[bc-gnso] Costa Rica, ICANN, and Nonviolent Governance

[Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My post from the Costa Rica meeting, including an observation about IANA

See below or at  
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120312_costa_rica_icann_and_nonviolent_governance/

Costa Rica, ICANN, and Nonviolent Governance
Mar 12, 2012 11:33 PM PDT

By Steve DelBianco

There's a peaceful feeling in the air at ICANN's meeting this week, and I think 
it has something to do with being here in Costa Rica.

Speaking at today's opening ceremony, Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla 
described how, back in 1948, her country became the first to willingly go 
without any kind of armed forces for national defense. In that respect, Costa 
Rica is a lot like ICANN: alone in a hostile world with only its constituents 
and allies for protection.

Costa Rica has proven that this nonviolent approach can work, but only if you 
keep your own house in order. If ICANN takes nothing else away from this week's 
meeting, we can at least hope it takes a page from its host nation's playbook.

Everyone here at ICANN 43 has heard the mounting calls by governments and the 
United Nations to assert more power over the Internet, and by extension, ICANN 
itself.

Since ICANN doesn't have a standing army (or maybe THAT'S what all the new gTLD 
fees are for?) to repel these challenges to its authority, it needs to be 
creative about protecting itself from growing threats.

Part of ICANN's defensive strategy seems to have been "the best defense is a 
good offense." Its aggressive new gTLD program promises to dramatically 
increase the global reach of the Internet, thereby growing the community of 
stakeholders committed to the ICANN model.
It's a bold strategy that carries some big risks. Even as ICANN increases its 
global footprint with new gTLDs, it increases its exposure to external threats. 
ICANN has never been more in the public eye, and that increased scrutiny means 
increased pressure to get things right.

ICANN's growing global audience now expects the organization to meet the 
promises made for its ambitious TLD expansion plan. And a powerful army of 
detractors is poised to pounce on the slightest slip as evidence of ICANN's 
inadequacy.

Meanwhile, governments that have always been uneasy about ICANN's bottom-up, 
multi-stakeholder model are anxious about fraud, abuse, and challenges to law 
enforcement that could be exacerbated in new gTLDs. Still, many of the issues 
important to governments remain unresolved.

It's against that backdrop that I've been thinking about the U.S. Commerce 
Department's declaration that ICANN isn't quite ready for a renewal of the 
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract. Maybe Commerce was showing 
its "tough love" for ICANN, signaling the need for more safeguards against 
controversial new TLDs that could alienate the governments now defending ICANN.

ICANN can either heed that message, or else start assembling that army…