Elections

[Norbert Klein]

Thanks for this sharing of the discussion between Cheryl Preston and Dan
Krimm.

I can understand that Cheryl got some of the impressions during her
meeting in Puerto Rico which Dan is arguing that they need rectifying.
For those who have been involved in this and related debates for a long
time (WHOIS goes on for more than 5 years already) - and I have also
been part of it - it is, in my understanding what Dan says: to remind us
all time and again that ICANN has no mandate to regulate neither law nor
culture across the globe.

We all know that the Internet started in the USA, but by now it is a
global resource (in spite of the imbalances because of the different
economic weight different countries have). I would neither want to see
that Cambodian cultural restraints should be imposed on others, nor
should we be overwhelmed by the cultures of other parts of the world (I
deliberately do not say "USA" or "Western" - the "West" is much more
diverse  - I remember the Rumsfeld initiated debate about the USA and
"old Europe" like France and Germany, different from what he called "new
Europe" like Poland.

This leaves a lot of problems unsolved - but ICANN has no mandate to
solve cultural and political problems.

The very controversial - and still unresolved - political problem
debated during the WSIS summits about the nature of ICANN itself showed
that there is no consensus among different stakeholders, including among
different governments - about the nature and role of ICANN.

And just one more specific point: I never can understand that some
national legislations on privacy has to be dealt with in ICANN as
"exceptional cases" while voices basically coming from the US seem to
have established a majority "default" for what the role of privacy
protection is.

I refer here to the following observation of Cheryl Preston:

"I have heard, but conducted no objective study, the opinion that the
statements coming out of the NCUC, unlike other groups, are routinely
dismissed as a refrain of a single, inflexible, and particularized
approach to ICANN and the Internet, which approach doesn't well
accommodate the dynamic dialogue envisioned by the multi-stakeholder
principle."

Probably I will routinely and inflexibly react negatively when national
laws are considered as "exceptional" to claimed "ICANN consensus."  I
cannot accept the private suggestion I was once given by a quite
important participant in these debates: "If the law of your country does
not conform with this, maybe your country should consider to change your
laws."


Norbert Klein

=

Dan Krimm wrote:
> At 10:04 PM -0600 10/24/07, Cheryl Preston wrote:
>
[snip]

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