OReilly Media on "ICANN without restraints: the difficulties of coordinating stakeholders"

[Rafik Dammak]

Hi,
Well done, Radar has a good audience and different than others. hope that we
can reach other media.

Rafik

2009/10/3 Robin Gross <robin at ipjustice.org>

> FYI:
> *
> *
> *http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/icann-without-restraints-the-d.html*
> *
> *
> *ICANN without restraints: the difficulties of coordinating stakeholders<http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/icann-without-restraints-the-d.html>
> ***
> by Andy Oram <http://radar.oreilly.com/andyo>
>
> People interested in coalitions and policy-making on a global scale--topics
> that are increasingly relevant in a world whose borders are irrelevant to
> carbon dioxide, flu viruses, and other critical entities--need to learn from
> other organizations that are dealing with these issues. This week brings
> particularly important news about the Internet Corporation for Assigned
> Names and Numbers (ICANN) <http://icann.org/>, which has been making
> policy for eleven years under a number of difficult premises:
>
>    - It was created hastily and arbitrarily without roots in the
>    communities most interested in its mandate.
>    - Its concept of stakeholders is boundless, potentially involving
>    anyone who uses the Internet or gets information that has passed at some
>    point over the Internet.
>    - Its reach is global, and its decisions are affected by issues of
>    language and culture.
>
> Those in charge of ICANN have compounded these intrinsic problems with poor
> decisions and bad leadership. But ICANN is currently undergoing one of its
> regular reorganizations. Hopes were on the rise that it may overcome the
> barriers I've listed as well as its own history--at least till this week.
> On September 30, the U.S. Department of Commerce, which is ICANN's publicly
> accountable overseer, announced the most important decision affecting ICANN
> since its founding: the U.S. government will give up its role as overseer<http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-30sep09-en.htm#video>and make ICANN independent. ICANN's missteps in the past pushed the Commerce
> Department to seriously consider revoking ICANN's authority. But that can
> never happen now.
>
> Instead, a body called the Governmental Advisory Committee provides input
> to be heeded or ignored by ICANN, at its option. And because this committee
> is so diffuse, its members possessing different interests and agendas, one
> can hardly imagine them coming together to strongly voice opposition to a
> controversial ICANN decision.
>
> Reactions among Internet observers also indicate that this unprecedented
> assignment of authority was handled in secrecy, which is an odd way, to say
> the least, for a government agency to carry out a critical policy.
>
> Therefore, the questions that ICANN's history raises about governance and
> participation become even more relevant.
>
> *The stakes for ICANN and its stakeholders*
> From October 25-30, at ICANN's regular meeting in Seoul<http://sel.icann.org/>,
> board members will meet with representatives of its noncommercial users
> constituency (NCUC) to consider a proposal to improve relations with these
> communities. The non-commercial users constituency is an umbrella for a wide
> range of interested parties, ranging from political action organizations and
> academic researchers to artists and journalists who use the Internet for
> distribution and collaboration.
>
> To some extent, the non-commercial users constituency is the soul of ICANN,
> where the domain-name registrars and registries are its machinery and the
> commercial users constituency its fuel. ICANN needs all these
> constituencies--now they're being renamed "stakeholder groups"--but they are
> currently way out of balance.
>
> Robin Gross, a long-time volunteer activist with the NCUC, described to me
> a regulatory environment on ICANN that is all too familiar to people working
> for the public interest in other settings. The other three stakeholder
> groups pay experts to work full-time on ICANN issues; these experts travel
> to all the meetings and are on a first-name basis with the board and staff.
> In contrast, the NCUC is cobbled together from volunteers having different
> interests and backgrounds, often struggling to fund a single representative
> at official gatherings.
>
> It should be pointed out that the four stakeholder groups work through just
> one branch of ICANN--but an important branch that deals with the issues of
> most interest to ICANN observers, the top-level domains such as *.com*, *
> .org*, and *.edu*. This branch of ICANN, called the Generic Names
> Supporting Organization (GNSO), is the focus of the current reorganization<http://gnso.icann.org/en/improvements/>
> .
>
> The source of hope lies in the increased role assigned to the NCUC within
> the GNSO. (Spend just a couple more hours learning about ICANN, and you too
> will start eliminating natural language from your speech in favor of
> abbreviations.)
>
> GNSO was originally made up of six constituencies. The NCUC used to be one
> of them, and commercial interests encompassed three. Now that the GNSO is
> made up of four stakeholder groups, one of which corresponds to the NCC,
> non-commercial interests seem to have a correspondingly larger footprint.
> But even though only one stakeholder group is now officially commercial, it
> has far more in common than the NCC does with the registrars and registries
> (all businesses, of course) to which the other two stakeholder groups are
> dedicated. So the non-commercial interests are still a minority, not to
> mention a poor cousin.
>
> Having made some progress and been acknowledged as an important set of
> stakeholders, the NCUC is focused now on the question of how their
> representatives will be elected. I won't go into detail about this question,
> because I'd lose my readers after the sixth or seventh paragraph, but you
> can take a peek at a press release from NCUC activists<http://ncdnhc.org/profiles/blogs/public-interest-groups-in>.
> A more general examination of the GNSO reorganization has been written by
> Professor Milton Mueller<http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/2/6/4083962.html>
> .
>
> The important point I want to make is that ICANN is on the cusp of
> improving the effectiveness of the NCUC, and through them the wider public
> interest that goes beyond the interests of individual registrars, trademark
> holders, etc.
> *
> *
> *In search of a responsive governing body*
> I've covered the policy issues in domain names repeatedly over the years<http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/keyword/index.html#dns>and have followed ICANN since its
> first public meeting in 1998<http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/ar/dns_newcorp.html>.
> Most of its attempts at public input exemplified practices to avoid--notably
> its idealistic but unfeasible worldwide membership program<http://www.praxagora.com/andyo/wr/icann_member.html>
> .
>
> Thoughtful observers decided long ago that formal democracy won't work in a
> geographically distributed organization with no boundaries to membership.
> Attempts to make policy through voting, or to reach consensus on anything,
> will falter from differences in the ability of stakeholders to gain access
> and participate, the futility of winning sustained participation from
> scattered stakeholders, and the barriers to communication and
> community-building. The NCUC is concerned right now with installing a voting
> system that facilitates communication and community-building in the NCUC
> rather than undermining it.
>
> Thus, an organization without clear roots in geography or a particular
> interest group must be governed in a centralized manner, but remain
> responsive to outside pressure. This is where ICANN has lapsed. It has
> always been dominated by its staff, and has drawn most of its board members
> from outsiders with little background in its subject matter. The staff are
> accustomed to doing whatever they think best and, when faced with a storm of
> public protest, hunkering down for the duration.
>
> Given this analysis, the decision by the Commerce Department to let go the
> reins is disturbing. A body with a history like ICANN needs to be concerned
> that external judgment will ultimately be rendered on its decisions. Reviews
> by a responsible government agency would be far more meaningful than a
> diluted participation in a forum of many competing interests.
>
> But ICANN has a new chair who, according to Robin Gross, wants to overturn
> the board's traditional rubber-stamp role. Furthermore, several board
> members have reacted warmly to approaches from NCUC members and have agreed
> to meet directly with them in Seoul. The decision on the voting structure
> for the NCUC will be small but significant, and will tell us a lot about the
> ability of this organization to reflect a wide range of interests.
>
>
> IP JUSTICE
> Robin Gross, Executive Director
> 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
> p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
> w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org
>
>
>
>
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