[CPWG] Engagement on DNS Abuse

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Thu, 4 Feb 2021 at 13:09, David Mackey <mackey361 at gmail.com> wrote:


> It's my understanding the ICANN by-laws give voting power to the ALAC in a
> way that balances the interests of different stakeholders as
> originally intended when ICANN was created.
>

To the extent that ALAC can vote on non-binding advice, I suppose that's
true. But I'm not sure what you mean by "balance the interests of different
stakeholders"; the bylaws clearly indicate that ALAC is supposed to put
forward the perspective of Internet end-users. While this is of course a
massively diverse global constituency, it at least has some measurable
distinction from the self-interested and conflicted communities that make
up most of the rest of ICANN's non-technical conmstituencies.

This status is often muddied, in as far as At-Large has also become a "none
of the above" home for those in self-interested or conflicted situations
who can't find a home elsewhere, such as the domain speculators who have of
late been camping out in NARALO.

At-Large did not exist "when ICANN was created"; it was a cynical
consequence of the decision to eliminate community elections for the Board,
to provide a facade of sensitivity to the grassroots. The public-at-large
went overnight from the direct ability to elect Directors to an
overly-bureaucratic, process-obsessed (IMO), underfunded mechanism for
giving advice to the Board that until not long ago wasn't even
acknowledged. After decades the ICANN Board has not yet deemed ALAC mature
enough to elect a second Director as its own reviews have advised.

If the ALAC is currently structured in a way that it cannot fulfill its
> by-law duties, because the DNS Abuse issue "might not be best addressed by
> a small body of volunteers", I'd like to suggest that maybe the entire
> ICANN organization has a problem meeting its mission as stated in our
> bylaws. It may be wise to address any perceived capability problems with
> ALAC directly, rather than bypassing ICANN's bylaws for the sake of
> expediency.
>

The "small body of volunteers" issue has plagued ALAC from its beginnings.
Being useful on ALAC involves a great amount of unpaid time and work,
following developments led by people who have ICANN involvement as some or
all of their job description. Because two-thirds of ALAC is filled by
election its positions are often sought by people more interested in
politicking and less in crafting relevant and useful advice. (When I was
first on ALAC I saw the NomCom appointments as a curse; now I see them as a
blessing.)

The result indeed means that the bulk of substantive work (ie policy
development and advice creation) ends up being done by a very small number
of people. But it also means that the result of this work can easily be
dismissed when our output contravenes ICANN's common wisdom, under the "who
the hell are you to claim to speak for the billions?" argument. They love
the "small body of volunteers" if we agree with them but are savage when we
don't.

Since leaving heavy-duty ALAC work I observe that ALAC in its current state
is indeed not fit to serve its bylaw duties, but through no fault of its
own or its people. Without the ability to do global surveys of public
opinion, ALAC is really not capable of knowing what end-users want from
ICANN. The best we can do are educated guesses -- which, to be honest, are
usually pretty well-thought despite the lack of grounding. And statistical
inputs such as John's strengthen our case. But we're still guessing at what
the world wants. (If the public at large doesn't give a damn about closed
generics, why should ALAC?)

Until ICANN equips ALACs to survey the world and act as a conduit for the
results, ALAC won't be able to serve its bylaw mandate. The great
experiment that presumed At-Large Structures would effectively provide a
broad two-way global communications channel (education going out, quality
advice coming back) has generally been a failure at that goal. If you want
to address capability problems we can start there.

Then again, I may not be the best person to comment. The way ICANN handled
the .ORG transfer fiasco (and especially ALAC's inexcusable paralysis in
that matter) was shameful, and provides to me sufficient evidence (though
there is much more) that ICANN is not fit for purpose. If it were up to me
I'd hand off the technical coordination to either IETF or IEEE, and
assemble a treaty convention to deal with the rest.....

Sorry you asked?

Cheers,

- Evan
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