[discuss] discuss Digest, Vol 9, Issue 73

Phil Corwin psc at vlaw-dc.com
Fri Aug 29 20:19:58 UTC 2014


Grace;

With all respect, when ICANN announced that the IANA transition and the accountability enhancement processes would run on two separate tracks the rationale provided was that the first involved the global stakeholder community while the second was an internal ICANN matter and should be discussed and determined solely within the ICANN community. That rationale was questionable given that ICANN is wide open to participation to anyone in the world. Many also suspected that it was adopted in anticipation of trying to push the transition through before any significant accountability improvements were decided, much less implemented. But it is the rationale put out there by ICANN.

Now that every group within the ICANN community has signed a joint letter expressing concerns about the substance of the accountability process first promulgated on August 14th and the manner in which staff published it as a fait accompli, with that letter promising additional detailed questions within seven days, this has become an intense disagreement between ICANN the corporation and its community and should be resolved internally. 

There should be no objection to ICANN discussing the process it has unilaterally adopted and taking questions during the IGF meeting. However, this sentence in the announcement -- "The Town Hall Meeting will provide an opportunity for an open dialogue to address and clarify any remaining questions about the Enhancing ICANN Accountability and Governance Process." -- implies that "all remaining questions" can be answered in a 90-minute session in Istanbul. 

They cannot. There are too many questions to be answered in an environment that may be as much PR as substantive. And this is a session in which many members of the ICANN community will not be present while many in the audience will have little or no understanding of ICANN's procedures and the events leading up to this impasse.

In addition to that letter, there is about to be a Reconsideration Request filed with the Board asking it to reverse the material harm done to the community by the staff action. That is a big question.

Overall, the most relevant question is whether ICANN will reopen the process and allow its community to design the accountability process, or whether it will double down on intransigence. We hear a lot of talk in praise of the multistakeholder model, but what we see is a top-down mode of operation.

Best regards,
Philip


Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal
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Today's Topics:

   1. APC priorities for IGF 2014 (Valeria Betancourt)
   2. Re: Internet Governance and the NETmundial Initiative: A
      Flawed Attempt at Turning Words into Action (Kathy Brown)
   3. ICANN Town Hall on Accountability Process at IGF (Grace Abuhamad)


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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 08:35:02 -0500
From: Valeria Betancourt <valeriab at apc.org>
To: "discuss at 1net.org" <discuss at 1net.org>
Subject: [discuss] APC priorities for IGF 2014
Message-ID: <54008186.1040707 at apc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

Dear all,

The document which highlightsAPC'sprioritiesand main activities for
theIGF2104 is available at http://www.apc.org/en/node/19714/

Best,

Valeria

-- 

Valeria Betancourt
Directora / Manager
Programa de Pol?ticas de Information y Comunicaci?n / Communication and Information Policy Programme Asociaci?n para el Progreso de las Comunicaciones / Association for Progressive Communications, APC http://www.apc.org

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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 18:47:34 +0000
From: Kathy Brown <brown at isoc.org>
To: joseph alhadeff <joseph.alhadeff at oracle.com>
Cc: "discuss at 1net.org" <discuss at 1net.org>
Subject: Re: [discuss] Internet Governance and the NETmundial
	Initiative: A Flawed Attempt at Turning Words into Action
Message-ID: <3C861123-9BE6-49F5-A39D-6F026AA1BAFA at isoc.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

All, I thought I would share with you my post to colleagues this evening. Thanks for your comments. They have been quite helpful. Kathy


To my ISOC Colleagues,

I am writing as I fly to Istanbul with much anticipation for a week of important work. I understand that more than 3000 people have registered for the IGF. This past year, as a diverse Internet community, we have given much thought and energy on how to best "govern" ourselves. In Istanbul, we will have an opportunity, with our colleagues from around the world, to, once again, demonstrate the power of collective collaboration and action. As we know, collaboration is essential to ensure the future of the Internet.  If decisions related to the Internet and its future are not in the hands of the many, they will only be in the hands of the few.  I will post some further thoughts this weekend on IGF before the panels, workshops, lunches and dinners begin.

I wanted, however, to take a few moments before we land to report back on my observations of the WEF event yesterday.

I applaud the leadership of the World Economic Forum for highlighting and recognizing the enormity of the effect of the Internet on the global economy and the benefits and challenges inherent in its adoption in much of the world. It is, of course, entirely legitimate that it seeks to understand and participate in the debate on internet governance. When given the opportunity to comment during the morning session, I urged that its thinking about governance include as its central tenet the continuing investment, innovation and access to the Internet to and for everyone, particularly for those who do not yet have access and for the "unborn innovator".

Many of us in and around the Internet Society--on Staff, on the Board, in our organizational members and Chapters, in the IETF and the IAB have been deeply committed and involved in working with our extended communities to address the threats to the Internet as well as to develop, manage and deploy the ever-evolving technology of the Internet throughout the world. We revel in inventing the future. Together, we have adopted a bottom up culture and method of decision making around numerous, local and global, technical, social and legal issues that arise in the decentralized, distributed ecosystem which is the Internet.

We were delighted with the cooperative spirit in Brazil at Net Mundial as well as our collective ability to reach rough consensus on the principles that should govern our governing. Olaf Kolkman, ISOC's new CITO, enthusiastically said, lets tack these principles on the door and, for all who are ready to embrace them, come on in.

