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Steve, family matters have kept me from replying to this
earlier.<br><br>
Several points. <br><br>
- I completely understand the issue of the leverage given to us by the
IANA stewardship transition. I have talked about this a number of times
in CWG-Stewardship prior to the start of the CWG-Accountability (and have
been chastised for daring to mention it). You may recall that I have
championed one of the "internal to ICANN" transition proposals
which presumes (or rather demands) that the CCWG-Accountability put in
place real and effective accountability and the existance of this
leverage is why I believed that it was indeed possible.<br><br>
- As I said (or perhaps wrote in the chat) later in the meeting, I
support using this leverage to get overall Board accountability and I
have explicitly documented some of the methods that your inventory
itemizes.<br><br>
- I still feel that some of the items flagged as WS1 are not in this
category (examples of those are ones that reference details on registrar
or registry contracts, but there are others) that I feel are not at all
connected to either IANA or general Board accountability. Others are
specific instances of accountability that may not be needed if we succeed
in the more generalized methods.<br><br>
Regarding this being the "last kick at the can", that will
depend on whether the Affirmation of Commitments is replaced in this pass
or not. My hope is that even if this is not the last kick, we will not
need another one if we do our job properly.<br><br>
Alan<br><br>
<br>
At 02/01/2015 12:12 PM, Steve DelBianco wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Alan Greenberg has questioned
the accountability measures we were placing into Work Stream 1, saying,
<dl>
<dd>"I am somewhat troubled by all of the items in WS1 where I do
not see the direct link to the IANA transition. Note I am not saying that
they might not be perfectly valid and desirable accountability mechanism,
just that I do not see the direct link, and thus perhaps greatly
increasing our work to be done to allow transition.”<br><br>
</dl><br>
In responding to Alan, several of us said that a direct link to IANA
transition is neither required nor desirable. Instead, the IANA
transition is the community’s last bit of leverage to force
accountability measures on ICANN’s board. The leverage is
directly held by NTIA, who has said they would not transition IANA unless
there was consensus about holding ICANN accountable to the community once
the IANA contract is gone. And the internet community has indirect
leverage, though pressure being brought on the US Administration and on
Congress. <br><br>
So I would hope that Alan and others can gain confidence and comfort with
the leverage our CCWG holds in this process. With that leverage
comes the responsibility to create accountability mechanisms that will
guide DNS policy making for decades to come. And we must also get
our work done without causing undue delay to the IANA transition
process.<br><br>
Alan’s group is the ALAC, which has often felt the lack of leverage
over ICANN’s board and and management. As a recent example, ALAC
called on ICANN to stop delegating new gTLDs serving highly regulated
sectors but lacking enforceable public interest commitments
(<a href="https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/alac-to-icann-board-16oct14-en.pdf">
link</a>). ICANN’s board and management might continue signing
contracts despite concerns of the ALAC and others, perhaps fearing
lawsuits by gTLD applicants. The fear of lawsuits may also have led
the board to ignore community concerns over delegating both singular and
plural forms of the same gTLDs. After all, the ICANN
board’s duty is to the interests of the ICANN corporation not to the
community. (see
<a href="https:///www.icann.org/resources/pages/bylaws-2012-02-25-en#VI">
Bylaws </a>Article 6, Section 7). <br>
<br>
What would be the source of leverage to hold the board accountable to the
community for this decision? We have seen the futility of
Reconsideration requests and Independent Reviews that lack leverage to
reverse a board decision. <br><br>
This IANA transition is our last chance to create mechanisms that could
hold ICANN’s board accountable to the community it was designed to
serve. Let's embrace that challenge and use all the leverage
we have.<br><br>
<br>
Steve DelBianco<br>
Executive Director<br>
NetChoice<br>
<a href="http://www.netchoice.org/">http://www.NetChoice.org</a> and
<a href="http://blog.netchoice.org/">http://blog.netchoice.org</a><br>
+1.202.420.7482<br><br>
<br>
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