[At-Large] R: R: Is ICANN's oversight really moving away from the US government?

[parminder]

I use the term "international incorporation" to mean the creation of an
international legal entity (or a body corporate), the legal means of
doing so, and legal status of such an entity.... I find such a use of
this term perfectly in order and legitimate.. In earlier emails I said
that such international incorporation could be directly with the UN (or
one of its bodies) or it could be more independent, through a new
treaty, and in the latter case, yes, it will then be a 'international
treaty organisation'.

Now, I see no logical necessity that an international treaty
organisation has to have a governance structure which is inter-gov... It
can be as the treaty defines it to be, and my proposal is to have it
defined as ICANN today is, its bylaws, working methods, constituencies,
and all. While of course the treaty will have to be made among
governments, but all of us, and more importantly the US and its cohort
governments, may/would agree to such a treaty only if it sanctifies the
current structure and working of ICANN. Let that be the stating
point.... And as said earlier, such a treaty can be modified only if the
US and its allied governments agree, which would be never. That is the
guarantee ee have of maintaining ICANN's structure and work methods
intact even while its gets international incorporation or legal status,
and thus gets freed from the problematic jurisdictional control of the
US....

What amazes me in all the responses I am getting is that no one is
either saying that the problem I have posed does not exist or it is not
important to resolve, nor providing any alternative ways to resolve it.
They are just arguing with parts of my proposal, which is fine, although
I think, while no doubt this is a somewhat complex solution to a complex
problem, no one has been able to show why it really cant work.

To remind; the problem I had posed was about the very likely wrongful
US's jurisdictional imposition on ICANN's process and vis a vis the root
server maintainer. I had given a concrete example; of a US court pushing
the well-known over-zealous US intellectual property law and enforcement
to take away the gTLD of an Indian generic drug manufacturer even when
the latter has no direct business interests or activities in the US...
What is your response to such a very likely occurrence? Should we simply
ignore it? Or, do you not think it likely, in which case lets discuss
that.... You cannot simply not respond to this key global governance
problem that stares us in the face... (Apart from it, is the less likely
but still to be remained prepared for possibility of the The Office of
Foreign Assets Control of the US playing hanky panky with the gTLD of a
country that the US gets into serious enmity with.... every country
likes to remain prepared for such an eventuality. You cannot deny them
that right. )...

No one seems to want to address these key global governance problems. Do
they not exist? If they do, then what is your response to and
preparedness for these?  parminder



On Monday 28 March 2016 04:36 AM, bzs at theworld.com wrote:
> On March 27, 2016 at 12:53 johnl at iecc.com (John R. Levine) wrote:
>  > 
>  > I don't understand why we're wasting time with this nonsense.  There is 
>  > no such thing as "international incorporation" and any plausible UN or 
>  > treaty alternative would give governments total control.
>
> That was my problem.
>
> I googled "international incorporation" for a while but didn't find
> anything useful.
>
> I did find some attorney sites which offered "international
> incorporation" but they meant helping a (typically) US corporation add
> a new incorporation in another country such as (typically) the Cayman
> Islands.
>
> So that was "international incorporation" more in the sense of
> "international airport": More than one country of incorporation but
> two was sufficient to merit the term.
>
> It seems to be conflated, in this discussion, with an international
> treaty organization (ITO) which is well-defined. There is even an
> extensive list of ITOs here.
>
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intergovernmental_organizations
>
> So at least that's plausible. That the term actually exists is
> encouraging.
>
> Incorporation is, at least in US law, a fairly specific term. It
> creates a fictional legal entity with limited liability and the
> ability to, within broad limits, indemnify officers of the corporation
> and others. But they are subject to the regulations and laws of the
> incorporation jurisdiction, at least. And to engage in political
> elections without restraint but let's not go there.
>
> Looking through those organizations most though not all seem to be
> chartered under the UN.
>
> I couldn't find an incorporation of any of them, particularly non-UN
> (e.g., EiroForum), but I only looked for a few minutes and it occurred
> to me that someone more versed in this field could enlighten us
> extemporaneously in a few words so why should I even attempt to do
> this?
>
> All that said what model, examples would be good, might this new ICANN
> resemble?
>
> And, as to difficulty, having located some potential model
> organizations why not ask them, where founders are available, how
> difficult it was to create them?
>
> Put another way, why do I get the feeling too much of this discussion
> is being manufactured de novo as if we were writing a movie script
> only limited by our imagination and word juggling abilities?
>
> And if that is the case I move to include a love interest, people
> always like a love interest, particularly stakeholders.
>

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