[discuss] [IANAtransition] A Summary of IANA Oversight Transition Tasks and Issues

[John Curran]

On Apr 2, 2014, at 10:03 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:

>> 
>>     To continue the analogy, the (implied governmental) party that engages in
>>     regulation or rule-making on behalf of the public for establishing minimum
>>     safety equipment for automobiles does not necessarily have to be the same
>>     party that provides any necessary oversight to an association doing the
>>     development and coordination of automobile safety standards;
> 
> Agreed, not be the same party, but again this is a layered (and thus related) relationship... the party which engages in rule making on behalf of the public will make the larger rules (say, the legislature), and the specific oversight body (regulatory body) will ensure that these are adhered to by those who do actual development and coordination of safety standards.

You presume it to be layered, but that is not necessarily the case... 

The reason for the confusion is your statement "and the specific oversight 
body (regulatory body) will ensure that these are adhered to by those who 
do actual development and coordination of safety standards.", which is not
correct.

In general, the actual development and coordination of safety standards is
completely independent.  The regulation is of those _who actually make the 
cars_, to see that they make use of equipment conforming to safety standards 
as required by the regulator (at least in the USA).  It is not regulation 
of those working on the technical safety standards.

The regulator specifies certain requirements or standards be met, but that
is a requirement on the manufacturers/distributors/buyers, not a requirement
put upon the technical standards organization.   

I can easily imagine that certain public policy norms and mandates may be
applied to usage of the DNS system or IP registry system, but am far less
certain that those requirements are on the registry operators than on the
registry user community.

>>  the former
>>     is a public safety regulator while the latter might be entirely provided by
>>     normal judicial authority regarding a trade or standard association's
>>     compliance with its incorporation/purpose.
> 
> Ok, here I lose you... I divided the two roles differently as above..... you seem to be saying that 'necessary oversight' to technical coordination bodies can be provided by 'normal judicial authority' but in my understanding judicial authorities has another level of role. Or perhaps I misunderstand.
> 
> To go from this analogy to the issue under discussion - nature of political overlay above global bodies dealing with Internet related technical coordination functions, I think the two layers are
> 
> 1 - the general system of legitimate global policy making - which I think is a whole global system - WTO, WIPO, UNESCO etc, each in its own domain.

Sure.

> 2 - a specific oversight body with respect to Internet's technical coordination functions, which ensures that these global public polices developed by the above systems are adhered to by the bodies undertaking technical coordination functions. (We will of course not want an oversight body to be working on its own whim and fancy but just  ensuring compliance with legitimate global public policies made elsewhere, and even the decision of this oversight body should be subject to appeal with a judicial authority - say a special bench of the International Court of Justice,.)

Again, you conflate the technical coordination with adherence to public 
policies, and while I will acknowledge that there sometimes needs to be
awareness of relevant public policy norms and standards, it is not clear
to me at all that implementation of these norms and standards are a task
that ICANN must perform, as opposed to a task for each participating government
to perform with respect to those using DNS technology.

Thanks,
/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.