Hi, This is just a note from someone who's a latecomer and mostly observing, so take it for what it's worth. But since I have less history with some of the text, maybe fresh eyes can be helpful. If not, feel free to ignore. On Wed, Nov 04, 2015 at 04:29:49PM -0500, Silver, Bradley wrote:
The argument is only serious, I think, because the Mission is being amended to include a prohibition which facially covers an activity that ICANN is engaged in. ICANN's history of accreditation never had to be justified against such a prohibition, because it wasn't there.
From: Burr, Becky [mailto:Becky.Burr@neustar.biz] Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2015 4:26 PM To: Silver, Bradley; Metalitz, Steven; 'Malcolm Hutty'; Alan Greenberg; Accountability Community Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] WP2 Issues from last night's call
This argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me. ICANN has always accredited - both registries and registrars. Is there a serious argument to be had that this is outside the Mission?
It is pretty clear that ICANN has always accredited, and doing so has been reasonable because of ICANN's actual mission (i.e. the one it has been doing). People wanted (as I understand it, and I think correctly) a prohibition against a number of specific things because of worries about overreach and historical patterns of behaviour. It strikes me that perhaps some of that history is because the mission text was too broad for the actual mission, and if we come up with a mission that is appropriately limited to what ICANN actually does then the specific prohibitions might be unnecessary. This observation applies I think to more than one of the current text questions: if the additional text is actually obviated by a more narrow mission, perhaps it can be left out if we get a narrow mission statement to begin with. As Saint Exupéry had it, "Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher." I hope I'm not speaking out of turn; and again, if this isn't helpful just ignore me. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com