Re: [wg-review] Clarifications requested from BoD, Staff, NC,TC, Chair prior to co-Chair elections

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

Milton Mueller wrote:

> >>> "'Kent Crispin'" <kent@songbird.com> 01/09/01 08:02PM >>>
> 
> The real point is that many people have a completely mistaken idea about
> the nature of ICANN -- they think it is some kind of government agency,
> and judge it in those terms.  But it is not a government.  It is a
> corporation.

It is structured as a corporation. Its role akin to that of a monopoly
infrastructure industry like electric power or the telephone industry.
In some countries, those are gov't-run services, in others they are
heavily regulated monopolies. There are arguments both ways on which
of those models work better.

The net, and therefore ICANN, are inherently international. This
complicates either model immensely since we don't (and arguably
shouldn't) have an international gov't to either run or regulate
ICANN.
 
> In fact, you would be better off thinking of it as a corporation that
> offers products (coordination services and anti-trust shielding) to
> governments, registries, ISPs, and so on.

Absolutely not.

The clients for DNS, hence for ICANN's services, are millions of
Internet users and thousands of domain name holders. The object of
the exercise is to make the net work well for them.

Policy decisions should be based on their needs, and they should have
enough votes to dominate the process on issues where their interests
are clear enough to unite them.

Registries and registrars are part of the mechanism for delivering
those services. They are emphatically not ICANN's clients.
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