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

Tue Jul 22 12:22:39 BST 2003

Dear Meryem and others,

the point is here, that the understanding of ICANN has changed over the
years. While it was seen a couple of years ago as "something like the
government of the Internet", ICANN 2.0 has a much more limited mandat with a
more or less clear technical function. All discussions, at the same time,
articulated that the techical issues have political and social and economic
implications, that is "public policy implications". The Marakesh resolution
(2002) of the ITU says that while "private corporations" (like ICANN, ITU
refused to mention ICANN in its documents) could deal with technical issues,
it is the ITU which is responsible for the public policy implications. The
GAC did not jump into this boat directly. The GAC Chair explained this
during a ccTLD Workshop in Geneva immediately after WSIS PrepCom2 in early
March 2002 (also in conttrast to the ambassador of Syria) with the argument,
that, while in the ITU only the PTT ministries are represented, GAC
representatives come from a broad range of different ministeries - from
foreign affairs to economcy, technology and even culture - and represent a
broader view of the government and have to take a wider look, dealing also
with "other stakeholders". So the ball was back in the governments groups to
clarify their inner discussion, which ministry should speak on behalf of the
whole government. Between the governmental ITU and the private (US
dominated/although the US dominance is more de jure than de facto) ICANN,
there is a growing grew zone with undefined issues and responsibilities.

The first proposal for a "GIG" tried to take this discussion on a new level,
that is to introduce the proposal of a New (open and transparant
multi-stakeholder) Organisation (I call it the Global Information Society
Observation Council/GISOC) which could take care of "new emerging issues"
and "invite existing organisations" or "propose the establishment of new
organisations" to deal with the open questions. I know this is very far
forward looking, but WSIS is a right time and a right place to start such a
discussion and to escape from the ITU vs. ICANN debate. We live in the 21st
century and not only priorities have shifted, also enemy images, models and
approaches. All this is work in progress.

Best

wolfgang

----- Original Message -----
From: "Meryem Marzouki" <marzouki at ras.eu.org>
To: <ct at wsis-cs.org>; <plenary at wsis-cs.org>; <hr-wsis at iris.sgdg.org>;
<governance at lists.cpsr.org>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 12:41 PM
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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>