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

[Alan Greenberg]

At 01/12/2014 09:31 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
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>Alan, based on some of your comments I am having trouble 
>comprehending what your disagreement is about anymore. See comments inline:
>
>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.
>
>MM: Agreed, the IANA contract has to be used as leverage, _both_ to 
>keep ICANN's policy processes in bounds, _and_ to ensure adequate 
>performance. So why are you opposing the contracting model?

My point was that in the contracting model, I think the leverage is 
largely gone. It is status quo from an ICANN perspective. But my main 
reason for opposition is that I am far from convinced that all of the 
questions I and others have can be viably answered.

>
>Thus my reference to lost opportunities.
>
>MM: "Lost opportunities" is the phrase I heard from Malcolm Hutty in 
>Frankfurt, after he was told that it would be out of scope for the 
>IANA transition process to be used as leverage to keep ICANN policy 
>making in bounds. I agreed with Malcolm, I believe Chuck Gomes did, 
>too, and I think the group started to reconsider that. But again, 
>people who support Malcolm's view are people who are strongly 
>committed to the external contracting model of governance. So where 
>do you stand on this now?

I think that using the transition to force accountability with 
respect to policy IS out of scope. But I also think that SOME 
transition models will have the incidental benefit of better 
policy-making accountability.

>
>  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.
>
>MM: My point in the original message to you was not that we should 
>take the Kelly bill as gospel, but that you were mistaken to claim 
>that the "US government" will not accept separating IANA from ICANN. 
>If a significant part of the US government is writing legislation 
>demanding that IANA be separated before they will allow the 
>transition to occur, I don't see how anyone can claim that 
>separating IANA from ICANN is unacceptable to the USG.
>
>MM: As a general matter, I don't think it's appropriate for anyone 
>here to use "what the USG will accept" as an argument for or against 
>any provision of the plan, unless a) they are part of the US 
>government and b) such provision clearly contradicts the criteria 
>that the NTIA has set out. The simple fact is that the NTIA criteria 
>do not say anything about whether IANA is contracted or not, 
>separable or not, or inside or outside of ICANN.

I never claimed that the current proposal would not be accepted. I 
try to be quite careful in what I write. I said "It is not at all 
clear that a proposal such as one that the CWG has put in this draft 
would be acceptable to the US government."  That was an opinion, but 
it voices a possibility that I believe we need to consider.

>
>MM: While we are on the subject of the USG, let me direct your 
>attention to today's column by L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street 
>journal. 
><http://online.wsj.com/articles/gordon-crovitz-halfway-to-wrecking-internet-freedom-1417387404?cb=logged0.09525622939690948>http://online.wsj.com/articles/gordon-crovitz-halfway-to-wrecking-internet-freedom-1417387404?cb=logged0.09525622939690948 
>
>
>In this opinion piece, Crovitz claims that the transition process is 
>failing, that we have accomplished nothing, that "there has been no 
>progress finding an alternative for protecting the Internet from 
>authoritarian governments" and that "Icann has spent the past nine 
>months trying to come up with a new governance model, to no avail." 
>Obviously he is making this up, but most people aren't tracking our 
>process and don't know better.
>
>I'd suggest that before you nitpick the plan further you weigh very 
>carefully the fact that there are vultures circling who would like 
>nothing better than for this effort to fail and for the status quo 
>to remain in place.

I find it rather inappropriate to consider the comments I presented, 
ones that I and others (and indeed YOU, in some cases as you have 
confirmed) feel are crucial to the ultimate success of this 
transition, as NITPICKING.

Alan

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