At 29/11/2014 11:07 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
Alan,
After reading your contribution, I think that most of the proposals you
make are more appropriate to the CCWG on enhanced accountability.
I made no proposals with regard to accountability. If you look at my
wording, I offered several examples of accountability measures that might
be considered by the Accountability CCWG should it need to ensure that
multistakeholders were in control and not the sovereign ICANN Board. They
were there as a proof-of-concept to counter those who claim there is NO
way to control the ICANN Board.
That is, you are referring to
recalling board members, voting margins by the ICANN board, by-laws
regarding GAC advice, and so on. These are all matters relating to ICANN
in its role as a policy maker and policy enforcer, and not as
_implementer_ of policy via the IANA?s modification of the DNS
root zone.
They also matter related to ICANN carrying out the IANA function if that
were to be the way this transition plays out. Clearly not what you and
many others want, but the subject that I was writing on.
There has been general agreement on the principle that policy making and
its implementation in the root zone should be separate and distinct
processes. That is why IETF is separate from IANA, why RIRs are separate
from IANA. And while there is no hard and fast line barring ICANN from
doing both under proper safeguards, most people recognize the inherent
danger of a corporate entity with the unchecked power
Bingo. And that unchecked power was what I was attempting to demonstrate
could be fixed. And fixing it would have a VERY significant benefit to
the policy process as well. And we have little hope of fixing them
without using the IANA contract as leverage. Thus my reference to lost
opportunities.
to implement root zone
changes without bottom up, open and consensual policy development That is
one reason why NTIA established the role it did as backstop for the root
zone, and why the IANA contract required IANA employees to stay out of
policy processes.
Therefore, this CWG has taken the correct approach of trying to replace
the necessary elements of the NTIA role, in order to make both the IANA
functions operator accountable to its customers, and to make ICANN?s
policy process less prone to abuse. The idea that we can simply give IANA
to ICANN permanently and rely on internal accountability for it to avoid
abusing these mixed up roles is never going to be accepted by a
substantial portion of the community.
Possibly, and I find that sad. I truly wish that ICANN had addressed
these matters of trust long before we came to the opportunity of the IANA
transition.
And since your message also made some comments about the acceptability of
the current proposal to the US government, let me point out to you that
the Kelly bill actually would _require_ IANA to be pulled out of
ICANN and formed as a separate corporation
To quote Milton Mueller referring to the Kelly bill, "There are some
very good ideas and some very bad ideas in this proposal". If we
cannot take all of the aspects of the Kelly bill as gospel, then you
cannot use a particular one to demonstrate what the US government
wants. Sensible, desirable, far-fetched and overly micromanaged are
clearly in the eyes of the beholder.
; which means that your proposal
would certainly NOT be acceptable to the Congress. My most recent blog
post performs a detailed analysis of the Kelly bill
http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/11/28/laws-sausages-and-the-iana-transition-part-2-the-kelly-bill/
You made some good comments about some of the ambiguities surrounding the
relationship between the CSC, PRT and Contract Co. As you may have noted,
on the call I agreed with some of those points. But those comments
justify further development and perhaps modification of the current plan;
they do not in any way justify starting from scratch.
That presumes we can find practical answers to all of the concerns. If we
can do that, and keep the costs low, and sell it to the US gov't., then
we will have invented a very cumbersome and complex system that works. If
we cannot address all of them, we have, in my opinion, a real
problem.
Alan
--MM