[Advisors] TLD governance (was Re: CIRA elections -- no my turn this time)

[Evan Leibovitch]

On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 at 01:44, Marita Moll <mmoll at ca.inter.net> wrote:

> James, you are talking about the ICANN policy initiative -- Alyssa will be
> in Barcelona and CIRA is very conscious of this. The way ICANN works
> though, CIRA can have little impact on this. Country codes like .ca are
> already set aside. Policies around the new general top level domains are
> decided through discussions encompassing the entire community. In the end,
> if civil society and business can't come up with a good plan, I think
> government reps will step in -- but this would be highly unpopular. Like
> the UN, ICANN tries to work by consensus. It's very hard........
>

My take on it is a little different. And please forgive my bluntness.

What ICANN calls "the multi-stakeholder model" (I'll abbreviate as MSM) has
devolved into capture by the domain industry -- registries, registrars,
resellers and owners of large portfolios of speculative domains. The
inmates are running the asylum, the industry that ICANN is supposed to
oversee is clearly in control. ICANN's interpretation of MSM is that
there's no such thing as conflict of interest so long as you declare it.
Once declared you can bully and buy your way into ICANN's good graces and
the top of the decision tree. By contrast, other multistakeholder bodies
such as ISOC International and IETF have much more egalitarian models.

Governments representation in ICANN (through the GAC) has power but must
operate by consensus, and the difficulty in getting unanimity has reduced
its ability to effect real change (its most recent obsessions have over the
entitlements to the .win and .amazon tope level domains). Civil society
seems to do little but rail against law enforcement and advocate for
unrestrained registrant privacy. And the At-Large Advisory Committee, of
which Marita is now a member (and I was for six years), has become a
Douglas Adams parody of itself; it spends so much of its time caught in
procedure and fearful of losing its travel allowance that it spends nearly
zero effort on proactive ICANN policy and even less on public education.
Bikeshedding is rampant.

As a result, for instance, even though the last round of top-level domains
was a total bust the industry is hell-bent on doing more rounds and there's
not a thing anyone can do to stop it, and they don't even try. Any time
there is real dissent, ICANN trots out the MSM and fearmongers that if it's
weakened the ITU will step in and make domain names a multilateral treaty
thing. (An increasing amount of the community wonders if that would really
be worse.)

By comparison, country-code TLDs (like CIRA) are fiercely independent of
ICANN and guard that autonomy as a matter of national sovereignty. The role
of the country code community in ICANN is to contribute money, interface
with the industry, and ensure that ICANN doesn't do anything to impede them.

(In fact, I have always considered it one of ICANN's dirty little secrets
that the public is unaware of the distinction -- that ".co" is governed
completely different from ".com" but is marketed identically.)

Truth be told, as bad as anyone thinks CIRA is, for all its opacity it's
quite possibly the best-run country TLD in the world. Most certainly top 3.
By contrast other operators such as in the UK and Australia are in a
shambles. CIRA has created decent policies that deter rampant speculation
and has a sensible approach (IMO) to Canadian presence, and the delicate
balance between domain owner privacy and public accountability. Its
management is stable and they have avoided the missteps that so many other
CCTLDs have encountered.

(Disclaimer: I speak on behalf of nobody but me. I am an owner of .ca, .com
and .org domains, none of them for resale. I have never served on CIRA
board or staff.)

- Evan
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