[CCWG-ACCT] WP2 Issues from last night's call

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

This is just a note from someone who's a latecomer and mostly
observing, so take it for what it's worth.  But since I have less
history with some of the text, maybe fresh eyes can be helpful.  If
not, feel free to ignore.

On Wed, Nov 04, 2015 at 04:29:49PM -0500, Silver, Bradley wrote:
> The argument is only serious, I think, because the Mission is being
> amended to include a prohibition which facially covers an activity
> that ICANN is engaged in.  ICANN's history of accreditation never
> had to be justified against such a prohibition, because it wasn't
> there.

> From: Burr, Becky [mailto:Becky.Burr at neustar.biz]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2015 4:26 PM
> To: Silver, Bradley; Metalitz, Steven; 'Malcolm Hutty'; Alan Greenberg; Accountability Community
> Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] WP2 Issues from last night's call
> 
> This argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  ICANN has always accredited - both registries and registrars.  Is there a serious argument to be had that this is outside the Mission?
> 

It is pretty clear that ICANN has always accredited, and doing so has
been reasonable because of ICANN's actual mission (i.e. the one it has
been doing).  People wanted (as I understand it, and I think
correctly) a prohibition against a number of specific things because
of worries about overreach and historical patterns of behaviour.  It
strikes me that perhaps some of that history is because the mission
text was too broad for the actual mission, and if we come up with a
mission that is appropriately limited to what ICANN actually does then
the specific prohibitions might be unnecessary.

This observation applies I think to more than one of the current text
questions: if the additional text is actually obviated by a more
narrow mission, perhaps it can be left out if we get a narrow mission
statement to begin with.  As Saint Exupéry had it, "Il semble que la
perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais
quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher."

I hope I'm not speaking out of turn; and again, if this isn't helpful
just ignore me.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com