding the IANA contract. What matters are:

1)      The institutional designs and structures that make ICANN accountable to its publics, including binding limits on its scope and mission and a “judiciary” branch for binding dispute resolution

2)      ICANN’s own policy making processes, who is represented within it and how

3)      Last but not least, the _substantive policies_ that come out of ICANN (which everyone seems to neglect); i.e., what are you actually allowed to do (or prohibited from doing) with domain names, your registration data, etc. How are domain names regulated?

The Brazilian idea that 1), 2) and 3) will all magically improve if we shift the territorial jurisdiction of ICANN seems to be an idea completely disconnected from reality – and a huge distraction from the actual issues we face in reforming ICANN. For those of us involved in the actual nuts and bolts of designing the transition, it is amazing how quickly these jurisdictional issues fell by the wayside, because they just don’t address or contribute anything to the basic problems of accountability and good public policy. Indeed, as Froomkin has repeatedly pointed out, the more specific you get about what would happen in some kind of major jurisdictional shift, the murkier all the accountability issues become.

Is it not obvious that if you are holding up international law as the basis for ICANN governance and accountability that you are talking about negotiating a new international treaty that would instantly disenfranchise most of the people here and put everything in the hands of states? Aside from the decade or two, or three that would be required, how accountable would the results of those negotiations be, especially for the 2/3 of the worlds population who don’t live under democratic states?

Brazil and India are taking a typical state-centric view of the world and I am surprised that so many in civil society are misled by it. Either we are designing global internet governance institutions that serve the interests of the internet nation, or we are using IG as a proxy for geopolitical rivalries among states.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20150615/3001b7a5/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t