[WSIS CS-Plenary] [IGP Announce] Internet Governance Project Headlines

[Internet Governance Project]

August 12, 2009

The House Committee Letter on ICANN: All politics is local

Four ICANN Board members dissent in vote on NCSG charter

Are you listening, ICANN?

IGP files comments on proposed Noncommercial Stakeholder Group charter

The 2009 NCUC Membership Drive: "Tell 'em Kieren sent you!"

Under pressure from trademark interests, ICANN undoes the GNSO reforms

When You Hear “Security,” Think “National Sovereignty”

New CEO stresses ICANN's role in cybersecurity

Search Internet Governance Project Headlines

 
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* The House Committee Letter on ICANN: All politics is local - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=40356648&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

On August 4 the U.S. House Committee that oversees the Commerce Department published their opinion about ICANN and the impending expiration of its Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the Commerce Department. The gist of the letter was that the Congressional committee, headed by powerful Democrat Henry Waxman of California, wants something like the JPA to become a permanent part of the global Internet. 

The letter proposes that a new, "permanent instrument" between the U.S. Commerce Department and ICANN be created. The list of things the instrument should do was strong and sweeping. It not only allows Commerce to periodically review ICANN's performance but also asks it to "create a mechanism for ICANN's implementation of any new gTLDs and internationalized domain names that ensures appropriate consultation with stakeholders." It would ensure that ICANN will not change its current policy toward indiscriminate access to Whois information. 

In other words, this is a rather explicit call for the basic parameters of DNS policy to be made (or rather, re-made) in Washington.

Why? What reason was put forward to justify this rather stark departure from the basic model of ICANN, which was supposed to be an independent, multistakeholder global governance agency, accountable to all the world's Internet users and not just those located in the U.S.? One has to answer the "why" question in two separate paragraphs. There are the real reasons, which can be read between the lines, and there are the rhetorical reasons explicitly stated in the letter.

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* Four ICANN Board members dissent in vote on NCSG charter - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=40303976&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

On July 30 a majority of the ICANN Board took a fateful step away from open public participation in domain name policy making. In a decision that seriously impairs ICANN’s claim to be a multi-stakeholder, bottom up institution, the Board voted 10-4 to impose upon civil society groups a charter that they did not support and which is designed to weaken and fragment their participation. 

The Board-approved charter for a Non Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG) was drafted directly by ICANN’s staff, without any consultations with the affected noncommercial organizations. When it was put up for public comment the reaction was overwhelmingly negative. And yet the majority of the Board (with several strong dissents, see the “silver lining” below) didn’t care, and passively complied with the direction fed to it by its Vice Chair and staff. The staff did not make a single modification reflecting the views of the overwhelming majority of the affected community. 

The importance of this issue goes well beyond the NCSG; it relates to the whole problem of public participation in ICANN. Is ICANN a structure to facilitate policy making by any interested and affected stakeholder, or is ICANN nothing more than a self-perpetuating corporation that sees the public as a potential threat and public participation as something to be carefully managed and controlled?

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* Are you listening, ICANN? - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=40093162&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

A wonderful thing is happening on the ICANN public comment board. Public interest groups from all over the world have mobilized to express support for the NCUC charter proposal. What seemed to be an obscure procedural issue months ago has attracted worldwide attention. Civil society groups are objecting strongly to the ICANN management's attempt to manipulate and control its allegedly "bottom up" policy making structures. These are not your standard two-line ICANN public comments, "I support this, I hate that." These are not your usual commenters, the same ICANN insiders who have held the same positions in the GNSO for 10 years. The entries are from new people, many of the comments are unusually long and articulate, and motivated by a sense of disbelief and injustice.

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* IGP files comments on proposed Noncommercial Stakeholder Group charter - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=40089893&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

The IGP filed comments today in ICANN's second proceeding on GNSO Stakeholder Group Charters. In its comments IGP identified both substantive issues in the revised NCSG charter proposal drafted by ICANN policy staff, as well as procedural flaw in ICANN's proceeding. In light of these concerns, IGP asked that ICANN immediately drop its attempt to impose its revised NCSG charter proposal, and instead reinstate the original Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) charter proposal submitted by the NCUC for consideration by the Board.

