[CWG-Stewardship] Agenda item 5 - Alternate proposals

[Milton L Mueller]

Interesting that Shawn’s membership proposal (the one published in The Hill) is put forward as something “simpler” than the CWG proposal. Though I am sympathetic to this proposal, establishing a membership would be an extremely complicated and drawn-out change, fraught with all kinds of unanticipated implications and implementation difficulties.

Likewise, Alan is suggesting that a set of yet-unknown changes coming out of an incomplete process is also “less complicated.” That is not a supportable claim. It would be more accurate to say that the separability we propose here dramatically simplifies the work of the CCWG-Accountability.

Del Bianco’s “cross-community membership group” (described at the end of Alan’s message below) is another proposal mentioned. That would be an alternative board that could second-guess ICANN’s board in numerous ways and would create a competing power center. The complications caused by such a structure are _enormous_, far more so than the Contract Co. It is interesting that advocates of ICANN controlling everything see such problems with the MRT but no such problems with a committee that not only mirrors the composition of the MRT but has an unrestricted mandate to overrule the board.

--MM

From: cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org [mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Alan Greenberg

Although I believe that the ALAC proposal ( http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-cwg-naming-transition-01dec14/msg00011.html ) is the only such alternative presented here, it is not alone. I am not advocating the exact details of the proposal referenced in the message (see http://www.innovationfiles.org/key-principles-for-the-icann-transition/ and http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/227375-icann-transition-plan-needs-new-ideas-to-ensure-accountability), but it does demonstrate that we are not unique in wanting a far simpler mode for the new IANA coupled with real multistakeholder accountability in ICANN.

I believe that the CCWG *WILL* deliver and I think that we need to factor that into our deliberations. Specifically, is there really a need for the complexity, cost and associated issues of Contract Co. given the same level of control could be provided by a change such as this?

Alan

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

From: Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco at netchoice.org<mailto:sdelbianco at netchoice.org>>
To: Accountability Cross Community <accountability-cross-community at icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community at icann.org>>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 16:20:43 +0000
Subject: [CCWG-Accountability] Op-Ed from ITIF regarding permanent cross-community group as ultimate authority


This pertains to our discussion yesterday about a permanent, cross-community "˜Membership" group to hold ICANN board and management accountable to the community.  It was described this way in draft3<https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/51414327/WorkArea2%20Accountability%20suggestions%20%5Bdraft%203%5D.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1418610739000&api=v2> for work area 2:
Amend ICANN bylaws to recognize a permanent cross-community representative structure (all ACs, SOs, Constituencies) with authority to:
Appoint members of Affirmation review teams
Review a board decision, or resolve a dispute (option to use independent panel)
Approve changes to ICANN bylaws or Articles, with 2/3 approval
Approve annual proposed ICANN budget
Recall one or all ICANN Board members
One of the groups proposing<http://www.innovationfiles.org/key-principles-for-the-icann-transition/> a community of stakeholders as ultimate authority posted a relevant Op-Ed<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/227375-icann-transition-plan-needs-new-ideas-to-ensure-accountability> in a Washington paper today.  Daniel Castro of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) wrote:
California state law applies since ICANN is a registered nonprofit corporation in the state. As such, California law allows nonprofit organizations to have statutory members. Gunnarson suggests that one way to provide an effective check on the ICANN board's power is to create statutory members of ICANN with extensive authority over the board. This authority could include removing board members, overturning board decisions, etc. The statutory members would likely include the chairs of the various ICANN "supporting organizations" and "advisory committees," such as the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) responsible for IP address policy and the Country Code Name Supporting Organization (ccNSO) responsible for managing the country code top-level domains. To ensure that the statutory members do not hold too much sway, their actions could be limited to situations where there is a supermajority (i.e., consensus).
We welcome further elaboration of legal basis to enable this modification to ICANN’s bylaws in conformance with California law.

Steve DelBianco
Executive Director
NetChoice

http://www.NetChoice.org<http://www.netchoice.org/> and http://blog.netchoice.org<http://blog.netchoice.org/>
+1.202.420.7482
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-stewardship/attachments/20141218/69806979/attachment.html>