Re: [ga] ITU Resolution 102 -- four years later

["Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette@wz-berlin.de>]

On 18 Oct 2002, at 11:38, Roberto Gaetano wrote:


I agree with most parts of your description. I am not convinced though it would be the
best solution if the ITU stepped in and took over the control over the root. 

What I find really unfortunate is that the idea of self governance is linked to the 
oversight of one government. What is necessary I think is some form of political 
framework that would enable a new attempt of self-governance. ICANN's failure and 
incapability of reforming itself in a legitimate way does not prove that self-governance
is impossible alltogether. ICANN's failure does prove though that both stricter and more
comprehensive forms of accountability are necessary. By comprehensive I mean more than
just one government should oversee names and numbers administration.  Ideally, this could
be achieved by a convention that restricts the role of governments to a minimum of 
sanity,
fairness and similar types of checks. Such a convention would provide the political space
for a new attempt governance model that aims to manage without direct government
intervention. Btw, "regulation of self-regulation" has become quite a popular strategy
recently. 

Jeanette




> I'm not more versed than you, and do not want to correct you, but will 
> nevertheless propose a different reading.
> What the ITU is doing is simply to encourage its members to participate 
> *directly* in the management of the process. This does not mean that the ITU 
> wants to candidate itself to replace ICANN (although it is not impossible 
> that some people in the ITU might think so).
> 
> But maybe the interesting question is, rather than arguing again over 
> "bureaucracy", "government vs. private sector", and the usual amenities, 
> "why is this position different from the previous position?", namely the 
> encouragement to participation in the entities that manage the process.
> My answer is simply that it is because ICANN has failed to address some of 
> the concerns of the members of the ITU, and therefore the ITU is encouraging 
> its members to take direct action to correct the problem.
> 
> Some of you might remember the comments of Wilkinson and Twomey about 
> representation in ICANN, I think it was in Yokohama, but I might be wrong. 
> They both stated that, should ICANN fail in providing a mechanism for 
> representation of the individuals (the discussion was about AtLarge 
> Directors), governments would have stepped in.
> Some oldcomers might also remember that this was exactly my point in some 
> discussions at the times of the IFWP, and in the creation of ICANN: let's 
> try to have self-governance, but be aware that we better get it right the 
> first time (and therefore be prepared to compromise for the sake of broader 
> consensus rather than to push one specific solution upon other unwilling 
> stakeholders), because we might not have a second chance.
> Well, here we go.
> 
> But this, as I said, does not mean that the ITU will take over. It only 
> means that the governments cannot accept a situation in which a supposedly 
> private entity, de-facto run by one of the Governments of the world, has the 
> power to rule over the Internet world-wide.
> ICANN is exaggerating now, and is stretching the thing too far.
> On one hand it seems incapable to curb the monopolistic/oligopolistic 
> ambitions of some powerful actors, and on the other hand is denying 
> representativity to the less powerful, like individual users.
> On one hand it allows free hand to the major gTLD, and on the other hand it 
> is trying to impose unnecessary rules to the ccTLDs, that should be 
> answerable to their local community (and to their individual governments), 
> not to a centralized body.
> 
> But where do we go from here?
> It was Karl, if I remember correctly, who advocated that there was no need 
> to have just one organization that fulfills all tasks and duties of the 
> current ICANN. We could have a "functional" breakdown allocating tasks to 
> different entities (existing ones, or created "ad hoc").
> If this is the way to go, it might well be that one or more functions be 
> delegated to the ITU. For instance, the assignment of IP addresses, that 
> seems similar to the management of the frequency spectrum or the telephone 
> system, and seems to be perfectly adequate for an International Treaty 
> Organization. Or the management of the A-root, a typical thing that should 
> be protected by international law, and not be left under the authority of 
> one Government.
> Of course, other tasks might be completely out of scope for the ITU, or even 
> for any other similar organization, and should be left to a different body 
> or mechanism.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> Best regards
> Roberto
> 
> 
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