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* The 2009 NCUC Membership Drive: "Tell 'em Kieren sent you!" - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=40060938&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

A few days ago we described the discrimination and barriers ICANN’s Board and staff have unjustly placed on civil society representation in ICANN. In a reply on our blog, ICANN’s Director of Public Participation, Kieren McCarthy, made an attempt to be constructive. After implying that hundreds of thousands of people should be actively involved in the GNSO, he stated, “Now if you want my help in getting those people in, just ask - that's my job after all. But I've never been asked by anyone in ICANN …to help them go get more people. I'd be happy to do so.”

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* Under pressure from trademark interests, ICANN undoes the GNSO reforms - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=39958831&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

A little-noticed outcome of the Sydney ICANN meeting (overshadowed by the excitement surrounding the selection of its new CEO) was a shockingly flagrant display of how arbitrary and unfair ICANN can be. A year ago a Board Governance Committee recommended, and the full Board adopted, a proposal to give civil society and commercial user interests the same number of votes (6) on the GNSO Council. The action was intended to correct what was widely perceived as an indefensibly unfair distribution of votes, in which trademark/ commercial interests were given nine votes and noncommercial interests only three. The rebalancing was first proposed in an independent, expert evaluation of the GNSO by the London School of Economics, and later endorsed by the Board. A July 2008 GNSO committee - which included representatives of the trademark and commercial users - also endorsed the idea of representational parity. 

But when faced with the prospect of equal representation of commercial and noncommercial user interests, the commercial user groups revolted. Having lost the fight against parity on principle grounds, they shifted tactics and "went negative," claiming that the Noncommercial Users Constituency was not "representative enough" and did not warrant additional representation. The staff and Board were inundated with non-stop criticism of this sort for months. Numerous threats about withdrawing from the GNSO were made. 

 
And yet, in Sydney the Board's Structural Improvements Committee turned a deaf ear to the vibrant new participation and caved in to the incessant pressure of the commercial interests. Two decisions, almost unbelievable in the degree to which they discriminate against civil society and completely ignore public comments, emerged from the Sydney meeting.

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* When You Hear “Security,” Think “National Sovereignty” - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=39963026&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

The Obama administration is making security a high priority. However, prioritizing security goes contrary to Internet privatization, multi-stakeholderism, civil society, and even international cooperation.

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* New CEO stresses ICANN's role in cybersecurity - http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=39918460&f=175425&u=11399690
 
 

One summer sport in Internet governance is speculating on what direction ICANN’s new CEO will take it in. Making the media rounds yesterday on Fox and Lehrer News Hour to talk about the recent DDoS attacks on US and S. Korea government and commercial websites, new CEO Rod Beckstrom pushed how the response to cyber attacks is a coordinated effort, he also alluded to ICANN's role in similar attacks. Responding to a question on the News Hour about the USG policy response to dealing with cyber attacks, Beckstrom highlighted the critical role of ISP filtering, and identified the "organic" as well as "somewhat structured" coordination which occurs during a typical response. More interestingly, he plugged ICANN's facilitating role.
ICANN, as the global Internet corporation that handles the naming and address for every mailbox in the Internet globally, over 200 million, we have relationships with every single country in the world and play somewhat of a diplomatic role when these things occur, particularly if they affect the naming and addressing system, which this one doesn't yet, but it involves multiple countries.
While there are some technical inaccuracies in his statement (domains are not “mailboxes” and ICANN doesn’t actually have formal relations with every country in the world) producing accurate television sound bites is really tough. But Beckstrom correctly points out the limitations of ICANN's role in resolving cyber attacks.

So far, ICANN's role has largely been as a facilitator. E.g., in the ongoing cooperative effort against the Conficker worm, the security community determined preemptive barring of domain transfers and registrations in affected TLD registries as a mitigation tactic. ICANN's role was largely to communicate this to TLD operators. It took the agreement of ccTLD operators to put the response in place, because in reality, ICANN has very little authority over the ccTLDs business and operational practices. (with gTLDs it has almost complete contractual governance and can even take away the assignment after a period of time) Because of "national sovereignty" claims most ccTLDs have very limited contracts with ICANN, and there are clear limitations to using ICANN's authority to enforce stability and security on the Internet.

View the News Hour interview:

And the Fox interview (which dutifully follows the First Law of Cyberwarfare):

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