[council] Rod on Internet governance

[David Olive]

Bill:

I wanted to share with you and the GNSO Council List Barbara Clay's note on
this article.

Regards,           David

=========================================================================

Barbara Ann Clay - VP Marketing & Communications
                   

The Reuters story, based on an interview with Rod which I attended,
doesn¹t capture what he actually said and we have protested to the
journalist and to his editor.

The journalist asked what changes could come in the context of the
Affirmation of Commitments, and Rod said he would not speculate.
He then asked if ICANN would ever cede authority to a UN body or a G12 type
group. Rod responded that this would be hard to imagine, but that ³it would
be up to the [ICANN] community to decide². He then said that his role is to
run the staff and lead the organization, and not to say what ICANN¹s
stakeholder groups will decide in the future.

That part of his answer is not in the story and without it, the article
leaves the incorrect impression that Rod stated active opposition to a UN
³takeover², a subject on which he remained studiously neutral in the
interview. He did not ³caution² or ³warn² anyone on this or any other
subject.

In my protest, I stated that the problem is not just that any decision on
this would not be in Rod¹s hands. It is that ICANN has a bottom-up
decision-making structure that Rod respects; that is why he stressed that
³it¹s up to the community to decide² and laid out his exact and limited
role as leader of the organization.

So while the quotes that appear in the article are - strictly speaking -
accurate, the headline and the terms ³warns² and ³cautioned² considerably
overstate his comments and the article does not correctly reflect what he
said.
 
==========================================================================



On 5/27/10 11:56 AM, "William Drake" <william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch>
wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> This is relevant to the thread about whether to discuss ICANN's strategic
> response to global Internet governance debates at the Council-Board dinner.
> In light of all that that has gone on over the past few years and the
> continuing discontent of a majority of governments with ICANN's constitutional
> structure, is it enough to simply argue that any departure from the status quo
> would make ICANN less "nimble"?
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/icann-head-warns-against-puttin
> g-internet-addresses-under-un-control/article1579820/
> 
> 
> 

David A. Olive
Vice President, Policy Development
ICANN
Office: 310.578.8617
Cell:  202.341.3611