[Internal-cg] Charter version 4

[Milton L Mueller]

-----Original Message-----
>1) There was e-mail discussion about the word "legitimate" that has 
> not been acted upon. The group needs to make a decision, but I think 
> based on e-mail discussion that was pretty obvious.

Based on this email traffic I initiated an inquiry in my stakeholder group and they would be pretty upset if the word "legitimacy" is struck. I think it shows a certain political insensitivity on the part of the technical community to pretend as if legitimacy issues with ICANN do not exist or are not important. Further, I find the main rationale for fearing the word legitimacy - the idea that it somehow supports governmental oversight - to be prima facie false, a kind of strange and idiosyncratic aspect of ICANN culture. 

Here is the common dictionary definition of legitimacy: 
"In political science, legitimacy is the popular acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a régime." 

The key operant phrase here is "popular acceptance of an authority." IANA is a regime. The last "A" in IANA stands for "Authority" We want and need popular acceptance of whatever authority the new, post-NTIA IANA has. 

Thus, unless a better rationale for removing the word is provided I would strongly oppose it.