[CWG-Stewardship] FW: Responding to Olivier

[Milton L Mueller]

Alan,
Let me clarify what I mean by politicization. And let me use your own analogy of hiring an electrician to fix the wiring in your house.

Yes, if you hire an electrician you have the right and the duty to engage in “oversight” as s/he does the work. What some people seem to be proposing here, however is that both the decision which electrician to hire and the oversight of that work should be done not by you, but by a broadly representative neighborhood committee (because, you know, if your house burns down theirs might be affected ;-)

And once that committee is in place, it just so happens that one of the members insists that you use electrician X, who happens to be his brother in law. Another committee member, a Labor party member, complains that the electrical company you want to use doesn’t use enough employees and there ought to be two electricians, not one, on the job. But he gets into a big argument with the Conservative party member of the committee (who of course had to be included to balance representation). Another one doesn’t know anything about wiring but has just read a magazine article in Popular Science and insists that certain experimental techniques he read about be used, even though the guy doing the work has never used them before. And so on.

The point is ‘broadening representation’ sounds good but oftentimes all it really does it bring a lot of people into the picture with personal or political agendas that have nothing to do with the basic task at hand. The incentives and issues of the committee members can easily be misaligned with the needs of the person directly affected by the work.

Of course this is just an analogy used for illustrative purposes and doesn’t prove anything. But I think it clarifies my concerns about politicization. We really don’t want to make the IANA implementation become a second policy development process, and the emphasis on representation and inclusion in the oversight of these functions is almost certain to do that, in my opinion.


From: Alan Greenberg [mailto:alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca]
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2014 6:34 AM
To: Milton L Mueller; cwg-stewardship at icann.org
Subject: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] FW: Responding to Olivier

I am neither Olivier nor a +1, but I'll try.

First, the process IS politicized. All you are doing is ensuring that only one faction has a voice. Yes, as in political systems, that "simplifies things" but does not necessarily make it better. This entire discussion reminds me of the statement attributed to the then CEO of General Motors - "What is good for General Motors is good for the Country (ie the USA)", a statement to which can rationalize all sorts of corporate misbehaviour seen in later year. In this case, "What is good for Registries is good for the Internet".  It will certainly be true much of the time, but I think it presumptuous to assume that this will be the case in all future instances. There may well be cases that in the future, that there is a policy that is decided governing how IANA is to operate that does not meet with the complete satisfaction of registries. That is the nature of a multistakeholder policy process.

Second, if the policies, contracts, agreements, etc are clear, there should not be a lot of judgement call involved in this overseeing. And when there is, it indicates a problem that needs to be rectified at the policy/contractual level.

Alan

At 29/10/2014 11:47 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:


Olivier, and all the +1-ers, are ignoring the point that was made about the risks of circumventing or vetoing community policy by politicizing the operational and technical functions via this kind of ‘oversight’

Would you care to address this, please?


From: cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org<mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org> [ mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Tracy Hackshaw @ Google
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 9:54 PM
To: Lindeberg, Elise; Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond; cwg-stewardship at icann.org<mailto:cwg-stewardship at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] FW: Responding to Olivier

+1

Sent from BlackBerry Q10
From: Lindeberg, Elise
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2014 8:02 PM
To: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond; cwg-stewardship at icann.org<mailto:cwg-stewardship at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] FW: Responding to Olivier

+ 1

Elise

Fra: cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org<mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org> [ mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org] PÃ¥ vegne av Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond
Sendt: 29. oktober 2014 19:16
Til: cwg-stewardship at icann.org<mailto:cwg-stewardship at icann.org>
Emne: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] FW: Responding to Olivier

Dear Becky,

thanks for detailing the various functions and going to depth showing none of the functions involve policy. To be frank, I am somehow baffled as to why end users would only be interested in policy and not operations.
On 29/10/2014 17:45, Becky Burr wrote:
Again, to be clear, I am not unalterably opposed to having other parts of the community participate, but I don’t understand why they would want to.

It's that set of eyes. End users would feel a lot happier if they could watch... and warn.
Kind regards,

Olivier


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