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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 the benefits of its multistakeholder dogmamodel, 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 has grown from a small group of closely-connected pioneers to an entity with global responsibilities and worldwide operations 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. Protections must exist to ensure that consensus procedures can no longer be opaquely circumvented for political expediency. 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).

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