IP: Where goes ICANN -- the first of two notes

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Stuart is the President and CEO if ICANN. The ICANN story is complicated and
controversial. I asked Prof. Froomkin to comment on Stuarts note and that
will follow in the next message. I suggest if you are concerned about the
future of the Internet these notes are worth reading and drawing your own
conclusions.

Dave

------ Forwarded Message
From: "M. Stuart Lynn" <lynn () icann org>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 12:51:08 -0800
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: Possible posting

Dave -- would you like to post the following to your list.

Many thanks
Stuart

_________
Several people, including one ICANN Board member, have posted
reactions to my proposal to reform ICANN.  They are certainly
entitled to their view, but I thought your readers might find it
useful to understand why I came to this position.

First, we should leave the red herring of the original plan for ICANN
outside the room. Does anyone seriously think that this totally
unique entity, by some
miracle, was created perfectly in 1998, and that the mere notion of
reform is somehow sacrilegious?  The original plan was an experiment, and
one
feature of successful experiments is that you learn from them, and
try to improve as you move forward.  I was not there at
the beginning, so I deserve none of the credit or blame for the
original structure, but I will say that my view is that it was
amazingly successful up to now -- not perfect, and not without
obvious flaws, but considering the ambition of the idea, a pretty
darn good start.

And the fact that, in my view, we will not achieve our mission
without adapting is in no way implying that ICANN is a failure. What
would be a failure and a total abdication of responsibility would be
not reforming when necessary to achieve our mission, but for ICANN to
continue down a path that would indeed lead to failure. To the
contrary, ICANN with all of its problems has been incredibly
successful from many perspectives. I just want to make sure it
remains that way.

But we are now three years into this experiment, and I have had a
year to review carefully where we are and where we must go in the
future, and my conclusion is that we need serious reform if we are to
move forward.  Now, Karl disagrees, and I respect
his opinion, but Karl has disagreed with a lot of what ICANN has done
to date, and clearly has not be able to persuade his fellow directors
-- including the majority of those elected in the At Large election
that produced Karl as a director -- of the correctness of his views.
And he has not been able to persuade me.

Nor am I persuaded by those
who, in good faith, argue that ICANN should retreat to a very narrow
technical mission. The mantra seems to be, "After all, it used to be
done by one man."  The reason ICANN exists is because that
one person and many others decided that what worked for a largely
academic and technical Internet no longer was sufficient for a
rapidly growing, universally pervasive and commercializing Internet.
Many readers will recall better than I that there were other, less
far-reaching efforts than
ICANN before it, all of which failed because they could not generate
the necessary support among all key stakeholders -- including the
world's governments. Theories and nostalgia are fine -- it would be
better to focus, however, on practical realities.

What I have seen in my year as CEO of ICANN is that the original noble
"experiment" -- and it was noble -- to see whether a purely private
entity could successfully manage a critical (and increasingly more
critical every day) global resource simply will not work.  It will not
work for many reasons, but the core reason, in my view, is that
it was created as a purely private entity.  This led to the ironic
effort of many to import into that entity much of the governmental
process and baggage that the creators of ICANN were seeking to avoid
in the first place, so that we have ended up with the worst of both worlds
-- governmental-like processes without the influence and real working
support of governments.  The primary driving reasons for
privatization over a purely governmental solution have been submerged
into process. Although ICANN has accomplished an enormous amount in
the face of serious obstacles, it is, in my view, in great danger of
becoming the lowest common denominator of special interests rather
than an effective organization that can fulfill its mission in a
timescale that spans our lifetimes.

In addition, ICANN was set forth to manage this global resource
without a penny in guaranteed funding from anyone -- governments or
private industry -- and survived its first year only by borrowing
from public-spirited private companies (and
the great good fortune that we were in the boom phase of the global
business cycle).  So, ICANN has been perpetually underfunded, which
means it is understaffed, which means it is not as nimble and quick
and effective as was hoped from a private sector body. Then on
top of that it has been burdened with governmental processes, checks
and balances on top of checks and balances, that have made the job
even harder by eating up large chunks of the very finite staff
resources ICANN has been able to afford to hire. This is what I found
in my analysis and discussions with the community:  a noble
experiment that was failing to deliver the promised benefits. [And,
incidentally, anyone who claims that I am proposing that ICANN is
proposing to quadruple its budget either  has not read the proposal,
or is engaging in pure political rhetoric. Anyone who reads the
proposal will immediately see that half of what is proposed is "pass
through" funding to organizations external to ICANN who are not being
funded today, namely the root server operators.]

So what are the options?  We could perhaps have continued to muddle
along (although I doubt it very much), but at least for me, that was
not an option.  I did not come out of
retirement just to muddle along and not accomplish anything.  I took
this job because I believed and still believe passionately in the
goal. Once it was
clear the goal was not attainable in our present form, the status quo
was not an option.  And the status quo was not an option for an even
more basic reason:  once it became clear, as it was starting to be,
to the major stakeholders of ICANN (including particularly the
governments that were depending on it to ensure a stable and
operational naming and address system so their citizens can enjoy the
increasingly important benefits of a stable Internet).  So that means
we either need to abandon the notion of a global coordinating
function rooted in the private sector, and default to the treaty
organization alternative, or we need to reform ICANN -- to build on
the accomplishments and become the effective organization that it
must become if it is to carry out its mission.  To me, that choice is
easy, and thus the only question is exactly what kind of reforms are
necessary.

As ICANN's CEO responsible for its operations, it  is incumbent on me
to report to the Board and the community on my conclusions, and to
offer my suggestions about the kind of reform required so that ICANN
can achieve its mission.  I have no illusions that my ideas are the
only way to get there, and so I welcome any and all constructive
comments and
suggestions.  If someone can come up with better ideas, so be it. But
these suggestions need to be grounded in reality, not wishful
thinking or peripheral thinking about matters that do not focus to
ICANN's core mission.  In my view the reality is, like it or not,
that the choice before us today is not a choice between the most
desirable (purely private) and the less desirable (some government
participation along the lines I propose), but a choice between the
less desirable and the completely undesirable (a purely governmental
solution).

  I recognize that for a few members of the community, process is more
important than accomplishment. That's fine. Some have already
vocalized that point of view.  I do not believe, for however, that
that is the view of the majority of the community we are designed to
serve.

At some point I will return to retirement (I am sure not soon enough
for some of my detractors nor for my family ;-)).  All I have to gain
personally from reform is the satisfaction of knowing that I made a
contribution to the success of the experiment, with the help of
dedicated staff and any number of terrific volunteers.  So let's have
a robust discussion of the diagnosis and the prescription, and
perhaps we can really make a positive difference toward solving a
very complex problem.

And, in the process of that discussion, let us not trivialize the
problems (very easy for armchair critics to do). Global coordination
of an ever-changing, massively decentralized entity like the
Internet, where there are many different stakeholder communities with
very conflicting perceptions and interests, is extraordinarily
difficult.  It is incredibly complex to do so  without
unintentionally stifling innovation and the ability of persons to
utilize the
resource as they best see fit so long as they do not adversely impact
others.

I urge all who read this to become constructively involved in the
discussion and debate, so that we can make the most informed
decisions possible.

Stuart

-- 

__________________
Stuart Lynn
President and CEO
ICANN
4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
Tel: 310-823-9358
Fax: 310-823-8649
Email: lynn () icann org


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