[CCWG-Accountability] Related work on ICANN's Public Interest

[Greg Shatan]

Eric,

Thanks for your reply and confirmation.  I think that if one pauses at your
statement "what we mean by "public interest" is determined by our social
expectations -- as residents of France (and Europe) and as residents of the
United States (and North America)" (or Namibia or Argentina, etc. etc.)"
the great difficulty in defining an overarching definition of "public
interest" for ICANN becomes clear.  And I think it goes beyond
geographically-driven social differences -- to political, cultural,
economic and other differences, etc.

For instance, someone who felt that bridging the digital divide was a
paramount "public interest" concern would emphatically say yes in answer to
your questions.  Someone whose public interest concerns lay elsewhere might
say that those are nice, but should not be a priority over [xyz].  And
there could be more extreme reactions than that to those with different
priorities or different perspectives on how important the "public interest"
is versus other interests.

Greg

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On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 5:45 PM, Eric Brunner-Williams <
ebw at abenaki.wabanaki.net> wrote:
>
> On 12/18/14 2:09 PM, Greg Shatan wrote:
>
>> Eric,
>>
>> I'm not sure why you appear to be limiting your inquiry to the "technical
>> coordination of unique endpoint identifiers" and the IANA Function,
>> narrowly construed.  Or is your point that from that fairly narrow set of
>> tasks, a broad variety of developments, innovations and other consequences
>> have flowed, hopefully in the public interest (but certainly affecting the
>> public interest.)?
>>
>
> Starting at "Or is your point ..." Yes.
>
>  On a separate note, the way I look at the whole "applicable law" point is
>> that ICANN (like any person or entity) should be expected to act within the
>> laws applicable to it.  To put it another way, they shouldn't break the
>> law.  There is some validity to Dr. Lisse's point that this is both vague
>> and self-evident, but it gives folks some comfort to say it in things like
>> Articles of Incorporation (indeed, there's a certain level of requirement
>> for statements like that in documents like that).  The linkage between
>> acting in the "public interest" and not breaking the law is somewhat
>> cloudy.  Many corporations (and people) do the latter without doing the
>> former.  And sometimes (e.g., the Pentagon Papers or (arguably, to some)
>> Edward Snowden) do the former while failing to do the latter.
>>
>> In any event, I do think there is some value in clarifying the concept of
>> "public interest" in the context of ICANN, but I am not seeing the value in
>> trying to create a linkage between that concept and the concept of
>> "applicable law."
>>
>
> I don't know if you recall the discussion between Jeff Neuman and Bertrand
> de la Chapelle -- if I recall correctly -- at the Paris meeting -- it was
> the first of those awkard "facilitated conversations" with colored bits of
> paper for the rest of us to indicate our responses to the theses of Jeff
> and Bertrand. They talked to, and past, each other, attempting to make
> cases for what "the public interest" might be. To my mind the enduring
> value of that moment (and others later in policy development contexts) was
> the demonstration that what we mean by "public interest" is determined by
> our social expectations -- as residents of France (and Europe) and as
> residents of the United States (and North America).
>
> If we are to "clarify the concept" I suspect that starting with explicit
> questions like "should we extend IDN to meet the requirements for lesser
> known languages?" or "should we promote registrar and registry formations
> in developing economies?" will be useful -- questions rather remote from
> "applicable law".
>
> These two example questions, to be sure, are outside of the remit of the
> CCWG, but if we are to detour to define or clarify "public interest", the
> details will be important.
>
>
> Regards,
> Eric Brunner-Williams
> Eugene, Oregon
>
>
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