[governance] [bestbits] US Control over ICANN

[Guru Acharya]

I absolutely agree with Pranesh's stand. The inherent political objective
of the IANA Transition was to remove the unilateral control of the United
States (executive, judicial and legislative) over ICANN and the IANA
Functions. What we have achieved is quite the opposite making the situation
worse than before. While we may have curtailed the ability of the USG to
award the contract, we have effectively made ICANN (and PTI) the permanent
home of IANA. The IANA Transition has literally gifted IANA to a US
Corporation in perpetuity owing to the weak form of separability adopted by
the CWG, thus making it even more susceptible to judicial and legislative
interference by the US. Even the names steward for awarding the contract is
a US Corporation. At least previously, the USG could have (theoretically)
removed IANA from ICANN and awarded the IANA Functions Contract to a non-US
entity. I think we got lost in the legal complexities of the transition and
effectively lost sense of the larger political objective.

In any case, at the very least, the IGC and BestBits should consider
adopting a position for further reducing US control. This is possible
through multiple means without having an effect on security and stability.
For example, this could be achieved in the form of building redundancy to
PTI. By redundancy, I mean a new corporation in Geneva that duplicates PTI.
Both PTI(California) and PTI(Geneva) would perform the IANA Functions in
parallel and duplicate each others work. In case of judicial or legislative
interference by the US, the multistakeholder community could stop IANA in
PTI(California) and make PTI(Geneva) the authoritative IANA. At the same
time, the community could re-initiate redundancy by introducing a
PTI(Morocco) in case the government in Geneva loses sense of the larger
picture. The financial expense of maintaining the redundancy is negligible
in comparison to the political costs of government interference. We already
have a IANA (PTI) budget for this year, making a social cost benefit
analysis an easy task.

While I propose one model, other constructive frameworks are also feasible.
The IGC and BestBits need to adopt a broader position of continuing its
fight to reduce US interference.

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 3:14 AM, Pranesh Prakash <pranesh at cis-india.org>
wrote:

> Dear all,
> In 2005 at WSIS, here are some of the demands made by the Civil Society
> Internet Governance Caucus:
>
> “ICANN will negotiate an appropriate host country agreement to replace its
>> California Incorporation, being careful to retain those aspects of its
>> California Incorporation that enhance its accountability to the global
>> Internet user community.
>> "ICANN's decisions, and any host country agreement, must be required to
>> comply with public policy requirements negotiated through international
>> treaties in regard to, inter alia, human rights treaties, privacy rights,
>> gender agreements and trade rules. …
>> "It is also expected that the multi-stakeholder community will observe
>> and comment on the progress made in this process through the proposed
>> [Internet Governance] Forum."
>>
>
> https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/pc3/contributions/sca/hbf-29.doc
>
> Do the IGC membership disavow this stand?
>
> And what do the membership of allied civil society groupings like Best
> Bits think about this, given that not just ICANN but even the new
> "Post-Transition IANA" is currently set to be incorporated as a California
> corporation?
>
> ~ Pranesh
>
> --
> Pranesh Prakash
> Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society
> http://cis-india.org | tel:+91 80 40926283
> sip:pranesh at ostel.co | xmpp:pranesh at cis-india.org
> https://twitter.com/pranesh
>
>
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