On 18/11/15 11:06, Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote:
I don't care really much about the other SO's, but the ccNSO is different, at least in this context.
On 18/11/15 11:06, Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote:> I don't care really much about the other SO's, but the ccNSO is different, at least in this context.
Eberhard is right, but anyone who was not involved in ICANN before 2005 it's worth pointing out some background to the reasons the ccNSO is so different. It will help understand not only why no change to the 2003 settlement in the guise of increasing accountability, will be acceptable to a significant number of ccTLD managers, and thus the entire package will not get consensus. There are two important concepts, one borrowed from the European Union, and the other is a concept well known to GAC members, although it has a slightly different construction used in this context. Those are "subsidiarity" and "sovereignty". SUBSIDIARITY ============ Many, many ccTLD operators could not have become members of the ccNSO without this building block of repairing the relationship between ccTLDs and ICANN which had, in 2003, broken down at a fundamental level. There are in fact many different reasons. However, if membership of the ccNSO implied that the ccNSO majority set ccTLD policy for its members (as the gNSO appears to do), the organisations concerned simply could not be members, and the legitimacy of the ccNSO would be threatened due to non-participation. This including knotty legal issues for those ccTLDs who are considered to be public authorities (i.e. government controlled, owned or directed). Other, private sector ccTLDs, take the view similarly choose not to concede power over their internal policies to a Johnnie-come-After private body without statutory authority over them, and there are still holdouts for this reason too. The principle of subsidiarity is this. No policy or policy decision should be taken at the overall level (c.f. the Union) where such policy was not absolutely necessary to achieve the purpose of the organisation. The expectation is that policy and decisions about how a ccTLD is run, operated etc. is a local matter in the country or territory that the two letter code represents, subject to the rule of law (self-evidently both in California and the place of establishment of the ccTLD operator). And this is echoed in the current version of the GAC principles (2005). SOVEREIGNTY ============ This is one those words which has multiple different, but similar meanings. We could probably coin a better, but for the time being this will have to do. Clearly Prof. Muelller's recent insightful article tells us that traditional views of national sovereignty (e.g. the UK having sovereignty over the Turks and Caicos Islands) cannot apply to 2-letter codes. However, if we use the word sovereignty to highlight the "right of each country or territory ccTLD manager to self-determination in matters relating to its own ccTLD", then it's may be helpful to say that ccTLDs are sovereign unless their Designated Manager misbehaves substantially (See RFC1591, and the interpretation work). Ultimately the test, that I, and I know several other ccNSO Council Members will use when the matter is finally considered is this. "Does the proposal significantly affect the subsidiarity principle and the right of ccTLDs individually and collectively to regulate their own affairs without the involvement or interference of third parties?" Any proposal which does not answer that question in the negative will not receive the necessary support, in my view. On 18/11/15 11:06, Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote:
I don't care really much about the other SO's, but the ccNSO is different, at least in this context.