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Accordingly, questions are now being raised about whether the present ecosystem of Internet governance, including ICANN, is able to adapt to such momentous change. The challenges fall into four main areas:

1) The public interest:

In this continuously evolving environment,  has ICANN arrived at a more accurate comprehension of been able to keep pace with growing public interest requirements, and adapted to adapt its methods in order to better serve them, or has it remained deferential beholden to the narrow interests of those who, from the outset, were its original most powerful stakeholders (registries, registrars)? Business interests within the ICANN community have suggested the need for a legal definition of the public interest, while others have viewed such a demand as a maneuver to sideline this central issue altogether. In its pioneering years, ICANN could live with such an ambiguity, but it is now required to ensure that the overall purpose of its multi-stakeholder model does indeed serve the public interest. ICANN’s often unsatisfactory response to publicly-identified problems, compounded by its inability to enforce its own regulations, have appeared to stem from ignoring, or being hostile to, the public interest. The lack of a lucid public-interest engagement strategy, combined with an At-Large infrastructure that currently struggles to fulfil its outreach and advocacy mandates, undermines the respect and trust of worldwide Internet users towards ICANN. Dwindling confidence invites consideration

In its pioneering years, ICANN served a public of a few millions, for whom the Internet represented novelty rather than a necessity. To serve the public interest today, when the Internet is an indispensable global facility for 2,3 billion users, takes on an entirely different meaning. As long as the concept of "public interest" remains ambiguous, it is easy for ICANN to pay lip service to it, even though its responses to publicly-identified problems and its ability to minimize conflicts of interest and enforce its own regulations have been unsatisfactory. The lack of a clear public-interest engagement strategy, geared to the present and future importance of the Internet to the world, undermines the respect and trust of Internet users towards ICANN. The increasing success of alternatives to the multi-TLD naming paradigm , some of which have enjoyed considerable consumer success. At a time when the very relevance of ICANN is being challenged, what are the reforms that could comfort its role?

2) The growing complexity of governance:

already indicate such erosion of public confidence.

2) Multistakeholder vs. intergovernmental approach

Is ICANN's so-called multistakeholder approach sustainable in the long run under increased pressure from governments and some inter-governmental organizations?

It is worth noting that many sovereign states first dismissed the Internet and the DNS as a marginal, passing phenomenon. Having finally understood their critical importance, some states are now attempting to regain control through inter-governmental structures, with potentially damaging consequences to the innovation and development of the Internet, maybe even to its global accessibility and end-to-end functioning as we now it.

While defending its multistakeholder dogma, ICANN has neglected to develop its content, and to redefine and overhaul the multistakeholder approach to meet demands, which have grown more differentiated with the expansion of the Internet and the types of its uses. In a decade, ICANN The arrangements for the global governance of the Internet’s critical resources (including ICANN’s internal governance arrangements) are inherited from the pioneering years. A crucial question now arises: are these arrangements commensurate with the legitimate expectations of the worldwide Internet community, ever more a producer and consumer of content, in an ever more diversified cultural and linguistic context? Some criticism has been levelled at the Board: it sets very high standards for the whole community, while failing to abide by the same standards regarding its internal governance arrangements. Indeed, the internal governance of ICANN now needs to evolve sharply, because in a decade the corporation has grown from a small group of closely-connected pioneers to an entity with global responsibilities and worldwide operations . The Board of Directors of ICANN spends inordinate energy and time arbitrating between sometimes divergent positions of its own stakeholders, and this is due to the growing discrepancy between the multi-stakeholder dogma (equality among stakeholders) and the inequality in their roles (Advisory Committees, Supporting Organizations). What are the necessary changes (e.g. with regard to Conflicts of Interest, in the By-laws), and more generally, how can the trust of the community in ICANN be enhanced?

3) Why has it been so difficult to implement ICANN’s multi-stakeholder model (MSM)?

Yet continuous cycles of internal organizational reviews fail to identify the substantive changes demanded by this shifting environment. Proliferation of constituences and stakeholder groups in the ICANN structure needs to be accompanied by real efforts to achieve and maintain equality and balance among various stakeholder interests. By-laws governing the status and role of stakeholders need to be revised so as to fully engender the informed consent of all ICANN’s components, including sovereign states represented through its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC).

3) Global governance:

Are the arrangements for the global governance of the Internet’s critical resources (including ICANN’s internal governance arrangements), inherited from the pioneering years, still adequate?

When ICANN was set up, the majority of Internet users were in North America and Western Europe. A crucial question now arises: how to evolve these arrangements to meet the legitimate expectations of the worldwide Internet community, ever more a producer and consumer of content, in an ever more diversified cultural and linguistic context, while preserving the multistakeholder approach and avoiding the pitfalls of inter-govermental solutions?   

Led by example of its own Board's selection methods and operation, ICANN has resisted a complete embrace of transparency, "bottom up process", and elimination of both real and perceived conflicts of interest. This corporate culture is unsustainable in order for ICANN to command the respect of the global community affected by its decisions and actions. More than a decade after ICANN’s creation, some fundamental questions must be raised: why has the MSM of Internet governance not been truly implemented? Is this because the initial arrangements for the MSM have proven inefficient? Have the stakeholders been treated like equal partners, and have they been able to perform as such? Has the MSM been side-tracked through the intent of some and the neglect of others? Or was the very notion of equal responsibility among stakeholders so Utopian that it was doomed to fail, in a decade when industry self-regulation was touted as the ultimate system of checks and balances for a thriving economic system? These questions are not rhetorical. On some occasions, ICANN’s Board of Directors, in contradiction with consensus policy, chose to rule over the objections of several stakeholder groups (e.g. by granting exceptions to the International Olympic Committee with regard to a requested generic top-level domain name, or gTLD). Clearly, the MSM is coming under increased pressure from nations. It is worth noting that many sovereign states first dismissed the Internet and the DNS as a subordinate phenomenon, but having understood its critical importance, they are now  attempting to regain control of the system through some inter-governmental structure which would in effect annihilate the MSM (in the classic inter-governmental model, national or international public authority is by construct above all other structures or participants). The challenge now is not to discard, but on the contrary to overhaul the multi-stakeholder system, if necessary by revising those By-laws governing the status and role of stakeholders, so as to engender the informed consent of all ICANN’s components, including sovereign states represented in its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC).

4) Institutional and practical cooperation:

Is there sufficient coordination and cooperation between ICANN and organizations that have been set up to deal with Internet governance issues beyond ICANN’s remit of technical coordination?

Some friction may be caused by a lack of ICANN’s adequate response to emerging challenges and by its failure to benefit from the strengths of its own multi-stakeholder nature. Strained relations with international entities, partly due to the ambitions and power politics of some national authorities or intergovernmental organizations, have  sometimes been aggravated by a poorly calibrated message from ICANN.

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