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ICANN Update
mpawlo writes "ICANN President and CEO Stuart Lynn has announced his intention to retire from the position with ICANN effective around March 2003. Andrew McLaughlin also announced that he will be resigning as Vice President and Chief Policy Officer effective July 1, 2002. Andy Mueller-Maguhn has posted some unofficial notes from this weekend's ICANN board retreat."
Or does Slashdot suck anymore?
I can barely stand to be here. I'm leaving.
In my opinion the future of ICANN is very vague. ICANN come from a shady place, but the retirement of Stuart Lynn does not automatically improve ICANN. Maybe someone will pick up the thoughts presented by the At Large Study Committe, chaired by Carl Bildt? The work presented in a final report was more or less dismissed by ICANN under its current regime, but it does contain some good food for thought (even though I personally do not agree with the committees conclusions). Also the NAIS report should not be forgotten.
I guess the main question for ICANN is what it should be designated for. In my opinion ICANN should be a tiny coordinating body and nothing else - not a government for the Internet. If ICANN wants greater power it must prove itself worthy of such extension of its mandate, primarely through improvements regarding:
Regards
Mikael
Pawlo.com
how the HELL did THAT get accepted? Resignations are largely meaningless. Retirements are largely meaningless, especially when they're almost a year away. Both of which are people nobody's ever heard of. And some guy (also an unknown) jotted some notes down!? And no summary whatsoever of those notes in the writeup other than meaningless personnel changes?
No wonder so many people complain about their submissions getting rejected! They make their's accurate, and lose out in favor of one that's way off base or full of unjustified paranoia, like SP's making XP modular (yes, that write up was factually flawed).
Lynn to Retire in 2003; McLaughlin to Go Half-Time
Marina del Rey, California USA (27 May 2002) ICANN President and CEO Stuart Lynn has announced his intention to retire from the position with ICANN effective around March 2003. He informed the Board of his plans this past weekend to ensure that the Board had ample time to organize and conclude a search for his successor, and to enable an orderly transition.
Lynn came out of retirement in March 2001 to assume his current post under a two-year contract. "I immensely enjoy my position and working with my colleagues and the community to accomplish ICANN's mission," Lynn said in his announcement, "But this is a 7 day-a-week, 24 hours-per-day job and I now need to pay attention to my personal life and health."
Andrew McLaughlin also announced that he will be resigning as Vice President and Chief Policy Officer effective July 1, 2002. He will be returning to Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, but will continue to work for ICANN in a half-time capacity to facilitate a smooth transition. McLaughlin has been part of ICANN's efforts since early 1999 as a senior adviser, staff member, and Vice President. He has played a key role in supporting the ICANN Board to establish its policy agenda and the institutional framework for ICANN.
ICANN Board Chairman Vint Cerf stated that "The ICANN Board is understandably disappointed with this news, but appreciates and sympathizes with the reasons behind both announcements. Both Stuart and Andrew have made extraordinary contributions to ICANN. We are relying on them both to continue their diligent work on ICANN's behalf until these transitions have run their full course." Cerf announced that the Board will organize a search committee to start seeking Lynn's replacement.
news from the icann board retreat
Hi,
just a few notices from my flight from jfk, coming from the board retreat near NYC in garden city, long island.
Disclaimer: nothing officially has been decided, this is a list of my notes of informal discussions.
The retreat in a way was making sense because of it was an open discussion about what "icann II" should be, what the outcome of the process be etc. We had a less confrontative, quiete constructive discussion, just interrupted by more or less a few struggles.
But (just the most important points):
- no atlarge election of directors to be expected
This is very bad but not unexpected news...
for "technical" reasons (dont know how) the majority of the board agreed to not make any direct elections with this year. on the direct questions, if any directors would say "no direct at-large-elections under no circumstances whatsoever" 5 directors outed themself: stuart (lynn), vint (cerf), hans (kraijenbrink), rob (blokzijl), helmut (schink)
Well this sort of figures as well... But still very bad news...
- the majority of the board agreed to the idee of a nomination committee (s)electing board members. status of the discussion is to keep 18 board members + ceo (to be discussed if allowed to vote) and some rought guidelines for setting up the nomination committee (including seats for advisory committees in the nomcom, that means govs included). but on the other hand side the board agreed to the fact, that the empowering/selection of board members by governments is not an realistic approach (at least for now)
I see. Well this seems to in some aspects follow the IP and BC's skewed methods as well as PART of the "Lynn Plan"...
- some important questions like the jurisdiction of the organization and the involvement of staff following or developing policys where raised but not answered. this means: we should watch the limit of the acting people even those acting with best attitutes..
Good warning here. Thanks!
- in the discussion about the principles of the corporation it was accepted that the outcome must be a balance of interests when making policy. freedom of speech was at least accepted by a majority to possibly be affected when following intellectual property ideas. so i do think, there is chances to involve NGOs acting in the area of freedom of speech in a "freedom of speech constituency" or however to put something on the other side of the intellectual property people
Hummm? Interesting but obviously not accurately representative of the wishes of the stakeholders...
- this means: setting up of the nomcom is the critical issue now. taking balance of interests as the goal, identifying all actors in the game and their interests and impacts on the game is the job for the NGO community in my eyes.
Well yes, this seems to be the only way a somewhat balanced structure could be achieved if you eliminate any At-Large...
And (watch out what comes next before calling it good news):
- Stuart Lynn announced to retire in March of 2003
Not soon enough...
- Joe Sims as Jones & Days announced to step out of acting for ICANN soon. He did not mention a precise date/time when, questioned by Vint said something like "in the next month or similar to Stuarts retirement"
Again not definitive or soon enough here either...
- Andrew McLaughlin announced to be changing his involvement to half time by 1st of July
Huh? Well I thought he was 1/4 time anyway given his actual work output...
More stuff:
- Rob came with an official (?!) paper from the european commission (gordon.lennox@cec.eu.int) from May 21st. I will scan this and put on my website tuesday night CET as well as:
- "ICANN II - Issues to be resolved" paper from Christopher Wilkinson, May 2002
- CENTR paper "ccTLD Requierements for International Coordination of the Domain Name System) from Marianne Wolfsgruber, gm@centr.org worth reading (online?)
Materials and some pictures to be on my site tuesday night when coming back to berlin.
what is this ICANN have to do with Internet. (no answer necessary)