[Fwd: ICANN/GAC quorum/funding questions]

[Mark R Measday <measday@ibm.net>]

Mark R Measday wrote:

>
> One of the questions to which I didn't get an answer in Chile was what
> constitutes a quorum of interest sufficient for ICANN to accept GAC's
> advice. If GAC is the voice of thirty or forty governments, it is
> presumably not the voice of the other 160 plus. Is ICANN supposed to
> consult the others privately?
>
> Secondly, the governments have shown a great deal of forbearance in
> allowing the ICANN to self-constitute under the terms of the White Paper;
> with the major commercial carriers governments appear happy to allow the
> teleology of interests involved to play out. After all there are many
> other existing fora available to them. This scenario demands that those
> who are asking for a voice balance the legitimate involvement of
> regulators, telcos, private trademark
> interests with their own contributions. If not, back to the time-honoured
> structures,
> many of which look comparatively attractive .
>
> It must come down to funding sources which are not beholden to the above
> groups. There is really no point if IBM, MCI, USG, AT&T, Telefonica, ETSI,
> the NICs etc. are the major sources as ICANN becomes a trade association
> or an associate UN forum, not that those options are necessarily a bad
> thing, just a repeat performance of many others. If ICANN is to
> demonstrate some progress as the experiment in governance it was supposed
> to be, it will have to go
> further to make those who wish to maintain a stable internet demonstrate
> the value
> they find in that stability.
>
> If ICANN is the source of that stability, it is in a position to fund
> itself from those sources of offshore risk capital and putative
> self-assigned nationhood etc. which have come into being precisely because
> stable international communications networks have allowed them to become
> such.
>
> Suggestions have been made to ICANN and the major players above as to how
> it might uncontroversially do this, starting back in May when the problem
> first appeared. However it will demand some initial level of agreement to
> allow it to function.
>
> MM
>
> R.Gaetano@iaea.org wrote:
>
> > Tony Rutkowski wrote:
> >
> >  Joe Sims wrote:
> >
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