[NA-Discuss] Fwd: The Internet Society on Egypt’s Internet shutdown

Marc Rotenberg rotenberg at epic.org
Sun Jan 30 21:16:02 UTC 2011


I appreciate your comments. You are a lot more familiar with
the process and the institutions than I am.

But it seems odd to me that an entity charged with looking out 
for the interests of Internet users (ALAC) would be silent when
there is a development that dramatically affects the interests
of Internet users.

And surely part of our responsibility would be determine
what it is that ICANN should do in response.

Marc.

On Jan 30, 2011, at 4:06 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

> 
> 
> On 30 January 2011 15:26, Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg at epic.org> wrote:
>  
>  "The role of the At-Large Advisory Committee ("ALAC") shall be
>  to consider and provide advice on the activities of ICANN,
>  insofar as they relate to the interests of individual Internet users."
> 
> This statement suggests that ALAC has the freedom to say
> what ICANN should or should not do when the interests of
> individual Internet users are concerned.
> 
> 
> Absolutely right. But I've added appropriate emphasis to what you said. ICANN is itself limited to specific components of Internet governance -- notably, names and numbers (the last two letters of the ICANN acronym).
> 
> Context matters.
> 
>  
> And the decision of a national government to limit the ability of individuals to access the Internet would seem to be high on the list.
> 
> 
> Be specific, then. What should ICANN do -- within the scope of things it is able to do?
> 
> I'm less of a newcomer than you and I can't honestly think of anything that falls within ICANN's mandate that it is able to do in this situation. Maybe others have better ideas than I in this realm, but it is critical not to deal in generalities.
> 
> Also, simply asking ICANN to "issue a statement" is not IMO a useful option. Given its heavy industry-driven agenda, if ICANN were prone to issuing political statements they would more often than not (IMO) be against the user best interest. So I prefer to have ICANN stay out of political statements entirely.
> 
> Thus, I am opposed to making any statement that is not tied to an explicit request for specific change to ICANN policy, operation or enforcement.
> 
> There are, to be sure, a broad range of statements that can be made, but a good starting point is to ask if  ALAC has issued statements on similar developments in the past.
> 
> 
> In my three years of involvement with ICANN the answer to that would be "no".
> 
>  
> It might also be a good opportunity to collaborate with NCUC.
> 
> 
> Perhaps. Some interface with ISOC (quite a few ISOC chapters are ALSs) might also be useful. But statements coming from ISOC and NCUC members organisations will be both more useful -- and more appropriate -- than those coming from ICANN itself.
> 
> - Evan
>  




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