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

Evan Leibovitch evan at telly.org
Sun Jan 30 20:15:54 UTC 2011


ICANN != civil society, and it's only a small piece of the puzzle known as
"Internet Governance".

Our role here in At-Large is fairly specific, and limited to advising ICANN
on matters regarding its own relatively constrained authority.

Is there something SPECIFIC that we can say to the ICANN Board regarding a
chance to its policies or practices that will improve or assure freedom of
access? Is there anything ICANN, its policies or business relations could
possibly have done to prevent (or lessen the impact of) government-decreed
denial of service?

If so, we should -- we must -- articulate such changes clearly and
forcefully. But it is pointless to advocate (in this particular forum)
change that ICANN is unable to affect.It's hypocritical for us to spend our
energy to keep ICANN confined to its own areas of authority and competency,
then produce out-of-scope pronouncements (that might make the authors feel
good but will be otherwise ignored).

- Evan



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