Accountability and Transparency
Reproduced with permission from Electronic Commerce & Law Report, 21 ECLR 249 (Feb. 24, 2016). Copyright 2016 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033) <http://www.bna.com>
An Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers working group will decide Feb. 23 how to proceed with an accountability enhancement plan after an 11th-hour intervention by ICANN’s board of directors stalled its final release.
The accountability proposal, which was expected to be released late Feb. 19 (see related article), is the second half of the overall plan to transition technical Internet functions oversight away from the U.S. Commerce Department in favor of ICANN self-oversight. The group is attempting to finish its proposal in time for its chartering organizations — the large stakeholder groups that make up ICANN’s community processes — to review and approve the plan at an upcoming public meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, March 5-10.
Board chair Steve Crocker told the working group Feb. 19, as it was finalizing its report, that the board objected to lowering the threshold for recalling all directors at once. The threshold would have applied when the board acted on consensus advice from national governments over the broad agreement of private sector and technical community representatives.
The board intervened to weigh in on a minor procedural point within a provision that is designed to be a last-resort option for ICANN private sector and technical stakeholders to counter any disproportionate influence by national governments. But its move threatens to unravel what is essentially a delicate set of compromises about how to ensure ICANN is accountable to the global Internet community after formal U.S. oversight ends.
Any additional wrangling risks reopening settled issues, Greg Shatan, president of ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency and a partner at Abelman Frayne & Schwab in New York, told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 22.
‘‘There are compromises here that are balanced against each other, and any change has the potential risk of pulling apart the compromises,’’ Shatan said.
BY JOSEPH WRIGHT
To contact the reporter on this story: Joseph Wright in Washington at jwright@bna.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexis Kramer at akramer@bna.com
