Authoritarian governments make a bid to control the Internet.

[Milton L Mueller]

Rebecca:
Thanks for sending this message and for making the commentary on Circle ID.

You say:

?       From everything I have observed, the U.S. government's relationship with ICANN is extremely hands-off.

This is not quite right. U.S. intervention in the .xxx case was the most visible case, but the JPA contains a dictum that ICANN's Whois policy must reflect the U.s. policy. Also, there are numerous indications that the decided bias against noncommercial participation in ICANN stems from ICANN being concerned about continuing to get the support of the USG, which after all is the Dept of Commerce.


You wrote:
?       Based on what various people at ICANN have told me, there appear to be
?       concerns amongst some members of the ICANN board that the NCUC is dominated
?       by a certain group of American lawyers and academics, who for some reason they don't like

What this means is, "Lawyers and academics who are critical of ICANN and many of its policies." Since when does the management of an organization that is supposed to be accountable, in a bottom up manner, to stakeholders decide that it will decide which of these stakeholders it will listen to and which it will not? The "American" charge is ridiculous because the LSE report showed - and a glance at any statistics concerning composition confirms -that NCUC is is more geographically diverse than any other GNSO entity. What these people are trying to say is, "if you're critical of us and what we do, you're can't possibly be representative." But the more people from the noncommercial sector get involved, there is no substantial change in the SG's political approach.

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