[governance] FW: Letter from Senators+ on .ORG Sale

[Mueller, Milton L]

This message, forwarded from the public list of the Noncommercial stakeholders constituency, provides a different perspective on the issue of US congress and .org

From: NCSG-Discuss <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> On Behalf Of Martin Pablo Silva Valent
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2020 9:58 PM
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Letter from Senators+ on .ORG Sale

Hi all,
            I can only strongly oppose to have the US Congress having a say in this matter. I think more important than .org is to not have th US Government, nor any other, thinking they have some sort of oversee or jurisdiction over what we do. I think NCSG should actually do a statement putting the US Cgonress letter in place, making sure that the line we constantly draw to the GAC is unmistakably clear.

            I can oppose to what happened to .org for many reasons, I can also live with a lot of solutions that include Ethos having it, but I cannot, under any circumstance, live with the fact we have to “converse”, “convince” or “inform” the US congress of what we do. Our legitimacy, ICANN legitimacy, is beyond US government scope, this was the IANA Transition holy grail, that is the primordial fight we need to address in this letter. Can you imagine having the same reaction of the Russian congress? The Chinese gov? The Argentina gov? Is not relevant that they might be viewing thing like us, to some extent. That is a circunstancial coincidence. What this means is far  worse and dangerous than having a for profit PIR that ultimately we can regulate in the next contract renewal, in an already rich and diverse gTLD environment.

            I urge NCSG PC to put out a word on the letter making sure the letter is only an expression of speech like any other organisation or individual out there, but in no way has a weight, bond or obligation toward the independent ICANN.

            I think Access did this in good faith an ignorance, but why did they not come to us for ideas is beyond me. This was a mistake even they will someday understand. Next time a big NGO is eager, finally!, to come to play here, we need to be prepared to give them guidance, at least in forms if not content.

Best,
Martín

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20200113/5b4e9ebd/attachment.htm>