Re: [ga] Re: Discussion Draft -- ICANN Reorganization

[vint cerf <vinton.g.cerf@wcom.com>]

Jamie,

thanks for this additional input which I will share with the other
board members. If you have some specific ideas about alternative
structures that will both solve the apparent problems and work
better than the strawman proposal, please do continue to work on
them and share with others.

vint

At 10:12 AM 3/18/2002 -0500, James Love wrote:
>Vint,
>
>I understand the Stuart Lynn spent a lot of time talking about Public
>Private Partnerships PPPs, which are something I know about from my work in
>health care.   PPPs are the instrument of choice for big pharma, because
>they believe it will provide a mechanism to manage and control public health
>policy, while socializing the costs, and reducing the influence of civil
>society on policy making.  The public pays, but the big pharma companies
>control how the money is spent.  At least, that is what they want.  There
>are also some who think this is the best way to get the private sector to do
>good works, with an emphasis on the incentives to the firms, coupled with
>moral suasion.   And there are also some PPPs that are led more by private
>donors or NGOs, and seek a cooperative relationship with companies on
>specific issues.  Indeed, I was in NYC during Accra on a meeting to create a
>new PPP called DNDi, a non-profit corporation to develop drugs for neglected
>diseases (an effort that I am supportive of, being coordinated by the Nobel
>prize winning MSF).  One thing that should be clear is the wide diversity of
>structures for all of these PPPs.  You can look at info on 78 of them at
>http://www.ippph.org , see the big pharma view here:
>http://www.ifpma.org/PublicPrivate.htm , and some typical NGO criticism
>here: http://www.haiweb.org/campaign/PPI/PPIs%20introduction.html.    Among
>the typical criticisms are too little transparency, too much corporate
>control, and that the public does not obtain sufficient benefits from its
>investments.   But of course, some are thought to work well, some poorly.
>What strikes me about the ICANN proposal is how inappropriate is the model
>of having governments choose the board members.  If the ICANN staff and
>board really want a large staff and a big budget and can't pay for it from
>private sector funding, there is no reason to assume you have to turn ICANN
>into a PPP regulator gizmo.  This is pretty much the worst way to structure
>this.  One can imagine a treaty dealing with the ICANN functions, and one
>can imagine a private sector group tying to do it, but putting the two
>together begs the question of what type of a new governance system is being
>created.   We aren't talking about funding R&D into TB or sleeping sickness.
>We are talking about enormous potential power to control the Internet.  If
>it looks like fascism to some it is because it looks a lot like fascism.
>I'm not sure this is the way you want to go.  Why not something a little
>more tame like contracts for services?  Is this because some in ICANN don't
>like the idea that the contracts could ever be rebid to a different group?
>
>    Jamie

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