[CWG-Stewardship] NTIA's Role in Root Zone Management

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

Dear Greg,

points taken and I am glad that in point 1 you clearly spell out that we
are not edging towards a for-profit model.
As for your second point, I'll be the first one to admit that whilst
there have been bad examples of corporate corruption in the US, this has
also been the same in other countries. I'll even go as far as admitting
that in the US, culprits have ended up in jail whilst in, say France,
they've just moved to another state company after being fined & had a
slap on their fingers. Corruption in other countries is not unheard of
either, of course. So let's concentrate more on using accountability
principles for the special non-profit animal that ICANN is rather than
using classic shareholder accountability principles that you and I know
can be circumvented as has been shown time and time again. Why didn't we
look for good principles and best practices in other global non-profit
orgs? Why don't we think about enhancing accountability using ICANN's
seed accountability processes? We are? Then I do not know why we are so
intent on saying otherwise. Is the grass really greener on the other
side of the fence?
Kindest regards,

Olivier

On 20/01/2015 22:24, Greg Shatan wrote:
> Olivier:
>
> Two points.
>
> 1.  I don't think anyone (myself included) is suggesting a shareholder
> model per se.  Indeed, a US non-profit generally cannot have
> shareholders.  The "membership" model comes squarely out of the
> non-profit world.  The commonality between the two is that the Board
> in each instance can be made accountable to that body in a way that no
> other body can possess.  The references to shareholders are merely an
> analogy, and reading any leaning toward a for profit model is entirely
> a mis-reading.
>
> 2.  As to whether US corporate accountability is "seriously dented"
> outside the US, I don't know (though it seems rather overheated to
> me).  However, I think you are again reading too much into things. 
> The examples given would work just about as well with French
> corporations or Japanese corporations or Australian corporations.  It
> would be ludicrous and extremely unhelpful to say that we have nothing
> to learn from US corporate governance or the governance of "for
> profit" corporations generally, or that we must ignore all the work in
> that area.  We can't be so allergic on principle to these things, and
> I doubt that most of us are.
>
> (I would also note that that in David Conrad's "parade of horribles,"
> there were companies from Japan, India, Italy and the Dominican
> Republic in addition to the US, so making this a US issue is both
> unfair and inaccurate.)
>
> Greg
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 3:44 PM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond
> <ocl at gih.com <mailto:ocl at gih.com>> wrote:
>
>     Dear Greg,
>
>     thanks for your kind message. A follow-up below:
>
>     On 20/01/2015 20:30, Greg Shatan wrote:
>     > ICANN is (for better or worse) virtually unique.  Most companies do
>     > not have an organized "community" of "stakeholders" around them,
>     like
>     > ICANN.  Most companies are not acting as policy and governance
>     > "ecosystems," like ICANN.  In many ways, this uniqueness is a good
>     > thing, but it gives us unique challenges.  While we can borrow
>     heavily
>     > from the "playbooks" of existing non-profits and private companies
>     > (whether publicly-traded or not), their solutions will need to be
>     > customized (more or less) to suit our situation.
>
>     You are absolutely right, ICANN is virtually unique. I therefore
>     am very
>     concerned that some suggestions are that it loses this uniqueness and
>     ends up working on a for profit corporate model of shareholders. It's
>     not that I am against share ownership - I am a shareholder of many US
>     corporations - but the idea of accountability based on US corporation
>     accountability is seriously dented outside the United States.
>     Again it's
>     a perception thing and I know it's not perceived in the US but most of
>     the rest of the world doesn't see it that way. I have concerns that we
>     are, once again, going to be accused of replacing US government
>     accountability with US corporate interest accountability and that will
>     do nothing for the legitimacy of our proposed solution.
>
>     Kind regards,
>
>     Olivier
>
>

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