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

[Marita Moll]

Oh my, we certainly started something here. I totally agree with Evan 
about CIRA being one of the best run country code domain names in the 
world but it could be more transparent -- there's nothing to fear. It is 
mostly all good news.

As for your diatribe against ICANN, Evan, many of the things you point 
out are true. I won't deny it. And I will go beyond that. I see major 
U.S. interests desperately trying to keep control over the ICANN policy 
while the rest of the world is increasingly pushing back. ICANN's 
desperate attempts to wiggle out of the constraints presented by the new 
European General Data Protection Laws are a case in point.

But, as hard pressed as it is it is to be effective, civil society does, 
at least, play an official role there. You suggest that it is all a 
grand illusion? Perhaps. Time will tell. But there are a lot of people 
working very very hard, volunteers putting in thousands of hours, in 
order to mitigate some of the effects you noted. I think these people 
deserve our respect. They don't just do it for travel chits. A lot 
cheaper and fewer headaches to buy your own ticket -- you could sling 
burgers at MacDonald's for a fraction of the time you put into ICANN 
activities to pay for it, if you need to. They do it because they see 
the same things you see and want to hold back that tide.

And, with respect to your criticism of At-large, I just spent dozens of 
hours working on policy concerning community applications for new gTLDs. 
And I am working hard with others on protecting some categories of geo 
names from being scooped up by investors so they can turn around and 
sell it back to the rightful owner. So I am feeling a little slighted by 
your "fearful of losing its travel allowance that it spends nearly zero 
effort on proactive ICANN policy and even less on public education" 
description. I know you have done this policy work as well. And maybe, 
after 6 years, I will be where you are on the optimism/pessimism scale. 
I came into this fully aware of the criticisms, the high burn out rate, 
the difficulty of moving things forward.  You and I have talked about 
this before.

To me, ICANN is an honest experiment to do things differently. It is far 
far from perfect. And I suggest that the world does not know how to do 
what is currently being attempted there. And it may turn out to be 
unsustainable. But, if we are going to live in a globalized world where, 
because of the communications facilities we have developed, borders are 
increasingly hard to enforce, we better start figuring out new ways to 
manage. And this is an attempt to learn our way forward.

Namasté

Marita


On 10/11/2018 9:55 PM, James Van Leeuwen wrote:
> That’s a helpful response Evan, thank you.
>
> Perhaps all the more reason for CIRA to become more transparent in 
> their governance, if they are setting a positive example.
>
> Or is my thinking misguided?
>
> James
>
>
>
>
>
>> On Oct 11, 2018, at 1:00 PM, Evan Leibovitch <evan at telly.org 
>> <mailto:evan at telly.org>> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 at 01:44, Marita Moll <mmoll at ca.inter.net 
>> <mailto: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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Advisors mailing list
>> Advisors at tc.ca <mailto:Advisors at tc.ca>
>> http://victoria.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/advisors
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://victoria.tc.ca/pipermail/advisors/attachments/20181011/199c6636/attachment-0001.html>