In my attempt at Spanish (sorry if it doesn't make sense)... Aquí estan los artículos escritos por William New para el diario National Journal Technology Daily durante la semana de las reuniones de ICANN. Deseo que podría traducir los artículos. Convengo que que la información debe llegar a todos, en su propia lengua para precisamente entender que es un proceso global.- Frannie And in English... Here are the articles William New wrote for National Journal's Technology Daily during the week of the ICANN meetings. I wish I could translate the articles. I agree that this is a global process. I wish we had the translation tools necessary for all to communicate, but also that people would make the effort to understand and communicate in languages other than English and translate their work where possible. - Frannie 03-01-2004 Net Governance: Lawsuits, Governance Top Issues At ICANN's Rome Meeting ROME -- At a weeklong meeting of hundreds of veteran constituents of the Internet community that started Monday, debate is occurring on myriad technical issues. But stealing the limelight at the board meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) are new lawsuits and a debate over the organization's role in global Internet governance. The nonprofit ICANN oversees the Internet-addressing system but is working to dispel the notion that it has overstepped its bounds into other types of policy issues. ICANN President Paul Twomey on Monday tried to do that in a report to the body's Government Advisory Committee. ICANN is involved in "creating technical policy, not public policy," he said. Characterizations lately that ICANN is an organization for developed countries are "far from the truth," he said. Paolo Vigerano, speaking on behalf of the host Italian government, said government participation in ICANN is essential to represent the public interest. ICANN handles technical coordination, which Twomey said is at the bottom of five layers of Internet governance. Above it are legal and administrative issues, development, economic issues and culture. Twomey pleaded with officials to inform their people of ICANN's limited technical role. On Thursday, ICANN was hit with a lawsuit from VeriSign, the manager of Internet addresses ending in .com and .net, for allegedly impeding its ability to introduce new technologies. Then on Friday, ICANN and VeriSign were sued for antitrust by a group of registrars for allegedly colluding on a proposed wait-listing service for expired domain names. "The relief was that on Saturday the courts were closed," so ICANN could not be sued three days in a row, Twomey joked. ICANN currently is the subject of five lawsuits, something that Twomey and board chairman Vint Cerf, an Internet founder, termed commonplace in the business world. Several suits involve who would get the money from the wait-listing service, Twomey said. In his report, Twomey emphasized ICANN's origins, in which it was directed to ensure stability, competition, bottom-up coordination and broad representation in the Internet community. ICANN, based near Los Angeles, was created as a result of a 1998 U.S. government white paper. Twomey reported on months of consultations with more than a dozen Internet constituencies spanning governments, holders of domain suffixes for countries (like .de for Germany), technical experts, Internet users, law enforcement and intellectual property holders. The message from the groups was for ICANN to finish separating itself from the U.S. Commerce Department, preserve future stability, augment core functions, introduce new domains suffixes, help developing countries, introduce multilingual domain formats and promote consumer services. On Monday, ICANN announced the formation of the Country-Code Naming Supporting Organization (CCNSO), which will develop and recommend to ICANN policies related to country-based suffixes. The announcement comes after years of negotiations to get managers of country domains to buy into ICANN. A European official at the meeting expressed concern that the announcement could effectively freeze the process of getting new country domain managers to join ICANN, and several large countries have not. By William New _____________________________ 03-02-2004 Net Governance: Debate Over Wait List For Domains Is All About Money ROME -- One of the hottest issues at the board meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) here, whether the group should proceed with a wait-listing service for expired Internet addresses, is at its core a fight over money. "The difficult thing is that it's about monetary interests," John Jeffrey, ICANN general counsel, said on Tuesday. "One party says we have gone too fast, the other says we have gone too slow." ICANN is the subject of two lawsuits over the service. VeriSign, which proposed the service, said ICANN's delay has interfered with its ability to introduce new services. A group of registrars, or domain-name retailers, sued to say ICANN is unfairly aiding VeriSign by supporting the service. And an earlier lawsuit by three registrars was dropped last fall. Several of the eight registrars in the suit were not accredited when the ICANN board approved the service. The ICANN board is scheduled to decide Saturday whether conditions it imposed in accepting the service at last June's meeting have been negotiated to its liking. If approved, the proposal will go to the Commerce Department for approval. Commerce has an agreement with ICANN that it must approve any changes in the relationship with VeriSign, the manager of the .com and .net domain extensions that account for the majority of domains. Commerce could kick the issue to the FTC, one source said. The board's plan is for a one-year trial of the service