[CPWG] ICANN’s Contractual Governance Regime

Tue Jul 25 17:54:05 UTC 2023

History absolves.

Registries have offered PICS before and commit to oversight by ICANN for
compliance. That is at least 12 years old.

ICANN has always had the inherent power established in contract to execute
oversight of PICs. Anything a registry does that has implications for
stability and security is a duty of care.

Any PIC without material impact - and thus a potential to ruffle the
stability and security of the DNS - is not worth a warm bucket of spit.

ICANN has not and will not demonstrate an appetite to police PICS for
compliance.

In my humble wrongheaded opinion, calling them RVCs has not changed a
thing. The playing field has not changed. The appetite for oversight will
not change.

Because the fundamental idea driving ICANN's engagement with its licensees
has not changed. ICANN has no wish to be seen or to act as a regulator in
any way, shape or form.

History will absolve me.

Carlton

==============================
*Carlton A Samuels*

*Mobile: 876-818-1799Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
=============================

On Mon, 24 Jul 2023 at 19:35, Evan Leibovitch via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
wrote:

> From my own experiences (granted, about a decade ago, but the issues are
> not significantly different)...
>
> Indeed, the balance -- between registrant rights and end-users wanting to
> minimize abuse -- has always been delicate. In the past ALAC has tended to
> be closer to the GAC position on this balance. Both of us are outside the
> ICANN food chain, so to speak, so our motivations are not driven by
> profitability, sunk costs, or proliferation.
> There is a fundamental flaw in the V in RVCs. Registries will promise
> anything if it means the difference between acceptance or rejection; upon
> delegation they will do what they want. PICs (or what they're called now)
> exist so long as convenient, but *never* survive their first challenge to
> the financial bottom line.
>
> Personally I don't accept, at all, the claimed equivalence between
> "consumer protection" and "regime protection". Any government that would
> want restrictions on the DNS in order to maintain political power certainly
> have many other -- more effective -- such tools at its disposal, many of
> which are beyond ICANN's reach. So I would tend to side with a GAC that is
> (usually) most-vocally represented by states who have genuine interest in
> balancing business and citizen needs.
>
> As a result, the best approach to take is a home-grown ALAC one that looks
> at both the unfettered-freedom-for-registrant advocates and the government
> regulator-wannabe approaches. It's up to us to examine every decision point
> on its individual merits if (and only if) we establish that the decision at
> hand is one that impacts end-users. There are many battles in this arena in
> which we have no stake; both volunteer effort and our collective stress is
> minimized if we meticulously avoid that which doesn't impact our mandate.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
> @evanleibovitch / @el56
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 24, 2023 at 4:17 PM Jonathan Zuck via CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Milton, and most of the NCUC, is focused on the rights of registrants,
>> not the interests of end users. That's their remit and I'm glad someone is
>> doing it. The slippery slope of "consumer protection" is that it can be
>> used by some governments as a cloak for "regime protection." So if we put
>> the GAC, in particular, in the position of dictating what gTLDs must do, in
>> terms of content, that could effectively become group censorship. If it's a
>> regional TLD, it could become even more dangerous individual government
>> censorship. So it's important that we're vigilant about that. That said,
>> with 1,500 TLDs, if the GAC wants to heavily regulated industries to have
>> lightly regulated strings, there's probably, on balance, a benefit. That's
>> OUR remit to always be searching for that balance.
>>
>>
>> So, not to speak for Milton, but I imagine he would suggest that the GAC
>> not be given free reign to dictate RVCs for any string but instead to
>> require a pretty hard core public interest justification. Just a thought.
>> J
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* CPWG <cpwg-bounces at icann.org> on behalf of Roberto Gaetano via
>> CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
>> *Sent:* Monday, July 24, 2023 11:59 AM
>> *To:* Alberto Soto Roldan <alberto at soto.net.ar>
>> *Cc:* CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [CPWG] ICANN’s Contractual Governance Regime
>>
>> 🤫🙄
>>
>> Inviato da iPhone
>>
>> Il giorno 24.07.2023, alle ore 20:56, Alberto Soto Roldan via CPWG <
>> cpwg at icann.org> ha scritto:
>>
>> 
>>
>> And what is Mlton's proposal?
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Alberto
>>
>>
>>
>> *De:* CPWG <cpwg-bounces at icann.org> * En nombre de *David Mackey via CPWG
>> *Enviado el:* lunes, 24 de julio de 2023 12:40
>> *Para:* CPWG <cpwg at icann.org>
>> *Asunto:* [CPWG] ICANN’s Contractual Governance Regime
>>
>>
>>
>> fyi: Sharing this blog post by Milton Mueller
>> <https://www.internetgovernance.org/2023/06/15/the-big-question-facing-icanns-contractual-governance-regime/>
>> regarding a discussion held at ICANN 77, because it seems relevant to the
>> At-Large CPWG community ...
>>
>>
>>
>> *"**ICANN never ceases to pose fascinating issues in global governance.
>> At ICANN 77, held in Washington DC June 12 – 16, a dramatic debate took
>> place about ICANN’s proper scope of authority. Some interest groups (mainly
>> Registries and GAC) want ICANN to be empowered to enforce compliance with
>> Registry Voluntary Commitments (RVCs), formerly known as Public Interest
>> Commitments (PICs). Civil society groups and some Internet businesses see
>> in the proposed change a threat to freedom of expression on the internet
>> and an attempt to undermine ICANN’s multistakeholder policy development
>> process.*
>>
>> *Underlying this debate are important questions about the relationship
>> between private contracting, multistakeholder governance, and public
>> policy."*
>>
>> *...*
>>
>> *"The RVC problem is really a derivative of a more fundamental flaw in
>> ICANN’s new TLD processes. Instead of defining clear, simple rules for
>> nondiscriminatory awards of new TLDs, ICANN has created a bureaucratic
>> morass of regulations and veto powers. The fate of a TLD application is not
>> governed by any predictable rules. It is all discretionary, and the GAC in
>> particular wants to be in a position to veto or modify applications and
>> names that it doesn’t like.*
>>
>> *Fortunately, Registry commitments that are designed to regulate content
>> and services and make ICANN their enforcer are clearly violations of
>> ICANN’s fundamental bylaws. The plot to bypass bottom up policy making
>> process cannot succeed unless those bylaws are modified, and the
>> modification would be so fundamental and the social gain so miniscule that
>> it is hard to imagine it ever happening.*
>>
>> *Never underestimate the ability of ICANN’s board, the GAC and DNS
>> industry short-term self-interest to screw things up, however. Keep an eye
>> on this process, and we hope this blog post helped you understand the
>> stakes."*
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