| | At Large Membership and Civil Society Participation in ICANN |
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Will He or Won't He?
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I have not yet decided.
There are many issues. But first I have to mention that the resolution that the Board adopted is ambiguous. It is not clear whether at this moment I am ON the board and will fall off if I don't say something by the 23rd, or whether I am at this moment OFF the board but have the ability to opt back in. This ambiguity means that ICANN does not have the ability to say exactly who constitutes its Board of Directors. Should, for instance, ICANN's board be sued, would I be a defendant? Or if there were an emergency meeting what would be the numbers used to compute whether a quorum were present?
But going further - clearly were I to go onto the transition board, my forray into boardsquatting would be a paltry one compared to those that have become routine within ICANN. But ICANN's "transition" board could, like its "initial"/"interim" board stretch on and on and on, amending itself into permanence as did those still present initial/interim Directors.
I was elected to represent North America (sans Mexico) and if I let my term lapse, the largest body of active Internet users will become unrepresented.
On the other hand, the assertion of "the need for continuity" or "no one is present to take my place" has been used again and again, from the national/dictator level all the way down to ICANN, to provide a thin excuse for a what is really merely a grasping retention of power beyond the mandate. ICANN's claim that it is engaging in "reform" means, if it means anything at all, that ICANN's interest in continuity with its flawed past is less rather than more and thus beggers any claim that one should stay on the board to promote "continuity".
ICANN is failing. Recent events in which a DNS root server was moved and two new ones created, all without even notice to ICANN, indicate that the level of disdain for ICANN has reached the point where ICANN's technical role in DNS has, as a practical matter, ceased. The IP address allocation system has also, as a practical matter, disengaged from ICANN, with the fact of independence covered only by a few rather transparent veils. ICANN has virtually no support from the Internet technical community. The national governments in the GAC have given ICANN strong notice of their concerns. The US Dept of Commerce has also put ICANN on short notice. The ccTLD community is reacting to ICANN's overreaching demands for data access, ICANN's use of IANA and abandonment of RFC1591/ICU1 to coerce ccTLDs to sign ICANN contracts, and ICANN's disinclination to maintain accurrate ccTLD records. And, of course, the public has never given ICANN any real support, if only because ICANN has never really recognized that the public is worth consulting about matters that affect the public interest.
Of course, that "reform" effort did nothing to repair any of ICANN's fundamental failings: ICANN's scope is still bloated and extends far too far in the direction of a supranational legislature, ICANN's "staff" is still out of control and not overseen by ICANN's Board, nor is that board itself subject to any form of accountability, and ICANN is still captured by the DNS and intellectual property industries. Despite the claim of "reform" ICANN still primarily serves as a travel agency for its staff, a money pump for the law firm that created it, a protective umbrella for incumbent DNS businesses, and a legislative bypass for intellectual property businesses. And despite the claim of "reform", ICANN is still neither open to the public, transparent to the public, nor accountable to the public.
So the next few months in ICANN ought to be "interesting", as in the old Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times."
I have still not decided whether to be a part of the "transition" board.
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[ Reply to This | Parent
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Well, I've decided.
Most of the items I mentioned in my prior comments on ICANNWatch balance out - each pressure towards "yes" is roughly balanced by a pressure towards "no". That is, except for three things.
The first is the principle that a body such as ICANN obtains its long term legitimately and success by the degree to which it transforms itself from the realm of personalities and arbitrariness to the realm of rules/laws and predictability.
I was elected for a given term. By opting to extend my stay, I feel that I'd be elevating the principle of personality and ad hoc decision making over the principle of having stable, predictable rules applied to all and applied without bias.
The second is the fact that ICANN unlawfully curtailed my rights as a Director. When I ran for the board seat I pointed out that an important part of my job would be to use my Director’s rights to inquire into the all too common dark corners of ICANN. For 18 months ICANN blocked access to materials that I have an absolute right to see. I brought a successful legal action that resulted in a court order obligating ICANN to open its records. Over the last few months I have tried to catch up. Doing so is an enormous task and I have much work yet to do. It is my feeling that opting to continue my term, at least for a short period while I pursue my review of ICANN's records, would provide a partial cure to the damage that ICANN unlawfully inflicted on my term.
The third is that the private and public communications sent to me have been universally in support of me going onto the transition board.
So here is the decision: I will opt to continue onto the transition board.
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[ Reply to This | Parent
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Basically count the votes and look at the mandate:
Vint Cerf: Votes- zero. Representing - no-one? Worldcom? Accountable - to no-one?
Karl Auerbach: Votes - thousands. Representing - an electorate that voted for him. Accountable - to those voters and the At Large.
Democratic Outcome of all this? (Ha ha) - in a few months he'll be kicked off the Board anyway. All the other At Large representatives will also be kicked out. No more people will be brought onto the Board with any kind of democratic mandate.
Great! They should get rid of all the unelected wankers who've kicked out the elected directors, and they should let people who are truly representative take responsibility for the DNS, and be held accountable to an active electorate for their actions.
This ICANN Board is a disgrace. They serve themselves and their friends in power. They do not serve the general public and they refuse to bring accountability and democracy into their Boardroom.
They'd be fine in communist China!
Rachel Macgregor
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Will He or Won't He?