with a review at the end. Some people at the meeting have called for the trial to be limited to .net domains. At issue are the thousands of domains that are dropped after owners do not renew their annual fees of $6 to VeriSign. VeriSign's Chuck Gomes told the non-commercial constituents on Tuesday that the company has invested millions of dollars without return in developing the pool of names that the other companies use for gain. Under the wait-listing service, VeriSign would charge $24 per year to registrars to reserve the rights to a name, on a first-come basis, when it becomes available. The Canadian firm Pool.com strongly opposes the wait list because nine months after launching an alternative service, it is earning the equivalent of $30 million a year. Every day at 2 p.m., VeriSign drops an average of 20,000 domains, and 40 registrars under contract with Pool.com try to get any that it had requested, typically 500 to 1,000. If Pool.com has more than one request for a domain -- and it gets as many as 200 per name -- it holds an auction that generates hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company argues that the wait list will kill a $50 million industry and is unnecessary now that other changes have been made by ICANN, such as a 30-day period for notifying domain holders of the impending expirations. Pool.com, based in Ottawa, Ontario, also has a complaint against ICANN in an Ottawa court that is currently deciding on jurisdiction. By William New ___________________________ 03-02-2004 Net Governance: ICANN Opens Doors To Opposing Groups, With Limits ROME -- The organization that manages the Internet-addressing system has broken with years of "tradition" and is letting groups that oppose its policies sponsor one of its meetings. New.net, a registry for 87 Internet domain extensions in six languages, is not accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) but has tried since its inception three years ago to participate in an ICANN meeting as a sponsor. ICANN repeatedly has rebuffed the proposal, never fully explaining why, according to New.net CEO Dan Sheehy. But at this week's ICANN meeting here, New.net has a booth. In addition, a last-minute sponsorship was awarded to Pool.com, which is using its prominent booth to urge that the ICANN board kill a plan to institute a wait-listing service for domain names whose registrations have expired. Both had to agree to curtail their criticism of ICANN and, in Pool.com's case, of VeriSign, which has proposed the wait-listing service. According to Claudio Corbetta, CEO of meeting organizer Register.it, ICANN at first refused the Pool.com application, then changed its mind. ICANN states on its Web site that it "reserves the right not to accept sponsorships from organizations whose missions and activities conflict with ICANN policies." ICANN officials did not want to comment for this story. New.net was started out of frustration with the slow pace at ICANN in launching new domain suffixes. The registry operates a parallel domain system on an alternative global network by getting Internet service providers to agree to make their servers recognize the New.net names. Seven registrars, or domain retailers, sell New.net names , which include .shop, .family, .familia, .boutique, .travel, .inc and .gmbh (the German incorporation mark). New.net is working with a registry called Tralliance, which has an application into ICANN for .travel to be introduced in the next round of approved domain endings that may be used only by entities fitting specific descriptions. ICANN has called for applications by March 15. New.net's ultimate goal is to be the accredited registry, or sole manager, of the names it controls if ICANN ever introduces them. Sheehy, who attended last year's ICANN board meeting, stopped the company's practice of publicly bashing ICANN. A formal meeting finally occurred in December, he said. ICANN's management also has changed, with Australian Paul Twomey just completing one year as president. In the meeting with New.net, ICANN officials "were really listening," Sheehy said, and did not "just view us as these heretics out to get them." One possible reason for the broader sponsorship is ICANN's eagerness to change the perception that it is not a representative organization. Another possibility is that it wanted to allow additional opportunities for revenue to be made by Register.it. The Rome meeting is the first as a business investment. Corbetta said three sponsors -- a group managing .org, VeriSign and the Italian Web-hosting company Seeweb -- paid about $50,000. Other sponsors, including New.net, paid half that. Register.it will fall about $40,000 short of breaking even, which it considers a good investment, Corbetta said. By William New __________________________ 03-03-2004 Intellectual Property: Internet Firms, Consumers Question European Directive ROME -- U.S. and European Internet service providers (ISPs) and consumer groups continue to express alarm about a draft directive on intellectual property scheduled for a vote by the European Parliament next week. Sarah Deutsch, vice president at Verizon Communications, which is a member of a European ISP alliance, said efforts continue for a "slow and careful consideration" of the draft instead of a "rush to passage." The draft has taken the step of "deputizing bounty hunters, agents and other third parties" to seek broad injunctions to obtain the identities of online users suspected of infringement and to seize assets, including those from ISPs, Deutsch said. "They could seize servers or network equipment," she said. The effect of the law "could be to literally take down your business if you're an online company." Deutsch addressed the issue here on