[Internal-cg] ICANN Board Concerns about CCWG Proposed Model -- My Assessment

[Daniel Karrenberg]

[message contains solely opining irrelevant to ICG work]

Milton,

the board actually has power over changes to ICANN's bylaws. The board
does not  need to "be given" those powers.  That is the status quo. Let
us not get into whether this is absurd or not. Last time I checked CCWG
was about evolving ICANN and not about replacing it. If one wants to
change a corporation, that corporation has to agree and that means in
this case that the board has to agree.

I offered incremental steps, with all their drawbacks, as a possible way
to overcome the "untested" and "too great a change" reactions. In my
experience they are a useful vehicle in situations where the direction
has general support but a single step change does not have sufficient
support.

I fail to see how the civil rights analogy fits the matter under
discussion.  Wasn't that about different tiers of government,
subsidiarity and all that? ;-) I have to admit my knowledge about that
history is from afar and I last studied it in high school.

Revolution is something different again: set up a new corporation and
take over ICANN's business/functions. I have not seen significant
support for that recently. ;-)

I am afraid civil war is not an option either if we want to keep a
unified name space. :-) :-) :-)

To summarise: accountability changes can only happen with the board and
not against it as long as we want to keep ICANN as such around.

Daniel



On 10.10.15 16:05 , Mueller, Milton L wrote:
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> exactly. arrivng at sufficient accountability reforms can only happen
>> in*incremental* steps that everyone agrees with, including the current board.
> 
> There are two obviously false premises here. 
> 
> 1. In a governance context, incrementalism creates as many, if not more problems than trying to fix the problem systematically. Reforms can be short-circuited or suspended; halfway houses can create contradictions.
> 
> 2. It's absurd to give the entity that needs reform veto power over its own reform. This is like saying that racist state governments had to agree before blacks were afforded civil rights. 
> 
>> but all this is out of scope for our, the icg, work.
>> let's concentrate on getting our part right!
>> once we have done that some of us may chose to join the fray in the other
>> room(s).
> 
> Sure, now that you and I are done opining, no one else should weigh in. ;-)
>