A modest attempt to advance the "Mission scoping" discussion
Dear Avri, Dear All, I am chiming into this long thread because I believe Avri's point below is very relevant, and echoes in other terms the concern voiced by our Legal Advisors a few days ago. To quote Holly's email : " For clients facing similar dilemmas, a common approach is to draft general principles into governing documents and provide a mechanism for interpreting them in specific situations. We recommend that the CCWG agree upon and articulate mission principles at a general level appropriate for inclusion in the Bylaws, understanding that refinement and interpretation will be needed thereafter. Based on the assumption that we would accept this advice, and that the IRP is the "mechanism for interpretation", we would have to focus on what general principles we can agree on, and only include this set of principles as part of our group's recommendations. Based on my reading of this thread, and the CCWG call discussions, it seems to me that there are some areas of agreement. First I believe the key principles of the 3rd draft remain acceptable : a. ICANN shall not impose regulations on services that use the Internets unique identifiers, or the content that such services carry or provide. b. ICANN shall have the ability to negotiate, enter into and enforce agreements with contracted parties in furtherance service of its Mission. Then I noticed what there seems to be agreement that related challenges of Icann decision would be focused on challenging the decision to enter into an agreement,, rather than the decision to enforce an agreement. And most importantly, regarding the discussion about "voluntary commitments", as Avri points out, we might have a way forward if we were to agree that *the scope of acceptable commitments in any agreement should be defined by policy* (with all the related process safeguards, including bottom up nature as well as advisory inputs), instead of implementation. Then it would be up to the policy makers to define whether eligibility conditions are appropriate or not and should be enforced, whether a specific form of stakeholder consultation or governance is acceptable, etc. I hope this is helpful to the discussion. Best, Mathieu PS: I have voluntarily left aside the "grandparenting" discussion which should be another thread. Our lawyers raised 5 very clear and good questions. -----Message d'origine----- De : accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org] De la part de Avri Doria Envoyé : mercredi 20 janvier 2016 06:02 À : accountability-cross-community@icann.org Objet : Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Deck for Meeting #75 Mission Statement discussion Hi, Perhaps I am misunderstanding the conversation ongoing on this list, but this seems more like gTLD policy making than clarifying without changing the mission. It is almost as if we want to preclude the freedom of the GNSO to make bottom up multistakeholder decisions about gTLDs or community gTLDs that may be decided upon in the future. We are getting into a very murky issue that is still the subject of reconsideration, CEP and IRP processes. In fact more all the time. I think we are trying to do too much at the last minute with manipulation of the mission to meet people's political ideas about what ICANN should and should not do. My suggestions is that we go back to the wording for draft 3 and just make the minimal changes needed by the the IETF and the RIRs and leave discussions about ICANN's mission for WS2 or elsewhen - this is a long discussion we are embarking on. Personally I am very committed to the policies that the GNSO initiated on communities and while I think there is a lot of work to do on them in the next PDP, I do not think it is work that is appropriate at this point in time for this process. We are supposed to be working on accountability not the mission or the gTLD program. but if this is going to become a question about what is acceptable in terms of communities, their commitments and the contracts they make with ICANN on behalf of the communities they intend to serve, I will have a whole lot more to say. I am currently saving those arguments for the subsequent gTLD PDP, but if those issues need to be fought here and now, I guess I am willing. Is this part of the WS1 task? If so, why? I do not think this is part of the requirement for WS1 and transition. avri --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Matthew:
-----Original Message-----
Based on the assumption that we would accept this advice, and that the IRP is the "mechanism for interpretation", we would have to focus on what general principles we can agree on, and only include this set of principles as part of our group's recommendations. Based on my reading of this thread, and the CCWG call discussions, it seems to me that there are some areas of agreement.
We have the general principles. Those of us who believe in mission limitations are not the ones causing the delay here. The problem stems from the realization of certain people that mission limitations might actually prevent ICANN from doing certain things that they might want it to do. So we are discussing what those principles might actually mean in practice. There are legitimate issues to be discussed about the proper scope of contractual enforcement. In my opinion this has been a very useful and clarifying discussion.
