[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] RDS-PDP-WG Looking for blue sky

[Sam Lanfranco]

Allison,

The short answer to your question is YES. As with many, in fact most, 
civil society groups, they cannot afford  to be engaged in ICANN's pdp 
process, and while we (I am in ncsg/npoc) cannot speak on their behalf, 
we are expected to be sensitive to their situation, and to the situation 
of all who are effectively "citizens of the Internet".

That does not mean that we have to take responsibility for protecting 
their interests. It just means that we have to strive for a registration 
regime that gives them the options to protect their own interests as 
they see them. The essence of a multistakeholder process is that 
participants strive for policies and practices that protect the broader 
interests of their constituencies, while the constituencies operate 
within that broader context to protect their special interests as they 
see fit.

If ICANN is to exhibit "best practice" multistakeholder governance, it 
has to rise to the occasion within something like the context I mention 
in the previous paragraph. Sadly, from recent history ICANN is falling 
far short of that mark, and probably providing fuel for those who see a 
multistakeholder approach as flawed and inadequate. ICANN  is an 
accidental social experiment. A technical solution to a communications 
problem (the Internet Protocol) morphed into the global Internet 
ecosystem where everybody is, in some sense, a citizen, where every 
entity has a presence, and where what that means in terms of rights and 
obligations is yet to be sorted out.

My personal view is that ICANN could elect to rise to the occasion, or 
it can just fight within itself, and the big issues will be decided 
elsewhere. ICANN would then just shrink to just a technical service 
entity. Whether I am right or wrong, ICANN is an accidental social 
experiment, and it is being watched with a critical eye, both from 
within its participating stakeholders and from those concerned with the 
wider Internet ecosystem.....and it my be my imagination, but I do hear 
a clock ticking.

Sam L.

On 10/24/2017 10:57 AM, allison nixon wrote:
> Sam, in relation to the "at risk" groups that you work with. Would you 
> agree that the groups themselves with their special use-cases need to 
> take some responsibility for their own privacy? Don't those groups 
> still need to file taxes and file some paperwork for public corporate 
> directories and property ownership directories in their areas? If 
> those public disclosure rules can be dealt with, then is the current 
> WHOIS an issue that is any more difficult to navigate than the others 
> I mentioned?
>