ICANN was a major topic of discussion at a recent meeting of an EU "High
Level Internet Governance Group." Below is my report on the meeting,
which I attended. Note in particular Paul Verhoef's comments about
changes in representation and the At Large.

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Here is a short, on-the-scene report on the meeting.

HL IGG meeting, 24 May 2005 at Charlemagne Building, European Commission

PRESENT
Governments - Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxemborg, UK,
Italy, Germany, Finland, Spain, Hungary,  Czech Republic, Netherlands.
ICANN: Paul Verhoef.
Civil Society: Karen Banks, Rikke Frank Joergenson, Milton Mueller,
Francis Muguet, Louis Pouzin, Wolfgang  Kleinwachter (arrived late).

Karen Banks opened up with an appeal to include development issues in
the scope of Internet governance and the  output of the WSIS process.
Access, interconnection prices, peering

Italy:
Focus on development may make scope of IG too broad. How do you
reconcile this development perspective with the  issues relevant to
Europe and US? Development of Internet and telecom infrastructure is
primarily a national issue.  Developing countries want to export their
responsibilities to facilitate local infrastructure development to the
global level.

Germany
European govts don't have such a broad definition of Internet
Governance. Outcome of phase 1: we don't want to  continue discussion on
access, IPR, only want to focus on financing and internet governance.
You want to use the IG  issue to reopen and discuss many other issues.
Risk of losing the focus.

Pouzin:
Discusses multilingualism and its relationship to IG.

Muguet:
Raises concerns of scientific community, free software.

Mueller:
Raises idea of framework convention.

Rikke:
Governments make formal commitments to human rights values, but must
move from commitment to effective  implementation. Arrangements must be
effective means of enforcing these standards. How do we move from formal
 commitment to effective implementation, where citizens can claim their
rights? Want to move beyond general guarantees  and provide specific
mechanisms to people for enforcement.

Germany
Do you believe that a global governance coordination mechanism based on
private sector actors can provide human  rights compliance?

Mueller:
Response to Germany. When you say you have a more narrow definition of
IG do you mean only ICANN? digital  convergence means that privacy, free
expression, IPR and technical management have become more integrated.
Notice  and takedown. Use of IP addresses to track users, whois
database. Different international forums approach these areas
differently, leading to a lack of consistency.

Italy
Spam - technicians did not perceive the danger of spam.

Germany
Obviously IG is more than ICANN v ITU. What are we going to achieve if
our expectations are too high then we might  run into problems if we
burden this new organization to dicuss all these issues. Don't put too
much expectations on the  WGIG.

UK
Risk that we try to reinvent the real world for the cyberworld. Can't
divorce those two worlds. Laws that exist may be  the correct legal
basis from which to start. Law starts to break down. Struggling hard ot
understand what we should be  doing wrt to human rights, already have
strong statements. Then have national legal frameworks. Risk to take an
absolute right and start to qualify it for the cyberworld, then you risk
weakening, watering down the rights we already  have. On Whois, claims
that privacy rights already protected, because in the UK country code
there is a right to  conceal one's private data.

Mueller
Human rights have been reinvented and are being reinvented online.When
you sign a domain name contract you commit  yourself to a globalized
dispute resolution system that redefines the tradeoff between free
speech and trademark; you  also commit yourself to exposing private
contact data. The UK example not relevant because it is not part of the
ICANN regime.  Any UK-based registrar would not be able to offer such
guarantees of privacy.

Wolfgang
Need a clearinghouse, need to improve coordination. If discussion
demonstrates a need for coordination, the actual  negotiations and
coordination can take place on a bilateral basis.

Francis Muguet
Need international public law, which supersedes national law. Criticizes
RAND policy for patents. People say IETF is  open, but most IETF RFCs
are written by American companies. Should try to modify this imbalance.

ICANN PRESENTATION (Verhoef)
International discussions based on fundamental misunderstanding. Telecom
networks centrally controlled. Internet is  controlled by the users.
What happens to governments under this system of user empowerment?
Problems of Internet  mostly rooted in use, not in its function. Venn
diagram of Internet organizational interactions and relationships.
ICANN trying to achieve status as a transnational org with global
relevance, have all stakeholders represented. Capture  issue: recognizes
that US is an issue. Should not be captured by any government, industry,
etc.

Identifies as "issues":
* "perceived" USG control, esp. RZF editing.
* US jurisdiction (California corporation)
* role of governments. (recognizes this as the key shift in WGIG
dialogue)

Now better understood and accepted:
* mandate and mission of ICANN,
* limited but important role in Internet function,
* multi-stakeholder nature of the org,
* "bottom up consensus approach."

Moving the whois debate somewhere else will not change anything.

GERMANY
What if we shut down ICANN tomorrow, what impact would it have on the
Internet?

VERHOEF
RIRs would get addresses, same issues as before. Registries and
registrars contractual relationship would devolve to  USG if ICANN were
shut down. Start over another 10 year process of developing ICANN with a
much larger group  of stakeholders involved, very risky. Better to talk
about evolution of ICANN.

ITALY
We cannot allow ICANN to edit RZF on its own. GAC has to take over some
of the functions envisioned by the MoU.

VERHOEF
Clear that MoU is going to stop, USG has confirmed that. No debate on
that. What happens after? A number of  scenarios. International
community alters reporting functions of ICANN CEO and staff. Could be
enough. Others  believe in stronger reporting mechanisms. Could have
improved reporting, more interaction between ICANN and  GAC. ICANN not
resisting changes, it is asking for and needs clear direction.

WOLFGANG
Asks Verhoef about At Large. It is clear now that the RALOs do not work.
Too complicated and indirect. Do you plan  to change this? Furthermore,
there is no clear formalized process in the ICANN Bylaws about how At
Large Advisory  Committee communicates with the Board, but such
instructions exist for GAC. Both are Advisory Committees,  nominally
have the same status in ICANN's structure.

RIKKE
What is obstacle to changing WHOIS?

VERHOEF
[answering both Wolfgang and Rikke] Staff does not do this, stakeholders
must make changes using the bottom up  process. For either WHOIS or
ALAC, management centrally cannot require this on a top down basis.

FRANCE
Do you (ICANN) want to maintain current activities of ICANN or expand
its function?

VERHOEF
Any discussion of whether ICANN would want to do more must be premised
on doing its DNS and IP addressing  roles properly. Not appropriate to
do more now. Long term, who knows? We are desperately awaiting results
of  WSIS process so we can implement required changes and move on. As
long as political discussions are ongoing, and  there is a chance of
major substantive changes, many interested stakeholders are taking their
chances and playing on  that. Once WSIS is over, and it is decided that
ICANN is the place to be for DNS, then there will be pressure to make
it work.

GERMANY
In 1998 the stated reason to keep governments out was that ICANN was a
small, technical coordination function. Why  then do we have so many
people working for ICANN and why is the number increasing? When you talk
about bottom  up: what about ccTLD managers? Why are they not joining?
European ccTLDs say they have no intention of joining.

VERHOEF
I want ccTLDs in the organization, have good individual relationships
with them. Collectively, problem is different.

MM
It would matter to move Whois debate to another forum: USG has a strong
position on WHOIS and influences  ICANN repeatedly. FTC letters,
Congressional committee hearings, Commerce Department lobbying etc.

Also, it is not enough to tell Wolfgang and Rikke that ICANN's bottom up
process should solve certain problems.  Imbalanced constituency and
representational structures make it difficult to change representational
structures. Any  increases in ALAC's powers would reduce the powers of
other interests and constituencies. Yet those interests are on  control
now, thus it is unlikely they would ever agree to change.





Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org
http://www.internetgovernance.org