| At Large Membership and Civil Society Participation in ICANN |
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A Public Private Partnership
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I sued, and won, a case against a thing called ICANN - it was, and it remains, entirely a California corporation. It is privately owned, privately run, privately financed. It has jumped though enough hoops to claim tax protection as a 501(c)(3) corporation, but that doesn't make it any less a private entity.
The US Department of Commerce has repeatedly assured the US Congress and others that ICANN is not attached to the government and is entirely a private actor.
ICANN has never been consistent about its self-characterization. On Monday it assures Congress that it only does "technical coordination", but on Tuesday it assures the IETF that it does nothing that is technical at all.
Many of us perceive ICANN as the hand attached to the US Department of Commerce's arm. It is amusing to watch the governmental arm assert that the hand is separate and independent while the hand can't seem to make up its mind.
Here's what I said in one of my contributions to the ITU meeting next week: (See http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog/#functional [cavebear.com] (All the contributions are available at http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/forum/intgov04/contribu tions.html [itu.int])
Third caveat: The phrase "public private partnership" has often been used in conjunction with internet governance. I have strong personal reservations about this concept because it implies the transfer of governmental powers (often ultra vires powers) into the hands of private actors without simultaneously imposing the obligations of due process, oversight, and accountability that are hallmarks of modern governments. In addition, no matter whether a governance body is private, public, or a blend, its role must be carefully defined and constrained lest it be captured by those it purports to oversee or by others who find the body to be a means to promote a private agenda. We have seen all of these problems arise within ICANN.
A related question is what is the relationship between ICANN, the Dept of Commerce, and IANA - don't forget that ICANN's role in IANA is derived soleley and exclusively by virtue of its role as provider under a purchase order from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a branch of the US Dept of Commerce.) IANA services are hardly the kind of thing that absolutely positively must be sole source - so one should ask what happens if the DoC picks a different provider in the future. One should also ask what right the DoC has at all to perform IANA functions.
For an organization that has so firmly slammed the door in the face of the public, with "public" in the sense of people who wish to have a meaningful say in how the internet is managed, it takes a lot of chutzpah to say that the organization is a has any partnership with the public at all.
But then again, perhaps ICANN uses "public" in the sense of "governmental" - in which case one has to ask "which country's government?".
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Your statement that "ICANN's role in IANA is derived soleley and exclusively by virtue of its role as provider under a purchase order from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a branch of the US Dept of Commerce)" is not accurate. Remember that the Internet Architecture Board designated ICANN to perform the technical IANA functions in RFC 2860. <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2860.txt> [ietf.org] And don't forget the December 1998 agreement between ICANN and USC, by which USC handed the IANA over to ICANN. (This agreement, apparently, was endorsed by NTIA.)
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