[discuss] [IANAxfer] [ccnso-igrg] Two accountability questions - help pls- Workshop 23 - ICANN accountability

[John Curran]

On Sep 5, 2014, at 10:34 AM, Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca> wrote:

> At the opening of today's IGF main session on IANA functions' transition, a speaker talked about IANA as if it were an entity in itself.
> 
> I now see this phrase from John Curran's msg below: "If one supposes that IANA is to be simultaneously accountable to a registry policy development body (e.g. the IETF, or gNSO) and also to an association of individual users, and then there is a conflict in expectations, the IANA would need to make a "judgement" and that should not be IANA task. Setting up any structure where the IANA may decide not to follow the adopted policy is actually making it _less accountable_ to the direct IANA user community for accurate operation."
> 
> Of course John knows what IANA means. And of course a set of functions is unable to make judgements -- humans/institutions do (for the good or the bad of it). I wonder if other discussants have the same clarity, so I think we should be extra-careful with our terminology.

Excellent point - I should have said "the IANA operator"...
(i.e. the team which performs the IANA functions)

Thanks!
/John

Disclaimer: my views alone.