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

Roberto Gaetano roberto_gaetano at hotmail.com
Tue Mar 29 16:21:28 UTC 2016


Parminder,
I will only address the questions/answers.

1. Bylaws
> I have proposed that they remain the same. Mrely incorporated in a treaty
> now ... There will be minor, non essential, changes in that incorporation
> documents would not respond to the Californian non profit law but to an
> international legal regime. What is the problem that you see here?
The problem I see here is that the ICANN Bylaws are drafted giving the
decisional power to the Board of Directors.
This will change if we incorporate ICANN as an International Treaty
organization, because in this case the trustees of the International Treaty
will be the Member States, and the governing body will be the General
Assembly (or General Conference) of the Member States.

2. Governance structure
> ICANN's working remains exactly as it is now. Its oversight becomes as
> decided in the CCWG proposal, that is, an internalised 'ICANN community'
> oversight.
You forget that in an International Treaty Organization the governing body
is always the GA/GC of the Member States (see above).
Or are you envisaging an International Treaty Organization where the General
Assembly of the Member States would delegate its powers to a Board that they
do not have any way to influence?

3. Judicial system
>From your long text I understand that you look for something like the ICJ.
That's a good start. However, unless my information is out of date, this
requires changes to the scope of the ICJ, that as of today does not discuss
cases presented by physical nor juridical persons, only governments.
Maybe we can explore WTO and WIPO - which incidentally are the bodies that
ICANN uses for arbitration on domain names disputes

4. The international treaty
> My dear friend, you really want me to write the full  text of the proposed
> treaty in this email exchange... I have said enough about what it would be
Not really. But if you have an idea of what it would look like, it will be
sufficient to have a bullet point list.
No long speeches about "democracy", just simple sentences.
> And dear, you really want me to first get the signatures of all countries
to a
> commitment to sign such a treaty!? But if you just want to get an idea who
> will sign, just go back to the last minute discussions of the WSIS docs
I have enough experience to tell the difference between "last minute
discussions" and an engagement.
Indeed, I would like to have engagement by potential signatories before
losing time on an initiative that I strongly believe will not stand a chance
of success, as I believe I have explained.

And this brings me to the answer to your question on why ALAC is not engaged
on this initiative.
I do not know about ALAC as a whole, but I can give you my reason for not
losing time on this.
Regardless the chances of success, that I believe small (but this is only my
personal opinion, I might be proven wrong), the main issue is that Internet
users have other priorities.
At the meeting in Marrakesh there were new people, participating for the
first time. This time the majority of newcomers were from Africa, but in
previous meetings we had newcomers coming in majority from other ICANN
regions, but their observations and concerns were always the same.
They talk about accessibility, training, sharing of experiences, cost of
online presence (including domain name purchase). Next comes security and
privacy.
What nobody raises as an issue is the incorporation of ICANN. It seems to
be, by and large, irrelevant - or at least far less important than problems
that affect everyday's life of Internet users.
That's why I am dedicating the little time I have available to these other
issues.
As a matter of fact, I believe that I have spent far too much time in this
conversation, as we can only agree on the fact that we disagree.
And this will not change, no matter how long we will carry on this
discussion.
Cheers,
R.




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