[CWG-Stewardship] Concern with Contract Co.

[Milton L Mueller]

Mary,
Appreciate your comments but I cannot make sense of some of your arguments. Specifically,

Contract Co:  the jurisdictional questions as had been raised in this thread makes it less attractive as the way to go.

MM: I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make any sense to me. There is no avoidance of jurisdictional issues. If there is no Contract Co. and ICANN controls the whole process directly, which is want Olivier and Alan want, then the jurisdiction is the United States. Decisions _must_ be made about jurisdiction, and the creation of a Contract Co. actually gives us more flexibility about this than the status quo. Let me also remind you that with the U.S. Congress looking over NTIA and a lame-duck Presidency, altering the jurisdiction of ICANN itself is simply not feasible at this juncture.

Question: Is this a multi-stakeholder entity?

MM: The answer is simple. Yes. Contract Co. gets its instructions directly from PRT, which is multistakeholder.

General acceptability by the internet community may be difficult to sell considering the heightened awareness in most governments ( ie ccTLDs) regarding the IANA relationship and the position of NTIA in representing governments in the functions.

MM: I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the proposal before us. Contract Co is just a shell that does what the PRT tells it to do. If you are looking at it as some kind of

I believe a less legal formal entity operating a bottom up process would  not only meet the NTIA requirements but also give the internet community the opportunity to be part of the MoU agreement with IANA functions Operator.

MM: I don’t understand this. PRT is representative of the Internet community. What is the difference between an MoU and a contract, except that an MoU is legally weaker and less separable?

Who is the ultimate supervisor (Regulator) of this entity? - US government?

MM: Again I do not understand where you are coming from and think that you may be fundamentally misunderstanding the proposal. The whole point of this proposal is to get the unilateral authority of the US government out of the system completely.
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