On Friday 12 August 2016 12:11 AM, John Curran wrote:
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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)
More people do not use cars, or guns, or ...... the list is endless. Does not mean that rules around them are not to be considered issues of 'public governance' just for that reason. The Internet today impacts practically everyone, whether one uses it or not. Just as laws of international trade effects everyone, whether one is directly carrying out trade or not.. Excuse me to say it, but this is a very weak argument.
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 am sure you'd then also say 'democracy' is similarly loaded (indeed this has often been said in a similar context), and for all these reasons words like 'public' and 'democracy' should not be used. The current transition is a part of the original plan for 'privatisation' of DNS functions. Do you realise how loaded the term 'privatisation' is, especially outside US, and how much of global civil society action today is organised against the excesses of it . But I understand that those who control the status quo at ICANN find that term fine but not terms like public governance and democracy, and so not much can be done about it. We can make some noise on a elist like this but it will die down, and that is it. Powers that be will believe what they would, and that remains the dominant discourse and vocabulary. But I must say that it is shocking for me to hear that 'public governance' is a term to be avoided because it is associated with 'authoritarian decision making structures'. It is such an openly anti-democratic statement.
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You cannot equate “lessening the burdens of government” with actual performance of governance - it may be the case, but is not clearly and inevitably so. If that logic were true, then “The United Nations lessons the need for warfare” would equate to “The work of the United Nations is clearly warfare…”
:) That is a very private, and may I say, extremely convoluted, logic..... US gov gives tax exemption on a certain understanding of the term 'lessening the burden of government' and that, I hope youd agree, cannot be in the meaning of doing opposite of what government would otherwise (in the absence of the agent lessening the burden) be doing.
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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.
I have stated that I believe that ICANN does a public governance function. As to how to make the ICANN community believe the same, first of all I have never been able to understand what exactly the ICANN community is (and I have asked this question often even in this space) . it seems just to be whatever the needs of certain legitimisation by ICANN status quo wants it to be at a particular moment, and for a particular purpose. parminder
… 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 of this working group. That does not preclude having additional standards of transparency and accountability applied to its activities, only that the authority for any additional standards is not readily apparent (unlike the legitimacy of structures that the ICANN community defines for such purposes.)
Thanks, /John
Disclaimer: my views alone.