[CWG-Stewardship] My concerns with the draft proposal and an alternative option

[Alan Greenberg]

At 29/11/2014 11:07 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:

>Alan,
>After reading your contribution, I think that most of the proposals 
>you make are more appropriate to the CCWG on enhanced accountability.

I made no proposals with regard to accountability. If you look at my 
wording, I offered several examples of accountability measures that 
might be considered by the Accountability CCWG should it need to 
ensure that multistakeholders were in control and not the sovereign 
ICANN Board. They were there as a proof-of-concept to counter those 
who claim there is NO way to control the ICANN Board.

>That is, you are referring to recalling board members, voting 
>margins by the ICANN board, by-laws regarding GAC advice, and so on. 
>These are all matters relating to ICANN in its role as a policy 
>maker and policy enforcer, and not as _implementer_ of policy via 
>the IANA's modification of the DNS root zone.

They also matter related to ICANN carrying out the IANA function if 
that were to be the way this transition plays out. Clearly not what 
you and many others want, but the subject that I was writing on.

>
>There has been general agreement on the principle that policy making 
>and its implementation in the root zone should be separate and 
>distinct processes. That is why IETF is separate from IANA, why RIRs 
>are separate from IANA. And while there is no hard and fast line 
>barring ICANN from doing both under proper safeguards, most people 
>recognize the inherent danger of a corporate entity with the unchecked power

Bingo. And that unchecked power was what I was attempting to 
demonstrate could be fixed. And fixing it would have a VERY 
significant benefit to the policy process as well. And we have little 
hope of fixing them without using the IANA contract as leverage. Thus 
my reference to lost opportunities.

>  to implement root zone changes without bottom up, open and 
> consensual policy development That is one reason why NTIA 
> established the role it did as backstop for the root zone, and why 
> the IANA contract required IANA employees to stay out of policy processes.
>
>Therefore, this CWG has taken the correct approach of trying to 
>replace the necessary elements of the NTIA role, in order to make 
>both the IANA functions operator accountable to its customers, and 
>to make ICANN's policy process less prone to abuse. The idea that we 
>can simply give IANA to ICANN permanently and rely on internal 
>accountability for it to avoid abusing these mixed up roles is never 
>going to be accepted by a substantial portion of the community.

Possibly, and I find that sad. I truly wish that ICANN had addressed 
these matters of trust long before we came to the opportunity of the 
IANA transition.

>
>And since your message also made some comments about the 
>acceptability of the current proposal to the US government, let me 
>point out to you that the Kelly bill actually would _require_ IANA 
>to be pulled out of ICANN and formed as a separate corporation

To quote Milton Mueller referring to the Kelly bill, "There are some 
very good ideas and some very bad ideas in this proposal". If we 
cannot take all of the aspects of the Kelly bill as gospel, then you 
cannot use a particular one to demonstrate what the US government 
wants.  Sensible, desirable, far-fetched and overly micromanaged are 
clearly in the eyes of the beholder.


>; which means that your proposal would certainly NOT be acceptable 
>to the Congress. My most recent blog post performs a detailed 
>analysis of the Kelly bill 
><http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/11/28/laws-sausages-and-the-iana-transition-part-2-the-kelly-bill/>http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/11/28/laws-sausages-and-the-iana-transition-part-2-the-kelly-bill/ 
>
>
>You made some good comments about some of the ambiguities 
>surrounding the relationship between the CSC, PRT and Contract Co. 
>As you may have noted, on the call I agreed with some of those 
>points. But those comments justify further development and perhaps 
>modification of the current plan; they do not in any way justify 
>starting from scratch.

That presumes we can find practical answers to all of the concerns. 
If we can do that, and keep the costs low, and sell it to the US 
gov't., then we will have invented a very cumbersome and complex 
system that works. If we cannot address all of them, we have, in my 
opinion, a real problem.

Alan

>
>--MM
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-stewardship/attachments/20141130/09b64c06/attachment.html>