[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [Governance] ICANN and the public interest issue in CS priority document

[Vittorio Bertola]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 12:41:13 +0200, you wrote:

>A/ Those who request the deletion of this sentence - mostly members of 
>the governance working group who are participating to the ICANN 
>process, some of them having been elected at ICANN board -

Just for the sake of precision, no one has been elected to the ICANN
board since year 2000 - the new Board was just appointed from the top
by a nominating committee through a secret process.

As for the rest, I share Adam's concerns, but I am also concerned
about expressing unconditional support to an organization where
participation opportunities for civil society have been constantly
shrinking in time, and have been moving from electing half of the
Board to electing an advisory committee (which I have the honour to
chair) without any actual power or funding.

So perhaps a good compromise solution would be replacing the paragraph
with a different one that states support for private-sector-led
management of the Internet, but asks for stronger powers for civil
society and for an internationalization of the legal and operational
structure of ICANN, and advises a role of "watchdogs" of the process
for the governments. Perhaps this could gain support by a good number
of governments without supporting a shift of powers to the advantage
of the ITU.
-- 
vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
-------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------