[huridocs-tech] ICANN and the future control of the Internet

Wired News
URL:  http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51109,00.html
     ICANN Surveys Its Crossroads
     By Steve Kettmann

     2:00 a.m. March 18, 2002 PST

     The battle for future control of the Internet could shift to Europe in
     the weeks ahead, as advocates of democratic representation for the
     Internet's governing body press their case.

     Meeting last week in Ghana, the Internet Corporation for Assigned
     Names and Numbers appeared to reject future elections for board
     members, such as the online voting that culminated in the October 2000
     election of five at-large members of the ICANN board.

     But Andy Mueller-Maguhn, Europe's at-large representative, said by
     e-mail from Ghana that contrary to press accounts, last Thursday's
     vote did not "kill" at-large voting. "It simply delegated the question
     to be worked out at the restructuring committee," he wrote.

     What that means, practically speaking, is that general Internet users
     have the opportunity to make their views on ICANN heard, as the
     increasingly contentious debate over its future plays out.

     At stake is not just whether at-large representation has a future, but
     also the extent to which the U.S. government exercises have control
     over ICANN, a California-based company charged with setting policy
     that affects Internet users worldwide.

     Mueller-Maguhn and others have expressed concerns that the war on
     terrorism made it less likely that the U.S. Commerce Department --
     which has overseen ICANN since it was established in 1998 -- will
     gradually cede control as planned.

     Last Thursday, members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a
     letter to the Bush administration saying that ICANN "was bereft of
     reasonable procedures, sound judgment, and had been meddling in areas
     it should not have trespassed."

     "Commerce does plan to conduct oversight hearings on ICANN later this
     year," said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for Republican members of the
     House Commerce Committee, adding that he and others are worried about
     ICANN becoming less democratic and open.

     Esther Dyson, ICANN's former chairwoman, hopes to give new life to
     democratic representation by pledging $10,000 -- which she hopes
     others will match -- for ICANN to hire someone to work on the topic of
     "at-large outreach" for the next year.

     She has in mind Alexander Svensson -- a PhD student from Hamburg,
     Germany, who is now doing research on ICANN. But who does the job is
     not nearly as important as someone doing it, she added in an e-mail
     from Ghana.

     Dyson said at-large representation remains very much alive, despite
     comments by M. Stuart Lynn, ICANN's chief executive, who last month
     called online voting for ICANN board members "noble, but deeply
     unrealistic" and "fatally flawed."

     Lynn also published a 17,000-word proposal calling for elections to be
     abolished and to more closely involve national governments.

     "They did not steal our food supply," Dyson said from Ghana. "In
     essence, they have said, 'Prove yourselves!' And that is what we have
     to do. Or to use another metaphor, we now get to play another round of
     the game."

     Mueller-Maguhn, a leader of Berlin's famed Chaos Computer Club, is
     especially concerned about the prospect of the United States asserting
     more control over the Internet. He said he expects general Internet
     users to be concerned about this possibility and thinks the issue
     could prove galvanizing.

     "I don't think governments can replace user participation within ICANN
     and/or the ICANN board because governments have their own interests,
     and there is a great range of issues showing that governments have
     other ideas than the citizens they claim to represent," he said.

     Dyson, an entrepreneur with wide experience in Eastern Europe, said
     she was concerned about the move toward more established U.S. control
     of ICANN, and that in her experience, foreign governments were also
     concerned about this -- not just general Internet users.

     "As governments go, the United States is benign," she wrote from
     Ghana. "After all, it called for the creation of ICANN in the first
     place, which was a great concept, though flawed in the execution. But
     the U.S. government would be setting a terrible example, and not all
     governments are as benign -- something that is quite evident here in
     Africa.

     "The real problem with governments is their power. The moment you put
     government or governments in charge of ICANN, you give it too much
     power (if only because governments can claim it). Better to limit
     ICANN's powers to what it can win from its constituents through
     contract negotiations, however painful those may be. That's the basic
     concept underlying its private status."


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