Many of us are busy implementing features of the NetMundial roadmap. ISOC has developed toolkits for spam and IXPs; our regional offices hold INETs throughout the world to demonstrate and teach technical skills; our Leadership program creates and administers online courses and sponsors leadership seminars, ambassadorships and internships; we take active leadership in policy development for governance issues; and our staff has worked tirelessly to introduce best practices workshops to the IGF, while our Chapters have actively supported Regional and National IGFs around the Globe. The Internet Society is a party to the NTIA Transition Coordinating Committee. Our representatives and Chapters are intimately involved in the ICANN accountability dialogue. We believe that we are well along the Internet Governance journey.

We welcome any and all people and groups of good will to work with us and the broader Internet Community in a multi-stakeholder effort to deepen and broaden this effort.  We certainly invite WEF to get acquainted with our collective work that is serious and ongoing. I heard some intention to do that.

I was disturbed, however, as others have expressed, with the opaque way the meeting came about; about what seemed to be established agendas; talk of some new single entity and top down models that purport to represent organic community processes that could be hobbled by definitions and artificial role expectations.

I frankly do not know enough to know whether my concerns are justified. I look forward to hearing more from WEF, and perhaps, from the ICANN leadership, this week, about the initiative. I hope, too, that the folks at WEF who are coming to the IGF soak up the energy, creativity, work and sweat of the community that will gather this week. A constructive dialogue and the collaborative spirit of NetMundial may just cause us to join forces for the good of the Internet and the good of the world.

So, on to Istanbul. We have work to do.

Kathy

On Aug 29, 2014, at 1:22 PM, "joseph alhadeff" <joseph.alhadeff at oracle.com<mailto:joseph.alhadeff at oracle.com>> wrote:

Jeremy:

Just to be clear,  a number of business representatives, including ICC-BASIS, have called into question the lack of transparency, bottom up inclusion and consultation in this process as well as the need to better clarify how this Initiative adds separate value and is supportive rather than duplicative of the  IGF.  Please also note that placing a number of businesses on a guest list has little to do with actual inclusion of or consultation with even the business community. We hope that these issues in creation will not preclude the ability of Net Mundial Initiative to  become something useful to the broader communities and would strongly urge that the ensuing 6 month consultation period be open to both procedural and substantive improvements; nothing should be final until that consultation is completed.   While business welcomes the ability to improve the effectiveness of the IGF (best practices, capturing discussions, knowledge transfer, capacity building, better addressing developing country concerns...), we believe, as you note, that the fact that IGF is not a negotiating form is one of its major virtues.  To that end, we hope that this IGF is able to focus on the work at hand related to its further improvement and not be overly distracted by the Net Mundial Initiative.

Joe
On 8/29/2014 2:04 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/internet-governance-and-netmundial-initiative-flawed-attempt-turning-words-action

--
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org<mailto:jmalcolm at eff.org>

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::




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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 19:10:01 +0000
From: Grace Abuhamad <grace.abuhamad at icann.org>
To: "discuss at 1net.org" <discuss at 1net.org>
Subject: [discuss] ICANN Town Hall on Accountability Process at IGF
Message-ID: <D026482E.9318%grace.abuhamad at icann.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"


Read the original post here:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-08-29-en


Enhancing ICANN Accountability and Governance Town Hall Meeting to take place at Internet Governance Forum in Istanbul  <https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300&winname=addthis&pub=ra-52fcc7eb
243d6d89&source=tbx32-300&lng=en-US&s=linkedin&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icann.o
rg%2Fnews%2Fannouncement-2014-08-29-en&title=Enhancing%20ICANN%20Accountabil
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<https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-08-29-en#>
<https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-08-29-en#>
<https://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=300&winname=addthis&pub=ra-52fcc7eb2
43d6d89&source=tbx32-300&lng=en-US&s=sinaweibo&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icann.o
rg%2Fnews%2Fannouncement-2014-08-29-en&title=Enhancing%20ICANN%20Accountabil
ity%20and%20Governance%20Town%20Hall%20Meeting%20to%20take%20place%20at%20In
ternet%20Governance%20Forum%20in%20Istanbul%20-%20ICANN&ate=AT-ra-52fcc7eb24
3d6d89/-/-/5400ce47c5656a77/3&frommenu=1&uid=5400ce47a9d44601&ct=1&tt=0&capt
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<https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-08-29-en#>
<https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-08-29-en#>
ICANN staff invites all interested stakeholders to a Town Hall Meeting to discuss the Enhancing ICANNAccountability and Governance Process during the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Town Hall Meeting will provide an opportunity for an open dialogue to address and clarify any remaining questions about the Enhancing ICANN Accountability and Governance Process.
Date: 2 September 2014
Location: ICEC in the Topkapi A Room, Istanbul, Turkey
Time: 06:00-07:30 UTC (Time zone conversions can be found here <http://ow.ly/AS3Jf> ) Remote Participation Information:
Online Meeting Room:
https://intgovforum.webex.com/intgovforum/j.php?MTID=md43f4ed6d6fb2922239ea6
3ba730800f
Meeting Number: 959 336 622
Meeting Password: ICANN
Audio Conference Information:
Call-in toll number (UK): +44 203 478 5289 Global call-in numbers:
https://intgovforum.webex.com/intgovforum/globalcallin.php?serviceType=MC&am
p;ED=312692962&amp;tollFree=0
Access code: 959 336 622


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