Wednesday while attending the board meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The proposed directive is markedly different from U.S. law, where the recording industry currently may not use subpoenas to obtain records without going through a judge. The European draft leaves that decision to "judicial authorities" of European Union countries, which Deutsch said could mean either a clerk or a judge. Under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a court has to apply a special four-part test before ordering action. Another issue in the European draft is the lack of reimbursement for ISPs for relinquishing data to meet requests for customer information. ISPs get requests from many sectors, she said. The draft has improved a little from the ISP perspective since emerging from a parliamentary committee months ago, Deutsch said. For instance, a provision was stripped that would have required ISPs to report intellectual property infringements to rights holders. An international coalition of civil liberties and consumer rights groups is preparing a protest in favor of digital rights the day before the March 9 European Parliament vote in Brussels, Belgium. The groups oppose the directive because of its "excessive treatment of users and consumers for minor and non-commercial infringements," putting them on par with large commercial counterfeiters, the U.S. group IP Justice said in a release. Members of the Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) include IP Justice, European Digital Rights (EDRi), the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII). The groups are calling for the draft directive to be more narrow and proportionate and to define "intellectual property rights." They also want officials to drop the ability of copyrights holder to hire private police to invade the homes of alleged infringers, as well as the ability to freeze assets before a court hearing. And they oppose the ability for rights holders to obtain personal information on users of file-sharing software, and to seize and destroy ISPs' equipment. The groups called for more debate before a vote. By William New __________________________________ 03-03-2004 Net Governance: Tensions Rise Over New Internet Registry Services ROME -- Tensions have soared at this week's international Internet meeting here over how to handle a revision of rules for the introduction of new services related to the core suffixes for Internet addresses. The fight is epitomized by the differences between registries, the managers of such domain extensions like .com that are the subject of the change, and registrars, the retailers of domain names under those extensions. "Registries tend to support a more relaxed approach that is sensitive to the market position of the registry involved," said Roger Cochetti, a Washington-based domain expert. Overall, they lean toward more caution for larger registries and less caution for smaller registries, he said. VeriSign, the registry for .com and .net and the dominant industry player, took exception to that notion in a Wednesday statement issued by the registry constituency. "The registrars tend to support a more cautious approach that focuses on technical or market issues that could arise," Cochetti said. Registrars previously have asked only that any proposed services be quickly examined for their effect on the technical stability of the Internet and whether they would impact competition. Under those measures, most plans would be readily approved. The issue is on the agenda of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet-addressing system. Internet service providers have asked that the domain-name system not be altered without notifying them. And business users have voiced concerns about competition and stability as well. NeuLevel, the registry for .biz and .us domain suffixes, has called for predictability. The broader debate over how to handle changes to registry services runs into a sharp disagreement about a proposed wait-listing service for domains whose registrations expire. Domain holders must pay a nominal yearly fee, usually around $6, to retain domains. VeriSign, the .com and .net registry, proposed the wait-listing service two years ago and last week sued ICANN for taking so long to decide on its proposal. Registrars oppose the service because a multimillion-dollar business in reselling expired domains has emerged in the last year while ICANN deliberated over VeriSign's proposal. The business constituency also opposes the service. The broad-based names council decided Wednesday to remind the board of its 2002 decision against the wait-listing proposal. The registry-service issue -- as well as the wait-listing lawsuit -- is at least in part about how to better define the terms of VeriSign's unique contract with ICANN. As the dominant registry, any changes that affect the domain database it controls must be approved by ICANN and the U.S. Commerce Department. VeriSign argued in its lawsuit that the wait list falls outside the contract terms. But the board is scheduled to rule on it Saturday, and the decision would create an interesting situation for VeriSign if the list were approved. The level of disagreement over the issue led one high-level participant to exclaim afterward, "I think the registrars want to choose what type of toilet paper I use." By William New ___________________________________ 03-04-2004 Net Governance: ICANN Urged To Seek Purpose For Web Contact Data ROME -- An Internet oversight body is being urged by government and nonprofit privacy experts to consider the underlying purpose it has in collecting contact information for every owner of an Internet address and making it public. The proposal comes during a weeklong meeting