First I believe the key principles of the 3rd draft remain acceptable : And most importantly, regarding the discussion about "voluntary commitments", as Avri points out, we might have a way forward if we were to agree that *the scope of acceptable commitments in any agreement should be defined by policy* (with all the related process safeguards, including bottom up nature as well as advisory inputs), instead of implementation. Then it would be up to the policy makers to define whether eligibility conditions are appropriate or not and should be enforced, whether a specific form of stakeholder consultation or governance is acceptable, etc.
What you are proposing here, Matthew, is that we abandon basic, constitutional mission limitations and allow any policy to dictate ICANN's mission. Not acceptable, sorry. It misses the whole point of having a defined and limited mission.
On 20/01/2016 14:04, Mueller, Milton L wrote:
First I believe the key principles of the 3rd draft remain acceptable :
And most importantly, regarding the discussion about "voluntary commitments", as Avri points out, we might have a way forward if we were to agree that *the scope of acceptable commitments in any agreement should be defined by policy* (with all the related process safeguards, including bottom up nature as well as advisory inputs), instead of implementation. Then it would be up to the policy makers to define whether eligibility conditions are appropriate or not and should be enforced, whether a specific form of stakeholder consultation or governance is acceptable, etc.
What you are proposing here, Matthew, is that we abandon basic, constitutional mission limitations and allow any policy to dictate ICANN's mission. Not acceptable, sorry. It misses the whole point of having a defined and limited mission.
If that were what Mathieu were proposing then I would also object, but I didn't read him as meaning that. Policy is also required to remain within the scope of the Mission. So long as that principle remains inviolate, I can warmly support Mathieu's proposal (or Mathieu's proposed implementation of Holly's recommended way out of this discussion, or however you want to characterise it). -- 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 Monument Place, 24 Monument Street, London EC3R 8AJ Company Registered in England No. 3137929 Trinity Court, Trinity Street, Peterborough PE1 1DA
Describing one group as "Those ... who believe in mission limitations" sets up a false and subtly pejorative discussion. It's not unlike certain political groups in the US that describe themselves as "patriots," with the subtle implication that those who disagree with them are less patriotic or even traitorous. We all believe in mission limitations. The boundaries of those limitations is where viewpoints differ. And I would submit that ever more aggressive attempts to constrain ICANN's mission (rather than merely to clarify it) and to draw circles with more and more of ICANN's current activities "out of bounds" are responsible for a significant amount of this "delay" (if that's what one wants to call it). We have just had glimpses of upcoming attempts to significantly rewrite the AGB, using the "new" Mission/Scope/Core Values as a sword (or perhaps a machete) to do so. It is this Trojan Horse aspect of the Mission/Scope/Core Values changes that is most troubling. At a "mob sit-down," everyone pulls out all their weapons and places them on the table (at least in the movies) -- that's transparency. This group is far less transparent Although a few of the intended uses of the M/S/CV changes have been fairly well revealed, there still seem to be many "concealed weapons" hidden in the M/S/CV by various parties, with new ones barely glimpsed from time to time. Assuming these survive implementation, we are in for a ground war of significant proportions once these changes are made effective in the ICANN Bylaws. Greg On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 11:15 AM, Malcolm Hutty <malcolm@linx.net> wrote:
On 20/01/2016 14:04, Mueller, Milton L wrote:
First I believe the key principles of the 3rd draft remain acceptable :
And most importantly, regarding the discussion about "voluntary commitments", as Avri points out, we might have a way forward if we were to agree that *the scope of acceptable commitments in any agreement should be defined by policy* (with all the related process safeguards, including bottom up nature as well as advisory inputs), instead of implementation. Then it would be up to the policy makers to define whether eligibility conditions are appropriate or not and should be enforced, whether a specific form of stakeholder consultation or governance is acceptable, etc.
What you are proposing here, Matthew, is that we abandon basic, constitutional mission limitations and allow any policy to dictate ICANN's mission. Not acceptable, sorry. It misses the whole point of having a defined and limited mission.
If that were what Mathieu were proposing then I would also object, but I didn't read him as meaning that.
Policy is also required to remain within the scope of the Mission. So long as that principle remains inviolate, I can warmly support Mathieu's proposal (or Mathieu's proposed implementation of Holly's recommended way out of this discussion, or however you want to characterise it).
