[ALAC] Bad Actor Admission

Fri Mar 1 13:49:49 UTC 2019

Dear Evan,

please be so kind to find my responses interspersed in your text:

On 01/03/2019 11:39, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> There are other models of MS which I have liked better than ICANN's.
> The IETF does IMO a good job keeping corporate interests heard but not
> forced upon it. The model used at the Netmundial conference in 2014
> struck a better balance between business, government and public
> interest, and deserves consideration. There may be other models of
> which I am not aware.

Of course some will dispute the IETF as being expensive for participants
since one has to pay to register to attend an IETF meeting and it is
nearly impossible to get a standard through the IETF process without
physically attending an IETF meeting - or more than one.
Others, primarily from Civil Society, will tell you that NetMundial was
a complete failure. Remember how Civil Society withdrew its support at
the end? So your balance may not be the balance that others see as being
balanced. And that's already the first problem of MS models.

>
> Meanwhile ... the current status quo is propped up by never-ending FUD
> that the only alternative to ICANN's model of industry capture is the
> ITU model of government capture. Of course, the ITU does its part to
> support ICANN by periodically holding meetings so incompetently run so
> to justify the fear. What is not spoken about is the fact that genuine
> options exist beyond these two undesirable extremes.

Please elaborate on these options. I remember when ICANN was created
there were several alternative options on the table. I wonder what would
have happened, had we followed these options rather than ICANN.

>
> Once upon a time I believed that the Internet Governance Forum was the
> perfect place in which alternative models could be designed and
> proposed. That belief has diminished as I have found the IGF over time
> to revel in its own insignificance, and contents itself to fret over
> the situation without considering real change. I have no idea where
> true innovation in this field will come, and this realization is a
> major source of my current cynicism.

Recently the MAG Chair has attempted to address the deficit of (a)
funding and (b) involvement from the Private Sector by holding
discussions with the World Economic Forum (WEF). The pushback from Civil
Society was vigorous. With such parochial outlook I cannot see the IGF
being able to evolve into a true multi-stakeholder dialogue... let alone
being able to actually run anything operationally.

>
> If a sane alternative does not arise, we will continue to be presented
> with nothing more than choice between the ICANN or ITU ways of doing
> things. Eventually the ITU will win this binary duel because
> ultimately governments will tire of the unwillingness of ICANN to
> truly incorporate the public interest into its decision-making. And I
> remind once again that there is no international treaty requiring the
> countries of the world to acknowledge ICANN as manager of the global
> DNS; ICANN's mandate is maintained through inertia and
> (ever-diminishing) goodwill.

That is the only point which I do not agree with you.
I am not so sure that the ITU will win because it is so incredibly
inefficient, political and clueless when it comes to anything
operational. The ITU sustains development and negotiates standards. It
is totally incapable of managing resources operationally.
Second, regarding international treaties: the Internet sits outside
international treaties full stop. It would have never existed had it
required any kind of international treaty. Networks that had previously
been build with the mandate of an international treaty failed commercially.
The Internet is a network of networks where all networks participating
strike agreements with others to carry their traffic and their
interlocutors strike agreements with others to carry their and your
traffic - and this is all based on trust and peering contracts. Nothing
stops any network from losing trust in the Internet and pulling out.
That's indeed what several countries keep on threatening and they forget
that in the 90s, they were the ones that asked to get connected to the
Internet to start with. I know that first hand as I helped connect some
of them.
The Internet runs on a circle of trust. The 13 root servers are trusted
to be a stable and reliable source of top level domain data that's
amended in the A root, itself trusted to be a stable and reliable
database of a stable addressing tree of generic top level domains and
country code top level domains. ICANN is trusted by all parties to be
the right location to issue orders regarding this database, using
clearly laid out and stable procedures. It is also trusted by all
parties to be the location for discussing the policy related to generic
top level domains and to take decisions about these. So if one or more
of the parties loses that trust, then they are welcome to leave.

And that's the fragile world that ICANN lives in. If the GAC gets fed up
that it is completely ignored, it can leave. It could look to find a
home within ITU for example - a dream that Richard Hill has had for some
time. If the ASO, doing so little in ICANN and most of its work within
the RIRs decides to leave, it could do. Ultimately if these
organisations were to leave, it would weaken ICANN's multistakeholder
model as without governments, ICANN's model is no longer
multistakeholder. ICANN would also lose a lot of legitimacy in the face
of governments without an incumbent forum for governments within its ranks.

So where does this take us? Well the question I periodically ask is "Are
we ready, we, as in the wider ICANN community that includes all
stakeholders, for an ICANN Version 3.0"?

- ICANN 1.0: ICANN as it was set-up with a caretaker Board, and then a
global direct At-Large election process to fill at least half of the
ICANN Board seats. Deemed to have failed.
- ICANN 2.0: in 2002/2003 creation of ALAC, stripping Board director.
SOs/ACs structure that we know today, with reduced power for ACs and
increased powers for SOs, especially the GNSO.
- ICANN 2.5: ICANN 2.0 with the US government contract replaced by an
empowered community that has powers to keep the ICANN Board under control.
- ICANN 3.0: a new structure with a core public interest mandate.

Recently I held long discussions with some old timers in the UK and
elsewhere. Whilst I lived the transition from ICANN 1.0 to ICANN 2.0
from the fringes, I was not part of the core group then, and I wanted to
understand what was the overwhelming force that came upon ICANN to go
from version 1.0 to version 2.0. I was told this was complex but it
involved some of the very big players out there, that drove it forward,
not necessarily players that knew the consequences of what the changes
were going to be, but there apparently was a real will to improve ICANN
then.

I am a rather pragmatic player when it comes to such things, with
sometimes a sense of immobility that betrays my age. Right now, I do not
see the overwhelming force out there to evolve ICANN from 2.0 to 3.0. I
do not see enough big players adhering to this scenario. I do not see
matters being so bad as to warrant an emergency summit to "save ICANN" -
because only then, would the huge commercial forces currently holding
ICANN into its current state because it serves their purposes, bow down
as for them it would be a choice between reluctantly accepting a new
ICANN 3.0 or losing it all.

Now I might be completely wrong too. I infamously told Larry Strickling
during dinner at an ATRT2 meeting that if he wanted to be remembered for
his action, he could take the unprecedented step of relinquishing the US
Government control on the Root but that if he was to launch such a
process, he would face the biggest hurdle in the US Congress -- and that
I was therefore convinced that it could not be done within less than 5
years. Well, Larry had the courage and determination to do it much
faster and although it was not without its dramas, it worked.

Perhaps should we follow the motto "Who Dares Wins". But as I have said
it in the past, this is likely to be a high stakes, high power,
particularly treacherous path which would need a lot of allies. It could
be very dangerous for ICANN itself. But then the world has never
advanced by sticking to the status quo.

Kindest regards,

Olivier
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