[discuss] The public interest and ICANN

John Curran jcurran at istaff.org
Wed Sep 3 12:59:08 UTC 2014


On Sep 3, 2014, at 3:37 PM, Jordan Carter <jordan at internetnz.net.nz> wrote:

> If there was a perceived gap in ICANN's mind between what the "public interest" is, and what the interests of ICANN's communities are, then there is a mistake being made somewhere.
> 
> To put it another way, I think we should be very firm that it is not ICANN's job to determine what the public interest IS in relation to its work. It is the job of the communities that work together in ICANN's multistakeholder framework to do that. ICANN provides the framework, not the answers.

Yes.

> There is no abstract public interest for ICANN to guard. It guards the public interest by faithfully serving the Internet Community.

...and approving the policy development processes that are used, i.e. ICANN has a 
very significant role in making sure that we all have open, transparent, and inclusive
processes, and then another very significant role in confirming that the approved
policy development process was followed properly.

If for some reason ICANN does not believe that the output of the properly followed
policy development process doesn't reflect the public interest, then something is 
very seriously wrong since the output of faithfully following an open, transparent 
and inclusive policy development process should be the most credible indication 
of the actual public interest.

FYI,
/John

Disclaimer: my views alone.


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