[ALAC] Questions on Accountability Proposals

Alan Greenberg alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca
Sun May 31 02:04:01 UTC 2015


The ALAC and IANA-Issues meetings last week brought a lot of clarity 
to the position of At-Large with respect the CCWG-Accountability Proposals.

One area where participants seemed to hold varying opinions was to 
what extent the new accountability measures need to be "enforceable".

For a power given to the community to be enforceable, the community 
or its representatives ultimately need to be able to go to court if 
ICANN (ie the ICANN Board) does not honor the communities directives. 
That doesn't mean that anyone WILL sue, but the right and therefore 
the possibility is there.

Currently, we have no such right. Although there have been numerous 
times where parts of the community (at times large parts) have been 
dissatisfied with Board action, it is not clear that IF we had the 
planned powers at that time, would we have used them.

In a typical case, although some parts of the community may be 
dissatisfied, others were delighted with the decision. In a case such 
as the creation of "digital archery" to address the order in which 
new gTLD applications would be processed, pretty much everyone was 
dissatisfied, but it is far from clear it was an issue that warranted 
extreme action.

If there is no formal enforceability, then we would rely on good 
faith and trust to address points of contention. In the case of 
failure, most parties seem to agree that removal of the Board (or 
selected parts of it) must be fully enforceable.

The current CCWG proposal calls for COMPLETE enforceability. This 
implies certain structural changes.

Here are several questions. This message is also being sent to the 
IANA Issues list. Only one reply is needed. Please reply by Monday if 
at all possible.

1. Do you believe that failing anything else, we must have the 
ability to remove parts of or all of the Board?

2. With the exception of Board member removal, do we need legal 
enforceability of can we rely on good faith (and Board member removal 
if you supported that).

3. If the final CCWG proposal calls for full legal enforceability, is 
that sufficient reason for the ALAC to not ratify it?

Alan




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