[MemberPubPol] Re: [chapter-delegates] FYI - in the coming discussion of the WGIG questionnaire

[Fred Baker]

So I guess I hear two points of discussion:
  - some would like ICANN to become a treaty organization, and may have 
good reasons for their viewpoint.
  - I still think I hear anti-US sentiment.

If the right thing to do is to make ICANN a treaty organization or move 
its functions to one, then I'm willing to support that. I have to say 
that the argument for doing so needs to be laid out pretty clearly, as 
the current treaty organizations haven't been inspiring. But I'm 
willing for someone to make the case. The argument "we're from 
government, so we're obviously the right people for the job" doesn't 
work. I need an argument that points out issues with the current 
structure - ICANN, RIRs, registrars and registries, etc etc etc and 
demonstrates that none of those problems would have happened if ICANN 
had been a treaty organization and no new problems would have 
materialized, or that there was a way to definitively handle new 
problems that might arise. If you sense skepticism in my voice, you 
sense well. My question about Taiwan's country code is a very real one, 
and very painful for the people of Taiwan. There is not currently a 
ccTLD for the Palestinian Authority, because .pl hasn't made it onto 
the right ISO list, but Palestinians can indeed get domain names - they 
just happen to be Israeli. For the people of Taiwan to use VoIP across 
borders, they have to work around the ITU's enum registry, and are 
currently moving in that direction. ITU, by its mismanagement of the 
registry, may completely lose control of it over time.

<tangent>
One of the things I find most clueless in that discussion, BTW, is a 
particular slide I have seen in s zillion presentations. In 1999, I 
(among others including Paul Wilson) met with the Ministry of 
Information Industry in China, and told the Vice Minister that his 
country needed to move to IPv6 for reasons related to addressing. That 
was during the ChinaInet Conference in Beijing in June of that year. In 
the same conference the following year, I showed a slide that started 
from Geoff Huston's numbers regarding IP routes and demonstrated that 
the IPv4 address space was become very fragmented. I also spoke about 
IPv4 address allocations (IPv4 addresses are today about 65% allocated, 
and depending on how you read the tea leaves could be 100% allocated 
somewhere between 2008 and 2014), and the number of addresses then 
allocated to China. I pointed out that for historical reasons there was 
a certain university in the US that had as many addresses as China, and 
that China's need for IPv4 addresses presuming the same network 
penetration as in the US could not be met in the IPv4 address space. I 
argued that China would do well to seriously consider moving to IPv6 at 
the earliest possible juncture (something China is actively doing). 
Those particular slides have made it into talks from any number of 
corporations, and into ITU talks, and in the latter are used to argue 
that the imbalance would never have happened if the ITU had been 
managing the address space. Well, bologna. First, it is making an 
irrelevant point from data that is not relevant to that discussion. 
Second, it is without attribution (my slide said it was copyright Cisco 
Systems). Third, if ITU had been managing the address space, it would 
have had the same history and the same set of considerations that went 
into managing the address space, and would very likely have made 
similar allocations.
</tangent>

Regarding the anti-US sentiment, I have to say that I think the tone of 
this entire discussion would be dramatically different if ICANN were a 
non-treaty organization incorporated in some other country, such as 
Ireland, Japan, or whatever. I get pretty used to encountering 
yankee-go-home sentiment wherever I go, but that doesn't stop it from 
grating on me.


On Jun 7, 2005, at 10:02 AM, avri doria wrote:

>
> On 7 jun 2005, at 01.32, Fred Baker wrote:
>
>> If one assumes that DoC does not renew its contract with ICANN but 
>> rather cedes control to ICANN entirely, would his arguments about 
>> ICANN then persuade you that ICANN is a global organization that 
>> happens to be incorporated in California, much like ITU is a global 
>> organization that happens to have a physical instantiation in Geneva? 
>> If not, why not? Is this simply anti-US sentiment on your part, or is 
>> it based on something more solid?
>
>
> I made the same argument you made Fred (go figure) while talking to 
> professionals who knew about treaty organizations and host country 
> agreements.  And though they gave me a much more erudite response then 
> I am able to give, they essentially  indicated that there is an 
> essential difference between an organization that has a host agreement 
> with a country and an organization that is incorporated under US  (or 
> any other country's) law.
>
> When an organization like the Red Cross is hosted by Switzerland, and 
> there are many other examples, they make agreements to abide with 
> local laws, such as sanitation and labor laws, but are not subject to 
> any national legislation, instead being governed by the agreement or 
> treaty made with the host government.
>
> On the other hand, a US corporation, whether for profit or non-profit 
> is subject to all US laws, including laws that specify which other 
> countries they can do business with and conditions they must follow in 
> so doing.  Saying this is not anti-US rhetoric, but US law as i 
> understand it.  Now, it may be anti-US bias to assume that the US 
> would use it law making capability to force ICANN to punish an evil 
> doer, but it is not anti-US bias to say that they would be within 
> legal rights in doing so if they wished.
>
> So, to my mind, ICANN cannot become a full fledged international 
> organization without shifting from its current existence as a US corp, 
> to becoming an organization established with a host country agreement 
> - even if that country were the US (the UN and others have host 
> country agreements of the type discussed with the US).
>
> a.
>