Q1. Why wasn't the community involved in the drafting of the staff plan? Q2. How does ICANN intend to handle the inherent conflict of interest with developing its own accountability plan? Q3. Why didn't ICANN invite proposals from the community? Q4. Why is there no public comment period on staff's plan? Q5. What is the rationale for [...]
1. ICANN’s So-Called “Enhancing Accountability” Process After a long wait, ICANN’s senior management finally released its plan for “Enhancing Accountability” at the private California corporation that makes global Internet domain name policy. Unfortunately, the accountability deficit crisis created by ICANN’s longstanding policy of purely “self-policing” with no meaningful external accountability mechanisms will not be solved by [...]
IP Justice Presents IGF 2014 Workshop #23: "Accountability in the ICANN Multi-Stakeholder Governance Regime" at the 9th United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2014 in Istanbul, Turkey 3 September 2014 ~ 9:00 - 10:30 am in Istanbul (other time zones) in Venue Room #2 at Lütfi Kirdar International Convention and Exhibition Center (ICEC) Video Recording Transcript Panel [...]
Strengthen Protection for Human Rights, Independent Checks on Board, Greater Transparency, Adherence to Bottom-Up Decision Making
ICANN should bake-in to its internal policy development process, consideration of the various interests and stakeholders that can together reach what can be called the 'public interest'. Consider principles that we agree help us to achieve what we think is the 'public interest,' like openness and promoting freedom and making sure the Internet enables education, communication, innovation, exploration ...
IP Justice submitted a statement today in response to the U.S. Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) regarding its relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In its submission, IP Justice argued that ICANN needs a better legal framework that will obligate the organization to respect internationally recognized [...]
IP Justice is deeply concerned that ICANN is insufficiently accountable to relevant non-commercial interests. Certain interests, such as business interests (in particular the trademark and domain name industries) are over-represented at ICANN both in structure and in practice. On the other hand, non-commercial interests and individual Internet users are not given the appropriate representation, although some improvements have been made in recent years. There is a real worry that ICANN is an "industry organization" and works predominantly for trademark interests and the domain name industry. Too often non-commercial concerns are ignored by ICANN; without any real "muscle" behind non-commercial interests, ICANN has little incentive to protect those interests in its policy development process...
ICANN's transparency commitment demands the adoption of a principle of default openness for all Board communications except in those specific instances where it is over-ridden, in writing, by the principle of personal privacy or an explicit requirement of confidentiality. It is especially critical that policy matters and the contributions of supporting organizations and advisory committees be presented to the Board accurately and completely. While we appreciate the need for staff to summarize matters that are often complex, we must stress the importance of ensuring that these summaries accurately report the relevant facts and positions. Openness and public review will minimize inaccuracies, facilitating the role of staff while enhancing public confidence in the Board's decision-making process....
While many are dancing in the streets over today's decision by the US Government to loosen some of its ties to ICANN as its a single governmental authority, I'm not convinced this decision will change much on a practical level. The Affirmation of Commitments was signed today by ICANN and the US Government to replace the Joint Project Agreement, and expand oversight to a more international community. Unfortunately ICANN still lacks any framework for meaningful accountability to the public. And recent efforts seem to indicate noncommercial interests are being systematically squeezed out of ICANN, which is dominated by lobbyists from big business and special interests. Adding more governments to ICANN's accountability framework is good on many levels since it recognizes the important global resource that we all share and depend upon and have a right to shape the policy of. ...
I had a conversation recently with a person who had been actively engaged at ICANN in its early days but became disillusioned and disengaged after a few years because his participation lead him to the conclusion that ICANN staff manage the organization's board of directors and the "community" via the GNSO and the At-Large Advisory Committee. He said the staff intentionally worked to stir up divisiveness between community participants in order to justify adopting the staff's own agenda. Before I even had the opportunity to say my first word about my own experience with participating at ICANN, this person who hadn't even been at ICANN in nearly 10 years spoke my thoughts and described my own experience about participating at ICANN for the last 5 years as I have. ...