Gauntlet Thrown Down on ccTLDs?

Karl, the document you are linking to was prepared by the Chairmen before the meeting, only by reading the papers, and as a draft, but was dismissed by the participants (all of them, not just ICANN staff members) since there was no agreement on the fact that the things stated there were actually a correct summary of what had been said or agreed.

For example, there were some other people (other than myself) standing up and stating that there should be more involvement of final users in the policy making process, and yet there was no mention of this in the summary. I was ready to propose a statement on this to be added to the document, when it was decided to discard the first three pages as a whole.

One of the problems, in fact, is that this was just a workshop without any kind of "policy-making process" or way to determine consensus. So there was no way you could decide whether the statements that the authors of the document had hand-picked to compose it did actually represent the views of anyone more than their author, and in some cases there were papers clearly stating opposite points of view. There wasn't even agreement on whether it is true that "in many cases domain names come under the provisions of a general telecommunications law" - some argued that in fact the cases in which the ccTLD manager is not formally recognized are still the majority.

(About the submissions being approved the Board - does ICANN have a "representation policy" stating what needs to be approved by the Board or what the CEO and staff can state on their own?)
--vb. (Vittorio Bertola)

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Re:I was there by vbertola

Re:I was there
by KarlAuerbach on Saturday March 08 2003, @10:49AM (#11277)
User #3243 Info | http://www.cavebear.com/

Regarding your question:

does ICANN have a "representation policy" stating what needs to be approved by the Board or what the CEO and staff can state on their own?)

ICANN has no board-created policy on this. And if we look at the issues such as the representation of the public in ICANN we see that the focus is on getting people into seats on the Board of Directors. An ICANN policy that abandons the power of the board to decide ICANN positions to ICANN's staff nullifies the value of any mechanisms for public representation.

We haven't spoken much about this, but the at-large issue depends on, among other things, ICANN's staff being reduced to a subservient role in which it merely carries out the policies created by the board rather than being an autonomous, policymaking (and policy effectuating) body in its own right. In other words, unless the board takes charge, any power that the at-large might obtain will really be nothing more than a toy steering wheel while ICANN's staff retains real control.

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