[discuss] Testing "structural separation" accountability mechanism

Fri Sep 5 08:23:04 UTC 2014

On Fri, Sep 05, 2014 at 04:08:32AM -0400, joseph alhadeff wrote:
> No, I am suggesting that oversight roles have impacts beyond only the
> ultimate sanction and we should consider the breadth of the overall
> oversight role.

Yes, of course.  But there are two possibilities:

1.  ICANN in its policy-development role (let's set aside the IANA
portion, which mostly works) behaves responsibly.

2.  ICANN in its policy-development role does not behave responsibly.

If we think (1) is true, then it seems to me we need an explanation
of why people are so discontented with the actual state of affairs.

If we think (2) is true, then it seems to me we need an explanation
of what the oversight that's supposed to be in place is giving us.

Of course, this is a false dichotomy -- it's possible for several
answers to be true for these questions at once, because there are
different elements involved.

But that's possibly instructive, because if there are cases where
ICANN was irresponsible _and_ NTIA's oversight of IANA didn't have the
desired effect, then actually those cases are not accountability
questions that need to block the NTIA transition since the NTIA's
oversight isn't having an effect in that case. 

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com