[CWG-Stewardship] NTIA's Role in Root Zone Management

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

Dear Greg,

thanks for your kind message. A follow-up below:

On 20/01/2015 20:30, Greg Shatan wrote:
> ICANN is (for better or worse) virtually unique.  Most companies do
> not have an organized "community" of "stakeholders" around them, like
> ICANN.  Most companies are not acting as policy and governance
> "ecosystems," like ICANN.  In many ways, this uniqueness is a good
> thing, but it gives us unique challenges.  While we can borrow heavily
> from the "playbooks" of existing non-profits and private companies
> (whether publicly-traded or not), their solutions will need to be
> customized (more or less) to suit our situation.

You are absolutely right, ICANN is virtually unique. I therefore am very
concerned that some suggestions are that it loses this uniqueness and
ends up working on a for profit corporate model of shareholders. It's
not that I am against share ownership - I am a shareholder of many US
corporations - but the idea of accountability based on US corporation
accountability is seriously dented outside the United States. Again it's
a perception thing and I know it's not perceived in the US but most of
the rest of the world doesn't see it that way. I have concerns that we
are, once again, going to be accused of replacing US government
accountability with US corporate interest accountability and that will
do nothing for the legitimacy of our proposed solution.

Kind regards,

Olivier