[CCWG-ACCT] Mission/Contract

[Andrew Sullivan]

Something someone asked me in the hall suggests to me that I wasn't
terribly clear, so let me expand a tiny bit despite the horror of
responding to myself.

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 07:25:48AM -0500, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> It seems to me that it would be hard to argue ICANN could impose the
> terms this way, because they wouldn't be consensus-based or bottom-up.
> I'd go futher and suggest that such policies would not be designed to
> ensure stable and secure operation, either; neither would they be
> reasonably necessary for openness, interoperability, resilience,
> security, or stability.  So I think the basis for rejecting such
> overreach is already in the mission text we all seem to like.

I should have noted that this is true in my opinion _only if_ the
mission stops with the terms above and maybe a statement that ICANN
won't step outside its mission.  This is roughly, I think, what Becky
suggested before.  I know some people disagreed with that approach,
but I thought it was excellent.

I am a little concerned about any addition that would permit various
excursions beyond the mission if it were in some agreement to which
ICANN were a party.  That opens the same problem that got us into
discussing the chapeau: it's a route by which people could conceivably
entangle ICANN in issues outside ICANN's proper remit, even if ICANN
didn't intend that (in this case, by getting some vague language into
a contract and then refusing IRP on the grounds that it is too in the
mission).  In general, I think the Internet and ICANN are both best
protected by a narrow, specific ICANN mission with an explicit
limitation to that mission. 

I think we mostly have that, but let's be careful not to over-egg the
custard.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com