On 31/12/2014 03:54, Bruce Tonkin wrote:
Hello Kavouss,
If the Board/ICANN will accept in WS1 a proposal for a strong contractual boundary on what they may do along with an external mechanism that can be invoked by the community to police that boundary, then most of the other accountability can be in WS2.
In my personal view - this sounds reasonable in principle.
Previously, Avri wrote:
If it does stick with separability then a contractual relationship remains as an ongoing leverage point. In terms of CWG-Stewardship work, Contract Co holding the contract, still appears to be quite active as a proposal.
Perhaps we need to look at the WS1 list in terms of the binary discriminant: is there an ongoing contractual relationship with an eternal entity or not. I expect the WS1 list will vary based on which of these is being considered.
We need to be careful not to assume CWG-Stewardship has done more than it has, or that this lessens our workload. Firstly, the contractual relationship CWG-Stewardship are proposing only concerns the operations of IANA. They have explicitly left consideration of proposals to ensure the accountability of ICANN (including anything to do with gTLD policy) to this group. So it would be dangerous to assume that we don't need to consider something we might otherwise have done on the basis that CWG-Stewardship has covered it. Of course, it's open to us to build on what CWG-Stewardship have proposed. We could, for example, come up with additional terms for the contract, and propose that the MRT be responsible for overseeing and enforcing those terms. But it will be up to us - not CWG-Stewardship - to propose this. Secondly, concerning the "separability" that Avri refers to, separation of IANA from ICANN is a nuclear option. While I support this principle, to be available as a last resort, it should BE the last resort, not the first thing to which we turn. It shouldn't be used as a reason for this group to do less to come up with mechanisms to resolve existing problems, on the grounds that "if we end up being unhappy, we've still got separability": we need mechanisms short of separation, because we don't want to get in a situation where w're left with nothing but the choice is between a bad outcome and separation (another bad outcome). Finally, regarding Bruce's point about putting "most of the rest in WS2", well, possibly. But we mustn't let this redefine the ambit of WS1: anything which is fundamental to the accountability of ICANN, that can't be added by the community later, needs to be in WS1. -- Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523 Head of Public Affairs | Read the LINX Public Affairs blog London Internet Exchange | http://publicaffairs.linx.net/ London Internet Exchange Ltd 21-27 St Thomas Street, London SE1 9RY Company Registered in England No. 3137929 Trinity Court, Trinity Street, Peterborough PE1 1DA