[governance] [WSIS CS-Plenary] Post mortem and next steps on IG

[Ronda Hauben]

On Sun, 2 Oct 2005, Jeanette Hofmann wrote:

> William Drake wrote:
>>
>> I remain skeptical that we could come quickly to a shared position in the
>> caucus, much less CS more generally, on the oversight question due to
>> varying views on the proper roles of governments.

The point of the caucus seems to be to put together a position that
some agree to, rather than to have substantial discussion on the mailing
lists to try to understand the salient issues involved.

Thus the list functions more like the governments are functioning,
come up with something that some people agree to and put it forward
as the position. It doesn't have the online discussion to expolore
the issues with arguments and thus to work out a position.

>
> I agree with Victorio. As far as our diverging positions are concerned,
> we just do it like the governments. We become vague or refer to general
> principles were we disagree. I think the one aspect we probably all
> subscribe to in the context of political oversight is the need of
> accountability. Who or whatever will be in charge of names and numbers
> should be embedded in in some form of check and balances. What we
> disagree about is how tight this structure should be and whether or not
> governments should play a role in it. Would you agree?
>
So then the issues remain on a superficial level.

It isn't just an issue of accountability. ICANN or whatever entity
replaces ICANN has in its control the Internet's infrastructure.

This involves a great deal of wealth and power.

This needs a very capable management structure. A management structure
where there is protection from control by those with vested interests.

>
> [...]
>
>>> Of course, I can't tell you about the internal dynamics of the EU, but
>>> it is definitely surprising that the representatives of some governments
>>> that generally have a pro-deregulation and even pro-US foreign policy
>>> were among the strongest supporters of not moving towards the US.

Being pro-deregulation of the country's corporations and being 
pro-deregulation of who owns and controls the names and numbers
and protocols of the Internet are very different issues.

It is good to see that perhaps some governments have recognized that abuse
of the Internet is of serious consequence.
>
> The Internet Governance caucus had a short meeting with the EU Troika to
> discuss the EU proposal. Towards the end we discussed two options of
> moving forward from the present unilateral regime. Control by one
> government could be replaced by a many-governments model or by a private
> non-governments model.

There is a need to understand what the problem is to determine what
kind of model is needed to solve the problem.

Was there any realization that this was an issue? That it isn't just
a matter of pulling some arbitrary model out of a hat and putting it
in place, but rather of understanding the nature of the Internet's
infrastructure and determining what model is appropriate.

That is why I have been saying here is a serious need to understand
the history of the development of the Internet and the model that
develops from that history.


> When we asked Martin Boyle from the UK about the
> reasons why the EU chose the first, he asked back: Do you REALLY believe
> it would be possible to run the Internet without any government
> involvement? (this is non verbatim, I don't recall his exact words) I
> left this meeting with the impression that the EU is much more serious
> about their proposal than I thought. This was more than a mere strategic
> intervention as some of us suggested.
>
Interesting.

It would be helpful to consider why he said this. What he felt was
the need.

I have been talking with people about what would be needed.

I think there are lessons from the development of the Internet that
could help to think through what kinds of considerations to take
into account when considering what is needed.

ICANN was formed to coincide with an ideology, rather than drawing
on the lessons from the development of the Internet.

>>> This
>>> might be due to the fact that not all EU countries had Foreign Ministry
>>> officers participating in the discussion - actually many of them have
>>> delegations composed of relatively technical people. So if the level of
>
> My impression was that the larger countries had people from at least two
> ministries in the delegation. Plus there are always non technical
> mission people involved.
>>
>>
>> I do think there was a principles and agents problem going on with the
>> delegations, which is part of why I expect some backtracking.

I propose that leaving the situation as ICANN, and as the US government
turning ICANN loose is the backtracking.

There is a serious problem that the world has facing it with regard to
creating a management structure that is international, public and
protects the Internet from vested interests, but which responds to 
feedback and has a way to learn the problems and respond to them.

The Internet provides a way to create such a structure. This is a research 
problem as well as a problem to be negotiated.

I tried to propose this to Ira Magaziner before he created ICANN. He
asked me to come up with a proposal to begin to tackle the problem and
I did. But it was ignored, rather than the subject for serious discussion
and consideration.

(...)
> From what I heard the EU has at present no intention to change its
> proposal. This could well change of course :-)

It is good to see the EU came up with a proposal. But also Brazil
and other countries were saying that the current situation with ICANN
is no an acceptable situation.

Ronda

Below is the proposal I submitted to Ira Magaziner before the creation of 
ICANN - It would have been appropriate to at least discuss it. Instead it 
was was ignored.

"The Internet an International Public Treasure: A Proposal 
for the Creation of a Prototype to Manage the Internet's Infrastructure"

www.wgig.org/docs/Comment-Hauben-April.pdf

Licklider advised that if you are really trying to solve a problem you 
can't exclude areas to consider as that may be where you will find the 
solution.