NCC DNSO elections - Question 3
To: YJ Park <yjpark@myEpark.com>
CC: pdeblanc@usvi.net, rweikers@home.com,
Jonathan Cohen <jcohen@shapirocohen.com>,
ncdnhc-discuss@lyris.isoc.org
Subject: Re: [3] NCC Q&A Session with Candidates for DNSO Board
YJ Park wrote:
> First, could you expound your position on this review process?
>
> "The Responsibilities of the Board in the ICANN process"
> "The Relations Between Names Council and the Board"
> "The Relations Between ICANN staff and the Board"
The board should set policy. The staff should carry policy out. I
was a bit surprised in the Yokohama meeting at the relationship between
the staff and the board. The board's role seemed fairly limited, but
this may have been due more to the lack of involvement or interest by
the board in various issues. I also think the board should give a voice
to public in these proceedings, rather than act as if they were circling
the wagons around ICANN.
The relationship between the Names Council and the ICANN board is
more complex. In theory, ICANN is supposed to be a "bottom up"
organization. However, the failure of the DNSO to reach consensus on
many important issues leaves a lot to the ICANN board, who mostly
delegates the details to the ICANN staff. There should be more open
recognition that on some issues there will not be consensus, but
decisions must be made. However, there will get greater incentive for
every group in the process to reach consensus if that consensus is
recognized by the higher decision making bodies. Much of the
frustration over the Working Group C report was the sense that the
consensus in the working group had not been given adequate consideration
by the DNSO or the ICANN board.
> Secondly, there have been some movements of forming a new
> constituency aiming to add more with a view to giving balances
> between commercial and non-commercial framework. Some NCC
> members support "Individual Domain Name Holders" which is even
> controversial within the NCC.
I support the creation of a constituency for individual domain name
holders. It would certainly take the pressure off the NCC to accomodate
everyone who cannot fit in elsewhere. One thing I am disappointed in
the participants in the NCC that would seem to be more clearly
represented in other commercial constituencies. For example, I don't
see why the CEO of the .nu registery should be a member of the NCC, and
why individuals don't any voting rights in the DNSO.
> If you are a DNSO Board member, are you going to approve this?
> If so/or if not, could you specify why and what would you do accordingly?
>
> Thirdly, there have been concerns that ICANN process is unfavorable
> to the developing countries and their stakeholders since not many
> people from SOUTH are not even aware of what ICANN is about.
Well, right now the at large representation by region seems to
benefit Africa and Latin America, but probably limit the influence of
China, so these things are pretty complicated. The one to a region rule
for DNSO NC constituency seats seems to benefit developing countries.
The ccTLD constituency would seem to give developing countries some say
too. I think that regional representation rules are reasonable ways to
address some of these concerns. One area to be concerned about are the
ICANN board statements that they intend to charge money for membership,
which will likely reduce quite a bit the participation in the elections,
and high fees will certainly be difficult for the poor.
> However, the first-mover advantage will not be limited to not only
> Dot Com companies but also people in general who will end up
> with being LATE-COMERS in the Cyberspace.
>
> If you are a DNSO Board member, are you going to take some actions?
> If so/or if not, could you specify why and what would you do accordingly?
One thing I would not do is discourage innovation and creative
efforts, simply because not everyone is ready to move ahead. I think
this is the wrong approach. A more constructive approach, in my view,
would be to focus on those issues particularly important for ICANN. I
don't think ICANN should be an all purpose Internet agency, with
responsibility for solving all Internet related agendas and problems.
ICANN could make some of its fees more realistic for developing
countries. The $50k fee for a new TLD application is an example of a
something ICANN can and should fix. If there are fees for individual
memberships, this too should reflect differences in ability to pay. I
would support the creation of a constitutency for developing country
interests within the DNSO. I think there is much support for
multilingual domain systems, and also much support for the IETF playing
a role in developing open and non-monopolistic standards for this. It
might be a useful idea for ICANN to issue an annual report on the status
of developing countries in the ICANN process, and solicit regular
suggestions for measures that can make ICANN more responsive to the
interests of developing countries. Most intergovernmental organizations
at least play lip service to this type of thing, and often one sees some
useful work through such processes.
Jamie
--
James Love mailto:love@cptech.org http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
voice 1.202.387.8030 fax 1.202.234.5176