-- 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 Monument Place, 24 Monument Street, London EC3R 8AJ
Company Registered in England No. 3137929 Trinity Court, Trinity Street, Peterborough PE1 1DA
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Mathieu, Thank you for the suggestion, however ... The authors and the various eventual applicants to ICANN in 2000 and 2004 and 2010 for delegations for linguistic and/or cultural and/or municipal and/or regional service registries, as I recall them did not, in general, frame the agreements they proposed within their eventual applications as being made for the purpose of competitive advantage in a contention process. The authors of the applications in 2010 for delegations other than those for linguistic and/or cultural and/or municipal and/or regional service registries, again, as I recall them, rationally evaluated whether their business models could be achieved under the (presumed enforced) restrictions of the "community-type" (which bobbled through each of the revisions of the draft AGB, in form, and in dispositive function). My point being that there are "voluntary commitments" such as services to users who prefer a Catalan namespace, or a cooperative-operated registry, absent any application impediment such as string similarity. Dissimilarly, there are "voluntary commitments" which appear to have no meaning outside of the application type restriction of 2004, and more recently, the similar string contention resolution mechanism of 2010. We can distinguish between these, and should, as the exercise of "voluntary commitments" for the purposes of gaming type restrictions (2004) and/or gaming contention (2010), substitutes (gamed) implementation for the policy of record.
And most importantly, regarding the discussion about "voluntary commitments", as Avri points out, we might have a way forward if we were to agree that *the scope of acceptable commitments in any agreement should be defined by policy* (with all the related process safeguards, including bottom up nature as well as advisory inputs), instead of implementation. Then it would be up to the policy makers to define whether eligibility conditions are appropriate or not and should be enforced, whether a specific form of stakeholder consultation or governance is acceptable, etc.
As a process coda, prior to the June 2010 meeting in Bruxelles, there was no "single user" application type in any draft of the AGB. Our current problem contains the implementation-trumps-policy warts of the 2010 round, and we cannot pretend that policy has been made transparently, accountably, and from the bottom-up, though we can hope that it is in the present, and will be in the future. Eric Brunner-Williams Eugene, Oregon
Mathieu, Thanks for your views. It make the task more complex . The issue was not as complex as you the one zou referred to are talking about. If we follow this path ,we generate a new discussion and may end it up February 2017. Regards Kavouss 2016-01-20 20:29 GMT+01:00 Eric (Maule) Brunner-Williams < ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net>:
Mathieu,
Thank you for the suggestion, however ... The authors and the various eventual applicants to ICANN in 2000 and 2004 and 2010 for delegations for linguistic and/or cultural and/or municipal and/or regional service registries, as I recall them did not, in general, frame the agreements they proposed within their eventual applications as being made for the purpose of competitive advantage in a contention process.
The authors of the applications in 2010 for delegations other than those for linguistic and/or cultural and/or municipal and/or regional service registries, again, as I recall them, rationally evaluated whether their business models could be achieved under the (presumed enforced) restrictions of the "community-type" (which bobbled through each of the revisions of the draft AGB, in form, and in dispositive function).
My point being that there are "voluntary commitments" such as services to users who prefer a Catalan namespace, or a cooperative-operated registry, absent any application impediment such as string similarity. Dissimilarly, there are "voluntary commitments" which appear to have no meaning outside of the application type restriction of 2004, and more recently, the similar string contention resolution mechanism of 2010.
We can distinguish between these, and should, as the exercise of "voluntary commitments" for the purposes of gaming type restrictions (2004) and/or gaming contention (2010), substitutes (gamed) implementation for the policy of record.
And most importantly, regarding the discussion about "voluntary commitments", as Avri points out, we might have a way forward if we were to agree that *the scope of acceptable commitments in any agreement should be defined by policy* (with all the related process safeguards, including bottom up nature as well as advisory inputs), instead of implementation. Then it would be up to the policy makers to define whether eligibility conditions are appropriate or not and should be enforced, whether a specific form of stakeholder consultation or governance is acceptable, etc.
As a process coda, prior to the June 2010 meeting in Bruxelles, there was no "single user" application type in any draft of the AGB. Our current problem contains the implementation-trumps-policy warts of the 2010 round, and we cannot pretend that policy has been made transparently, accountably, and from the bottom-up, though we can hope that it is in the present, and will be in the future.
Eric Brunner-Williams Eugene, Oregon _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
participants (6)
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Eric (Maule) Brunner-Williams -
Greg Shatan -
Kavouss Arasteh -
Malcolm Hutty -
Mathieu Weill -
Mueller, Milton L