On 2/27/16 2:45 AM, parminder wrote:
I disagree with Karl that California remains the best jurisdictional bet...
That's sensible.  I'm often wrong.  ;-)

My point was less to advocate California than to reflect that there will be no jurisdiction that will be perfect bliss and beauty.   And that jumping from one frying pan to another will not really solve problems as much as merely shift them into new forms while, at the same time, causing a whole lot of effort, trouble, and risk as the jump is made.

I understand the concern about US hegemony.

But take heart, even those of us in the US feel locked out.

I am a person who is pretty close to the topmost point of that hegemony - I'm a California techie (been part of what would become the internet since about 1968), am a California attorney, have written full internet standards, participated in the creation of ICANN and have been a member of its board of directors.

So do I have influence?   No.  So I can well understand that others who are in less privileged positions than I would feel resentment and anger.

However, the road you are asking us to follow is a road that involves the creation of what is essentially a new international body.   Where is the legitimacy of this body going to come from?  I fear that an effort to come to terms over this will result in something as egregious as the TPP.

And how are the massive assets of ICANN (contracts, money, etc) going to be moved without the willing consent of a lot of third parties.

Moreover, your road seems to involve what has been called a competing or alternative DNS root.  I'm not afraid of competing roots - in fact I think they are a good idea.  But many people are extremely (and not unreasonably) fearful of what could happen if the older roots - which will continue to be used (there is a lot of inertia) - and the new one begin to develop inconsistencies.

Moreover, the root server operators are an mostly independent operators - they have not obligation to accept what ICANN, or anyone else, publishes as a root zone file.  Nor are they under any obligation to not alter that root zone file.  They have not done so, but that is the result of their desire to act with extreme caution rather than legal compulsion.  We owe a lot to the root server operators.  They deployed anycast servers on their on initiative without the consent, and even despite the consent, of ICANN.  Do we really want to work against a group who has perhaps done more to assure the stability of DNS than anyone?

The point of my notes is that we should fix ICANN and do so in a way that follows well known, and widely accepted, methods.   ICANN was intentionally designed to be distant and unaccountable - deals were struck (and remain secret to this day) when the law firm that created ICANN was pushing "newco" through the US Dep't of Commerce.

There is a lot of room to fix the existing ICANN.  We can reshape it to have a real membership structure, with real voters rather than artificial ones being proposed.  And we can change ICANN's organic documents - its Articles and Bylaws - to require that certain issues receive supermajority votes on the board, to remove the President from his ex-officio seat on the board (the damage that that has caused over the years is significant), etc.  As I mentioned previously, take a look at what we (Boston Working Group) proposed back in 1998 - http://cavebear.com/bwg/submission-letter.html

The new proposals have a lot of good ideas.  I jump up and applaud changes to the Articles/Bylaws that better channel the decision making of the board of directors and require special procedures for certain matters.  I agree with the general notion of allowing members to have certain powers and rights - I just find that what is being proposed is redundant to, and inferior to, what is already available under California law.

                --karl--