[CWG-Stewardship] ICANN Board as "regulator" (was: A liaison from the Board to CWG)

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 04:17:24PM +0100, Christopher Wilkinson wrote:

> 	Rather, the ICANN Board is the Regulator holding the Ring among all the Stakeholders.
> 

I don't know whether I understand this correctly.  Perhaps you could
say more?

It seems to me that there are two different ways this could be true
(if it be true at all).

One is that the Board is the locus through which policy issues around
names get sorted out.  If that's true, then it is an issue about how
the policy-generation function for the names community is handled.
That is indeed an important issue, but I'm not sure it is directly
related to the IANA transition as such.

A second is that the Board is the regulator of IANA, or maybe just of
the names IANA functions.  In this case, of course, it would be
directly relevant to the IANA transition.  This claim would need
rather a lot of development for me to tell whether it is the case.  In
particular, I think that it is the relevant communities for the
different IANA functions that are supposed to regulate IANA.  In that
case, the ICANN Board is part of the names community, and presumably
is supposed to reflect the community's will to the extent it has any
authority over IANA employees.  Is ensuring that the Board reflects
that community will the issue you're concerned with?

Thanks,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com