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1. This has been a great discussion on the issue folks. It is
complex. I knew if I waited long enough everyone would have said
everything I wanted to say, which is the great joy of working in
this community. Thanks and Happy Christmas/Holidays/New Year all.<br>
2. Sam just made the point I was ruminating about making. Several
years ago Deborah Hurley wrote a nice little book on Human Rights
and the Internet/info society, entitled Pole Star (available in
english french and spanish). The key point is that the concept of
balancing rights is closer to a guiding star that is unreachable but
illuminates and sets direction. And it looks different in the sky,
depending on where you start from. [Forgive the religious
connotations, but if you are here in Canada you are hearing a lot of
carols about guiding stars as we approach the season of Epiphany.]
On a practical level, since I showed up at ICANN nearly two years
ago I have been trying to talk instead about "fundamental fairness",
which has been repeatedly dismissed as undefinable. Frankly,
defining public interest is impossible, as Milton has pointed out,
and sorting out fundamental fairness as a concept is closer to the
principles of justice by which we live than trying to define "the
public interest", particularly in a multi-national multi-stakeholder
assembly such as ICANN. I believe that the expression "public
interest" and its inclusion in the ICANN remit is very problematic,
almost a poison pill, and I would strongly support those who do not
want to define it. I agree that a workshop to discuss how to deal
with it when it arises (or is cited, or is used as an excuse to
trump rights), would be very useful. <br>
3. Why do I feel as strongly as I do on this, even though I have
not formulated my theory yet and am in learning mode? Anyone who
has worked in government must be forgiven for having their carbon
monoxide detectors start screeching when the concept of the 'the
public interest" is introduced in law, regulation, policy, or
contract, because it often (usually) means the abrogation of
individual and collective rights in favour of a broad, undefined
"public interest" which often (usually) means public safety (law
enforcement and security) or broader market access for trade. [Why
the reference to carbon monoxide detectors? because you get CO as a
product of combustion where there is a lack of oxygen, which is
often (usually) the situation where law enforcement, national
security, and trade interests gather to set policy/law/and
treaty.] In trade agreements, it has often meant the trumping of
local laws which had been established to protect consumer interests,
the environment, and privacy.....but never national security, which
has primacy. I believe these points have already been made, I am
reiterating. My views may also be coloured by my Canadian context,
where our constitution is based on the goals of peace, order and
good government, not liberty and the pursuit of happiness. <br>
4. Sam's point about ICANN being but one stakeholder in a community
that looks at Internet governance issues points to one way to defeat
attempts by certain groups to define "the public interest". It may
not be the role of ICANN to define it for other communities. Why
define public interest, when you have declined to define what a
domain name is? Arguably this is much more within the mandate. (if
anyone can point me to the authoritative, non-circular definition of
domain name I would be grateful)<br>
5. On a slightly unrelated note, I just read the documents which
Nigel Hickson has circulated on the <a
href="http://unctad.org/meetings/en/SessionalDocuments/CSTD_2014_Mapping_Internet_en.pdf">http://unctad.org/meetings/en/SessionalDocuments/CSTD_2014_Mapping_Internet_en.pdf</a>
which will be submitted in May to the WSIS discussion. I am
concerned because of the remarkable lack of consistency in the depth
of the analysis. A lot of the issues i care about are discussed
briefly, with the conclusion that there is a "knowledge gap" on the
issue. It needs to be said that this usually means there is a
policy and implementation gap as well, and unfortunately the
response/mitigation that I have witnessed on the part of ICANN, is
usually to call for further study and bury the matter. Is it worth
NCSG taking a look at this document and providing comments of some
kind? I think the stated deadline of January 31 is out of the
question, but this seems like a useful summary of the issues and a
not bad jumping-off point for our own analysis. I would stress that
I am thinking in terms of mapping where ICANN's narrow remit,
interests, and accountability to other actors lie, not in expanding
them. Writing a 50 pager like this seems to me to be a lot of
work.... <br>
Regards to all.<br>
Stephanie Perrin<br>
Eat turkey. Tryptophan helps you keep calm and carry on. <br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2014-12-27, 13:21, Sam Lanfranco
wrote:<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I might sound like a kid beating on a
one-note drum here, but it is useful to remind us that ICANN is
not the first or only organization to have to deal with this
issue. History gives us excellent models of how this can be
approached with or without organizational structures. Consider
human rights and decent work, two areas that comfortably fall
under the heading of "public interest" and both integral to
humanity's "core values" Our "empirical eye" tells us that
across the globe human society falls more than a bit short in
achieving acceptable levels of performance in these two areas.
We have responded using the same idea to approach to both, but
doing so in different ways. We created the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (UDHR) as a navigational aid (fixed star) for
the pursuit of human rights everywhere. We created UDHR without
an organization, and in our wisdom UDHR was vested with neither
judicial, legislative nor regulatory authority, which as it
should be. It is surrounded by a whole constellation of human
rights entities engaged in the pursuit of human rights in ways
that feed into appropriate regulatory, legislative and judicial
venues elsewhere. <br>
<br>
In the area of decent work, we humans created the International
Labour Organization (ILO) with a mandate to promote and pursue
"decent work". As an organization the ILO was vested with
neither judicial, legislative nor regulator authority. With its
own multistakeholder model the ILO has worked for a century
using something like a blend of ICANN's DG, WG, and PDP
processes, with results at all levels available for use by
stakeholders in their own regulatory, legislative and judicial
venues elsewhere. That is as it should be.<br>
<br>
What does this tell tell us about ICANN? It suggests several
things. First, ICANN as ICANN is but one stakeholder in the
process of defining rights and obligations within the Internet
ecosystem. It is neither the torch bearer, nor the keeper of the
flame. It is a stakeholder. Second, the embodiment of rights and
obligations, as a declaration (e.g. UDHR) or as the mandate of
an entity (e.g. WHO), has to be in universal terms, to be used
as a "fixed star" navigational beacon for all stakeholders,
including for ICANN as a stakeholder. Third, ICANN cannot wait
for the global stakeholder community to arrive at a declaration
on rights and obligations within the Internet ecosystem but it
can within its own business develop case-by-case best practice
approaches to dealing with the issues. The end result within
ICANN will be a case-based process, but it will be case-based
wisdom, not case-based law. This will also be useful for ICANN's
position around these issues in the wider Internet ecosystem DG,
WG, PDP processes, as well as useful for ICANN's stakeholder
constituencies as they address the same issues "at home" and
elsewhere. Lastly, in addition to raising awareness and
engagement, such a strategy will reduce the risk that forces
will coalesce around vesting global regulatory authority in
multilateral entities, in the UN, or in sister agencies such as
the ITU. They too are stakeholders in the process, and also not
"the" torch bearer, nor "the" keeper of the flame.<br>
<br>
Sam <br>
<br>
On 27/12/2014 10:53 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">I
totally reject that presumption. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">All
behavior is private. Only individuals or small coordinated
groups act and behave. The public interest cannot be much
different from an aggregation of a lot of people’s private
interests. The idea that we are all devils individually
but collectively become angels is a nonsense that I
thought had died with various forms of totalitarianism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Again
I think it is much better to talk about these problems in
the context of rights. If a specific private actor does
something that violates one or more peoples rights then
there is a regulatory problem. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
name="_MailEndCompose"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></a></p>
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