On Monday 08 August 2016 04:26 PM, John Curran wrote:

snip

Parminder -

ICANN by its function is not a "public governance body” - it is actually a coordination

body that supports the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s various identifier

systems.

Thanks for your response John. I dont see why the latter (Internet identifier coordination) cannot be or isnt a subset of the former (public governance) . More specifically, I dont see how, for instance, allocation of a generic language term, of immense cultural value, .book, as privately owned gTLD to Amazon, in complete violation of the spirit of trademark laws, is not a public governance or public policy issue.

OECD defines Public governance as ""the formal and informal arrangements that determine how public decisions are made and how public actions are carried out, from the perspective of maintaining a country’s constitutional values in the face of changing problems, actors and environments" . (You may just have to change from 'country's' to the 'world's' to talk about a global public governance function.) Are ICANN decisions and actions not public decisions and public actions?

ICANN and its community undertake decisions that affect those who make use of the

Internet identifiers in question. There are still a billion plus people on the planet who

do not do so, and ICANN has no ‘governance’ function with respect to them, yet your

use of the “public governance body” would lead many to assume otherwise (due to

the traditional role of public authorities in public governance)

While I recognize that the use of the Internet is pervasive, it is not clear that one can

equate its coordination with “public governance”, as the latter term is heavily overloaded

with meaning from its usage in authoritarian decision making structures, both within

individual states and on a multilateral basis.

I dont see how the most important and contested functions of ICANN are of not a public governance nature. If it is were only doing some technical management, maybe 30 people sitting is a small office somewhere could have achieved it rather well, rather than this whole big juggernaut that we know ICANN to be.

It’s certainly a coordination function, but again, your use of the term “public governance”

is readily misunderstood for more classical modes of governance. While you cite the

OECD, it’s equally easy to find definitions of “public governance” such as this -

"What is public governance? - Public Governance is about the exercise of public authority by state governments aimed at generating rules and regulations and delivering services to a community of citizens.” (Basel Institute on Public Governance, <https://www.baselgovernance.org/theme/public_governance>)

This does not in any way impinge on your main point: i.e. that ICANN should operate

under very high transparency requirements – only that it should do so because such

transparency was a basic tenet of its establishment and remains so to this day.

So, if I paraphrase and extrapolate rightly, you are saying that ICANN is just whatever it says it is, and that is it.

For purposes of this group’s WS2 activities,I believe that ICANN is public benefit corporation

which helps ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifier systems

via specific coordination activities. If you see some other framework into which ICANN belongs,

it would be best to elucidate on that point and make sure that the ICANN community believes

the same.

… No external cannons of public propriety - like transparency, accountability, etc can be applied to it. It is sui generis and sovereign in its constitution.

I do believe defining its transparency and accountability structures are inherent to the activities