[ncdnhc-discuss] Board Positions on .ORG (fwd)

[James Love]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alejandro Pisanty - DGSCA y FQ, UNAM" <apisan at servidor.unam.mx>
> Now. Would some of you engage in the discussion for the evolution and
> reform committee? It is an open process in which time is of the essence.
> May I call on participants to go beyond the initial part of Stuart Lynn's
> document, ie skip the part on governments for a minute since there is
> already input on that, and start focussing on such matters as the
> structure itself? Mission, bounds, stakeholders, processes?

 1.     Regarding Mission and bounds:

 a.  there was much concern and opposition to the mission statement type
message that was suggested in the discussion of the staff's activities and
the huge budget.  Maybe a simple place to start is to think about limiting
the growth of the bureacracy and the budget.

b.  Given the current makeup of the ICANN board, it seems to me that it
offers little in terms of technical coordination for the three functions,
and seems to be mostly designed to addresss the issue of who controls and
obtains access to the root for unique TLD strings.   Maybe the mission
should be shrunk to this, and the idea of combining all three SOs should be
rejected.   Why try to everything all at once.  The numbering and protoccol
groups don't seem to need ICANN very much.   On the other hand, the whole
issue of names seems still pretty much a work in progress.

c.  I have asked several times why the issue of uniqueness of TLD strings
cannot be negotiated by several (some) regional or functional groups
coordinating as equals.   I really haven't had any substantive discussion of
why centralization is essential.   Suppose there were just three regional
bodies, for purposes of discussion, the US, Europe and everyone else......
why couldn't each of the three groups have its own structure and address
regionally all the stability, quality and trademark issues, and simply
coordinate the uniqueness issue for new TLDs?    This could not be difficult
to do, if one wanted to do this.  Why is global so essential?     Is it
because the new regions really could not work together, rather than any
problems of coordination?

2.  Stakeholders.

In my opinion, Lynn pretty much gives the shaft to consumer interests.  Why
is this a good idea?    The whole rationale for ICANN was to protect
consumer interests.

3.  Processes.

a.  If you could have a process that gave the domain name holders some power
over thier own registry, for some accountability, and some bounds over what
ICANN is up to, they people wouldn't worry so much about the other things.
If domain holders are held hostgage to the registry and to policies that
ICANN makes up, they you have to deal with the popular accountability issue.

b.  ICANN needs better work on basic stuff, like conflict rule for staff and
contractors, making the independent review actually work, finding a way to
give consumer interests a voice without a tax to vote in the DNSO.    A real
commitment to work with the existing bylaws, whatever they are, so the "rule
of law" idea has come creditability.

  Jamie