On Tue, 27 Nov 2018 at 00:08, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl@gih.com> wrote:
it appears that following President Macron's call for more regulation, many European stakeholders are saying that if ICANN is unable to assume regulation of Registry and Registrar contracts in order to protect consumers, European countries should introduce local legislation to regulate the industry. Sad as it may be, not many people trust ICANN to do anything and more and more consumers consider regulation as a good thing.
Hi Olivier, It should be no shock by now that I am neither surprised nor saddened by this trend, and the mistrust is most certainly well-earned. All the times that good people like you and me and Alan and Carlton and numerous others have tried to impart the value of heeding (or even acknowledging) the public interest, only to be ignored or belittled, are finally coming back to bite ICANN on the arse. All of the "who do the GAC think they are" whining has inevitably been interpreted as invitation for governments to remind ICANN who is actually sovereign and who just plays at it. When threatened, ICANN has always played the fear card, warning that the only alternative to its industry capture is government capture. That alarm no longer resonates, as the industry had proven beyond any doubt that it is not only incapable of self-regulation but also incapable of accommodating the mitigating forces that would sustain its legitimacy. Whether the alternative is a multilateral one or individual countries acting on their own, ICANN has no say in that debate, its goodwill long squandered despite the best efforts of At-Large and others. Perhaps, using the only tool that it understands, ICANN should expand the scope of the committee promoting "universal acceptance" ... pleading the case not just for new gTLDs, but also the ICANN that made them. (Meanwhile, the entitlement parade that is the Subsequent Procedues WG rolls on, eager to inflict upon us a new round of TLDs even less wanted than the last one. Nothing is learned. Of COURSE trust is gone.) Cheers, -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch or @el56