Reports are emerging from European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG), one of the regional Internet Governance Forum events, of calls for a greater role for the IGF in monitoring Internet governance institutions. During a plenary session held today, “The post-JPA phase: towards a future Internet governance model,” there was discussion amongst the European governments and other participants about the role of the IGF in contributing to ICANN's accountability.
Participants identified the creation of a “Dynamic Coallition on ICANN Accountability and International Conformity” at the IGF as a possible solution to deal with the ICANN related issues more strategically, and in conformance with the Tunis Agenda. Although details are emerging about what the new Dynamic Coalition would entail, the suggestion sounds similar to the soft oversight role proposed by the IGP in its 2008 comments to the Department of Commerce during its mid-term review of the JPA.
According to one account, provided by a member of the IGF MAG and relayed to ICANN's Noncommercial Users Constituency, a reason given for such a mechanism was that “although ICANN's constitutional documents and by-laws require it to co-operate with relevant international organisations and to carry out its activities in conformity with relevant principles of international law and applicable international conventions and local law, there are no related formal accountability arrangements and this can be the first step to create this process.”
The ICANN Board and Staff have decided to become a PRIVATE non-profit company. They will
gracefully be opting OUT of the JPA.
The negotiations and decision making were simple,
ICANN wanted the .US TLD management in return
for playing ball with the NTIA. No deal, said Neustar
and the U.S. Government. No deal, said ICANN.
No JPA needed. ICANN will be another Jon Postel
creation headed for the history books. Earlier
this year, USC-ISI tossed in the towel on the
powerful RFC editor role. Those are all babble
docs now, why babysit those ?
The brave new world is the NTIA, NIST and FCC
outsourcing more and more root server work to
key insiders like Neustar. The .US and .USA TLDs
are only a start.
ICANN has enough cash in the bank to allow all
of their followers to travel for the rest of their
life. Some fools will continue to follow that
roadshow, along with the ISOC which is also
swimming in cash from the .ORG endowment.
It is all PRIVATE, just like Syracuse University.
The reality would backfire on this project because of one important reason. Do you think that everybody will agree to enforce such a pact? International law? This is very hard to promote because some countries don't want that and some of the countries that do want, do not have the necessary means of doing it.