[WSIS CS-Plenary] Political Oversight of ICANN

Wed Nov 2 17:41:10 GMT 2005

Dear Milton,

Your paper is very educative. In fact I must thank the outputs (this and the
earlier ones) from your IG project as my main source of education on
Internet Governance.

Thanks also for taking the straight-forward view on the un-tenability of
US's unilateral control of Internet, and exposing the hypocrisy of its
claims. 

The separation between narrow and broad oversight functions is uncertainly
useful, for the sake of understanding as well as contemplating oversight
mechanisms. 

("Narrow oversight refers to the policy supervision of ICANN and its
administration of Internet identifiers. Broad oversight refers to the
authority to set global public policy for the Internet on a large range of
issues, from intellectual property to spam, interconnection and privacy -
policy issues which include but go beyond Internet names and addresses.")

However, I cannot agree that these two need to be completely separated in
their discussion at WSIS. Unless one appreciates the broader oversight
functions (which are very well illustrated in your IG Project paper
'Internet Governance: the State of Play') one is not able to see why the
'narrow' oversight functions are important from, and linked to, the broader
public policy point of view - and this understanding alone can guide what
should be the nature of 'oversight' of the narrow functions. In fact IG
Project's response to WGIG report clearly mentions that 

"Moreover, on the Internet, policy issues are often intimately and
inextricably related to technical and operational decisions."

I therefore will like to see your promised paper on the 'broader' oversight
functions alongside this one, to make a case for appropriate institutional
mechanisms for either kind of oversights. 

Who takes up oversight when (if) US relinquishes it 

The second issue I have with the present paper is of figuring out where does
the oversight responsibility go once it is taken from (or ceded by) the US.
Here there is still a lot of confusion and I think we need to take a clear
view - which is in keeping with the political realities. 

It is either supposed to disappear into nowhere, which is to say` that there
are really no issues that need public policy guidance (which I know is not
your intention to argue, but I know that many people hold positions close to
this, and therefore I state it here) 

Or, it goes to a reformed ICANN. The paper gives two options. One, that
international inputs are incorporated into the existing MOU that governs
ICANN. That of course is completely unacceptable, even if it were practical
to do so. The MOU will still be between US government and the ICANN, and so
US stays the custodian for fulfilment of the 'international' inputs. This is
unacceptable. And this is not what one calls internationalised oversight. I
wont labour this point because your paper itself seems to favour the second
option.  

This second option is to let the MOU lapse, and ICANN then is left under no
oversight. And the powers for policies stay with a 'reformed' ICANN. One
problem with this approach as your paper mentions is that the US still keeps
all the powers of DNS root etc. The other problem which is as big is that
this option contemplates that a major global governance issue will be
entirely 'privatised'.   

This is too great a leap of faith. I do not want to elaborate on the
implications of this, which I think are not difficult to see (and the
elaboration will require a theoretical analysis), except to say that this is
neither desirable nor practical. The obvious issues of representative-ness,
legitimacy etc stare in our face. I am surprised that your paper while
building the argument for de-nationalising IG in its opening part, citing
the global nature of Internet, never considered the existing forums of
global governance. Especially when the IG project's response to the WGIG
report had this to say about the UN:

"General Assembly - the only universal body whose competence covers all of
the elements in Internet governance". 

I know that existing UN bodies may not be appropriate to take up IG
functions, but it is also obvious that for global legitimacy the IG
oversight MUST anchor in the UN.

And instead of operating from the private end of 'policy making', we need to
start from the legitimate possibilities from among public bodies and then
see what all is needed to be done to ensure that the free spirit and open
principles of Internet are not compromised. In fact the IG Project's
response to WGIG report speaks about initiating a  process of a framework
convention to lay out the principles and rules, and if needed a new
institutional mechanism, for IG. I too think that is the right way to go. 

CS needs to develop a clear position on IG oversight

IG is an important issue at Tunis, and CS needs to take clear, principled
and yet workable positions on this. Every option including the status quo
has its problems. For too long different fears have paralysed us into
inaction - but 'politics is the art of the possible' and we need to clearly
choose what we will like the Summit to do on this matter. Non-decision is
itself a choice, and I personally consider is as the most unacceptable one
in this case.  

And this in-decision makes us toy with untenable possibilities of trying to
'reform' ICANN into a new legitimate body of global governance for some very
important public policy issues, which will become even more crucial in times
to come. We can be assured that ICANN is not going to become a legitimate
public policy body. (It has tried to get greater representative-ness of what
it calls the 'internet community' and the efforts have mostly been
un-successful, and for all its good intentions it can in no way be said to
represent all on whom Internet has an impact. This concept of 'internet
community' as consisting of actual Internet users itself is problematic. It
may have been valid in the nineties. But today Internet impacts everyone,
and the entire world's population has a great stake in the Internet. )  

The IG caucus's response to the WGIG report says that "ICANN's decisions,
and any host country agreement, must be required to comply with public
policy requirements negotiated through international treaties in regard to,
inter alia, human rights treaties, privacy rights, gender agreements and
trade rules". How will this 'requirement' be enforced? What if they do not
comply with these treaties? Can institutional arrangements work without
accountability interfaces? Compliance to these international treaties can
only be ensured through an oversight anchored in the UN, which is the
framework in which these treaties are made and enforced. 

And the proposal of leaving things to a 'reformed ICANN' without any other
oversight mechanism cannot be justified even as a negotiation tactic -
seeking what is achievable.  The EU proposal speaks of an internationalised
oversight of current IG regime - and I don't think it could mean anything
other than an oversight mechanism anchored in the UN (of course, as the EU
is eager to ensure, with all precautionary measures to prevent ad-hoc
interferences, and its proposal also states as much). The EU proposal also
speaks of putting in place a process of transition - so the WSIS can itself
mandate or at least indicate a process like a framework convention (though I
am not sure whether this is what EU has mind as the transition process). 

So if EU, such a close friend of the US in most WSIS matters, can take this
option, which is the already the minimum position for almost all the rest of
the governments - we certainly are speaking of practical solutions in the
framework of what can/should happen at the Tunis summit itself. 

Now with EU taking on this position, it leaves only the US (with one or two
die-hard supporters), the business sector and a good part of the CS engaging
with IG issues on one side, and the rest of the global actors on the other.
This kind of situation generally doesn't happen. And we also need to examine
what it really means?(US on its own though is quite used to being pitted
against all the rest, as happened recently at UNESCO's 'treaty on cultural
diversity'.) 

Regards

Parminder 

_________________________________________________

Parminder Jeet Singh

IT for Change

Bridging Development Realities and Technological Possibilities 

91-80-26654134

www.ITforChange.net 

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org
[mailto:governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of Milton Mueller
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:17 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: [governance] Political Oversight of ICANN: A Briefing for the
WSISSummit

=================

Political Oversight of ICANN

=================

The Internet Governance Project releases a new paper clarifying the

controversies around "oversight" of ICANN. 

 http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/Political-Oversight.pdf 

We explain why WSIS must separate discussion of governments' role in

setting policy for all Internet issues from discussion of the narrower

problem of ICANN's oversight. 

An analysis of the contractual instruments used by the U.S. to

supervise ICANN shows how the problem of U.S. unilateral oversight can

be addressed in a way that is both politically feasible and avoids

threatening the stability or freedom of the Internet.

The paper can be downloaded here:

http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/Political-Oversight.pdf 

www.internetgovernance.org 

_______________________________________________

governance mailing list

governance at lists.cpsr.org

https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20051102/32cd50af/attachment.htm