[WSIS CS-Plenary] RE: [WSIS-CT] ICANN and the public interest issue in CS priority document

[William Drake]

Hi,

I agree with Meryem that the paragraph as written is entirely reasonable.
But the problem is not with what it says, but rather with the context in
which it is being said and read, so I share Adam's concerns.

The government ministries and national telecom administrations that control
the ITU have long been demanding that control over names and numbers be
moved from ICANN to the ITU.  Unless there was simultaneously some
fundamental changes in the ITU's membership and procedures, this would be a
disaster for civil society organizations (which are unable to participate
there, unlike in ICANN) and probably for the Internet more generally.  Bear
in mind that most ITU members were heatedly opposed to the Internet when it
first emerged as a global mass medium because they viewed it (correctly) as
a threat to their monopolies, and that they have been trying to use the ITU
to assert control over it ever since (e.g. by demanding the regulation of
Internet telephony and the imposition of archaic telephone-style accounting
and settlements practices, influencing standards for ENUM, and so on).  They
have issued non-binding declarations on this score at several ITU meetings
over the past five years.  The language they've inserted in the WSIS is
simply an extension of that long-running battle.

In this context, these players could attempt to argue that a CS document
questioning the current management of names and numbers (which is only one
small piece of "Internet governance") demonstrates global CS support for
their turf claims.  The question is whether we want to be so used.

Perhaps the addition of a last sentence making clear that this call for
reexamination is not necessarily an endorsement of any intergovernmental
organization's turf aspirations would have been a simple solution.  Since
it's probably too late to reach agreement on something like that, perhaps
the CS folks who will take the floor in Paris could simply make this clear
orally?

It should probably be added that there is absolute zero possibility that
anything said in the WSIS process or the ITU more generally will affect the
management of Internet identifiers.   This may matter for CS and its
evolution toward shared perspectives on ICT global governance, but it won't
matter for the larger world.  The US will never transfer control from ICANN
to ITU, full stop.

Cheers,

Bill Drake



> -----Original Message-----
> From: ct-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:ct-admin at wsis-cs.org]On Behalf Of
> Meryem Marzouki
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 12:41 PM
> To: ct at wsis-cs.org; plenary at wsis-cs.org; hr-wsis at iris.sgdg.org;
> governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: [WSIS-CT] ICANN and the public interest issue in CS priority
> document
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> It seems that we have a serious point of disagreement in the "Global
> ICT governance" section of the draft CS document. The sentence at stake
> in the document is:
>
> > "To these ends, the current management of Internet names and numbers
> > and other related mechanisms should be re-examined with the full
> > participation of all stakeholders in light of serving public
> > interests and compatibility with human rights standards."
>
> A/ Those who request the deletion of this sentence - mostly members of
> the governance working group who are participating to the ICANN
> process, some of them having been elected at ICANN board - argue that,
> although ICANN is far from perfect, such a sentence would be a call for
> the governements to take over the Internet management system, while
> they consider that nothing would be worse than an intergovernmental
> management.
>
> B/ Those who want this sentence remaining in the document - members or
> not of the governance working group but certainly not having any
> responsibility within ICANN process - argue that the current status is
> that ICANN has been and still is in the hands of the corporate
> interests, and that ICANN final decisions are in the hands of the US
> Department of Commerce, to which ICANN reports and without which it
> doesn't make any important decision.
>
> In other words, this sentence is here to say that :
> 1/ The whole issue should be reexamined, not to put ITU in place of
> ICANN, but to have everything reexamined and discussed on new bases
> 2/ Any discussion should inlude the full participation of all
> stakeholders
> 3/ Any discussion or decision should serve the public interests and
> should be compatible with human rights standards
> 4/ When governements are in, we favour multilateralism among
> unilateralism (i.e. in this case the sole US governement decision),
> specially in order to give equitable voices to the South
>
> It is also amazing to see how a general sentence intended for the whole
> ICT/Internet governance issues to ask for the promotion of public
> interests, human rights and the sustainable democratic development of
> the information and communication society seems to be understood by
> some as solely directed to ICANN.
>
> To my knowledge, this is the only specific issue in the document where
> there is such a strong disagreement, while at the same time other parts
> of the CS document also promotes the public interest, human rights and
> the sustainable democratic development, and even multilateralism over
> unilateralism.
>
> One can then reasonably wonder what is exactly at stake here.
>
> Best regards,
> Meryem Marzouki
>
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