Chehade Pushes Back Against Accountability Concerns of Some GAC Representatives
LOS ANGELES -- Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) representatives from Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Portugal argued against the scope of ICANN’s accountability process, during a panel discussion with the ICANN board Tuesday. Those representatives took issue with the fact that the board has the power to overturn the community’s accountability proposal and said international law should oversee ICANN’s affairs. ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade tried to clarify some of the concerns and rebutted any notion of an “intergovernmental organization” in place of ICANN.
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The GAC elected GAC Vice Chairman Thomas Schneider of Switzerland as chairman Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1w7wKWC). Schneider, the deputy head of international affairs at Swiss Federal Office of Communications, will replace GAC Chairwoman Heather Dryden at the end of ICANN 51, said an ICANN spokesman.
The governments’ statements on the accountability process came after many ICANN stakeholders from Western countries said they were relieved by ICANN’s recent revisions to the accountability process proposal 1410140062. A resolution on how the board plans to handle the community’s accountability proposal, which is expected to be modeled after the board’s procedures with proposals from other ICANN supporting organizations, will be submitted Thursday 1410140081. The resolution is likely to include a 66 percent board voting threshold to reject the proposal; a series of coordinated discussions and revisions between the board and the accountability Cross Community Working Group in the case of rejection; and a prohibition on the board from creating its own accountability mechanism, said Board Vice Chairman Bruce Tonkin. He has said the chances of rejection are slim.
It “might seem very strange for some governments that [a] board that does not include governments … will decide the global public interest” on accountability, said Brazilian GAC representative Benedicto Fonseca Filho. “I fear that an [accountability] solution with a very narrow focus might be rejected even by my own government.” The Brazilian government could look upon such an accountability proposal as being favored by the U.S. government and the ICANN board, but not necessarily in the interest of other governments, said Filho. A recent legal issue over a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in Brazil ended up being “decided by a judge in California,” he said: That’s not “satisfactory for us.”
Indonesian, Iranian and Portuguese GAC representatives echoed Filho’s sentiments, saying that Internet governance needed to be determined by international law, not the laws of a particular country.
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling isn’t going to accept an accountability process without “community consensus,” said Chehade. Citing Strickling’s Monday statements, Chehade said that if the board doesn’t engage with the ICANN community on the accountability proposal, it’s “no good.” That should put everyone, including governments, “at ease,” said Chehade. “The U.S. government was very clear that [ICANN’s] accountability was to the multistakeholder community,” not to a “government” or an “intergovernmental organization,” Chehade said in response to the Iranian GAC representative. “These are the conditions the Americans have set,” said Chehade.
Chehade also pushed back against the idea that the accountability process is limited in scope because of its link to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition. The scope of the accountability process is “absolutely unlimited,” in that it addresses those issues directed related to IANA and those beyond it, said Chehade.
The GAC has “serious concerns” about the new gTLD program, said Dryden, who asked for clarification on ICANN’s plans for a second round for new gTLDs. Developing countries need to be kept in mind when considering a second round, she said. The affirmation of commitments says that ICANN is to review the new gTLD program one year removed from its launch, said Akram Atallah, ICANN global domains division president. That means the earliest ICANN could do the review would be at the end of 2015, he said. ICANN is working on two “baseline” studies on the first round, an economic study on “competition” in the new gTLD market and a survey on the “perception” of new gTLDs, said Atallah. ICANN hasn’t begun discussing the nature of the second round of new gTLDs, he said.
Dryden said that the GAC is being burdened by a large workload, citing the IANA transition and accountability review, new gTLD issues and the WHOIS protocol. Because the GAC doesn’t often “initiate” its work, but “receives” work from the community, the community could help the GAC by prioritizing its work, she said. Dryden said the GAC is working to develop “high-level principles” to assist with its work on the IANA transition. Tonkin and board member Chris Disspain said that they agreed that the community should provide clearer direction for the GAC’s activities.