here of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as a way to break a deadlock on the issue of "Whois" data. George Papapavlou, an architect of the European Union privacy directive and until recently head of the EU Internet-related services unit, initiated the idea in a Tuesday meeting with the ICANN non-commercial and registrar constituencies. "You must ask what is the purpose of the Whois so you can then ask what data are we talking about," Papapavlou said. In the EU privacy directive, data is used for a particular purpose, which leads to a decision of what data to use for what purpose. ICANN, on the other hand, requires registrars for domain-name suffixes such as .com to collect basic contact information from all registrants of Web sites. That data is then made public and, for $10,000, may be used by anyone, such as marketing firms. European registrars have had a hard time satisfying the Whois requirements because the rules do not meet the standards of the EU privacy directive. "It is not at all clear to me what is the purpose," Papapavlou said. He said the directive requires "adequate protection" of personal data if it is sent to third countries, though it does not specifically address domain names. If data subjects do not agree with a use of their data or there is a mistake, they can appeal either to their national data authority or to a court, although they can be overridden if a need sharing information is shown. The directive also requires that the data be accurate and relevant. Data subjects have a right to remain anonymous and refuse to be included in directories, like the Whois database. In addition, data must be subjected to the "least privacy intrusive" option in any case. Europe considers using personal data for marketing without permission to be privacy infringement. On Wednesday, Syracuse University professor Milton Mueller, chairman of the non-commercial constituency of the Internet, carried Papapavlou's idea forward in a Whois task force meeting. If the purpose of the data is for rights holders to bypass lawsuits in resolving disputes, as they have said, then ICANN should state it, he said. This week, there also have been lengthy discussions about high levels of inaccuracy and fraud in the Whois database. One problem is that unauthorized marketers have obtained access to the database without paying the $10,000 and are offering it for sale. Holders of intellectual property rights and law enforcement agencies want greater accuracy to catch illegal spammers and other fraud artists. And a primary concern regarding the Whois database is privacy. Bernard Turcotte of the .ca registry said the bulk registrar Tucows easily fixed problems with its Whois data after being notified. By William New _________________________________ 03-04-2004 Privacy: Italian Official Questions 'Safe Harbor,' ICANN Contracts ROME -- A senior Italian official responsible for the protection of personal information Thursday called into question the validity of contracts signed by owners of Internet addresses and criticized the U.S.-European agreement on privacy. There is no doubt that the domain-name contracts conflict with Italian law and should not be recognized, Giovanni Buttarelli, secretary-general of the Italian Data Protection Authority, told a gathering here at this week's meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). But Buttarelli, who addressed non-commercial users of the Internet, said there is flexibility in practice because data protection is still a new concept and some relationships are made without recognition of the law. He added, however, that European authorities increasingly would begin to pay attention to the inconsistency between the ICANN contracts and privacy law. Specifically, Buttarelli said a requirement imposed by ICANN that the contact information provided to domain retailers and those registering names be made public is not consistent with the European Union privacy directive. Buttarelli serves on the EU working party established under that directive to monitor its implementation. He cited a paper adopted by the working party last June. Buttarelli also took issue with the "safe harbor" agreement negotiated by the United States and the European Union. U.S. companies that voluntarily sign the safe harbor agree to provide "adequate" protection of EU citizens' personal data. "We have the feeling that effective application is a little difficult," he said. For instance, he said companies get complaints about the deal but that they are never passed on to third parties. Buttarelli said he is "not optimistic" that problems with the "Whois" contact data for domains will be resolved any time soon, as the ICANN task forces created to examine the issue showed little progress this week. He also complained that he was not invited to participate in a series of workshops on Whois this week, saying that his exclusion furthers the concern that ICANN is working on the issue without the participation of privacy experts. Kathryn Kleiman of the ICANN constituency of non-commercial Internet users praised Buttarelli's remarks afterward. "Today Dr. Buttarelli reminded us powerfully and persuasively that ICANN and domain names exist within the network of national privacy laws, and these laws protect personal data that registrants must provide," she said. But in the ICANN Whois task force on which she serves, she said "powerful corporate interests argue that ICANN policy exists outside and above national laws. I fear that in the ICANN policy-development process, might will supercede rights." Several members of ICANN's intellectual property constituency complained later that they were not made aware of the Whois meeting (see previous story). Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said, "I think ICANN's Whois process seems to operate in the absence of informed expertise." By William New ______________________________ 03-04-2004 Net Governance: Officials Urge Limited Government Role Over Internet ROME -- Global governance over policy issues facing the Internet and the role of the body that oversees the Internet-addressing system were debated here Thursday. Paul Twomey, president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), again said ICANN does not seek to reach beyond its role as a technical coordinator of the Internet. ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf said other existing international bodies already are addressing many issues. Lucio Stanca, the Italian minister of innovation and technology, told the ICANN public forum that Italy's position is that "government must be involved only when public policy is at stake." He proposed that a U.N. task force being developed to define and discuss Internet governance include anyone with an interest -- such as governments, the private sector, nonprofit groups, ICANN and the Internet Engineering Task Force. Issues that Stanca said would fall under government responsibility include child pornography, digital signatures and e-government. Fiorello Cortiana, an Italian member of the European Parliament, said he has proposed a European Union directive for an "Internet bill of rights." The proposal would provide basic protection for individuals' rights, so the same battle does not have to be fought with every new law. He cited examples of pending EU directives on software patents and intellectual property. The proposal would need a two-thirds majority to become a directive. Champion Mitchell, CEO of the Network Solutions domain-name retailer, made an impassioned plea to the ICANN board to address the privacy of Internet users and to allow the introduction of more new Internet services demanded by users. VeriSign, the wholesaler of .com and .net Internet addresses, recently spun off Network Solutions. He urged the approval of new registry services based on consumer demand but criticized VeriSign's handling of its new services. VeriSign last week filed a lawsuit against ICANN for its delay in approving VeriSign's proposed services. Mitchell also said he cleaned house administratively when he took over at Network Solutions. "When I came in, I inherited a group of monopolists with arrogance beyond belief," he said. He said the company surveyed its users and found overwhelmingly that their biggest concern is privacy of their information and the threat of abuses like identity theft and fraud. Mitchell called the "Whois" contact data collected on each person registering a domain a "huge deterrent" to privacy. Ways can be found to stop making the data public while providing necessary access to law enforcement and intellectual property owners, he said. One-half of Network Solutions customers provide their personal home information for the Whois databases, and ICANN requires that the data be made public, Mitchell said. The company gets complaints every week from its users who have received unsolicited e-mail offers to buy a database of personal information. Following through on one offer, the company obtained a diskette with 15,000 names from the Whois database. The diskette is being turned over to the FTC and Justice Department. By William New ___________________________ 03-05-2004 Net Governance: Business Orientation, Lobbying Of Internet Body Criticized ROME -- On the final day before votes on a multimillion-dollar policy change, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) received heavy lobbying from business interests and heavy criticism about that lobbying from non-business interests. "I think ICANN has to show that it is more than a group of business people flying around the world to meet together, mainly from the United States," Vittorio Bertola, chair of the ICANN Interim At-Large Advisory Committee, said at the ICANN meeting here. Former ICANN board member Amadeu Abril i Abril of Spain called for "less lobbying and more public dialogue," adding, "The only thing you are doing here, my dears, is taking money from one hand and putting it in another." The ICANN board is poised to vote Saturday on a proposed wait-listing service for expired Internet addresses. VeriSign, the manager of the .com and .net domain-name suffixes that comprise the majority of all domains, developed the service. VeriSign's unique contract with ICANN requires that ICANN's board and the U.S. Commerce Department approve key changes. VeriSign sued ICANN last week for taking too long to decide on the service, first proposed in 2001, and allegedly inhibiting the company's ability to compete. In the last nine months, a new $50 million market has emerged that includes companies obtaining and reselling expired domains. The lead company, Pool.com of Ottawa, has been omnipresent this week. VeriSign representatives have matched Pool.com's arguments point by point. And a steady stream of companies, nonprofits and ICANN backers have voiced support or objection, depending mainly on whether they stand to gain financially from one or the other. "VeriSign is a bully in the schoolyard," one long-time participant named Jeff Field said. He recommended "punching the bully in the nose" to gain respect. Speakers at the public forum on Thursday and Friday also spoke to democratic principles of ICANN. Other ICANN faithful took aim at the perceived lack of inclusiveness in the organization and its board decisions. Bruce Tonkin, chair of ICANN's powerful names council, warned board members not to forget their public at the risk of collapse like the Roman Empire. "In the most recent Star Wars [movie], the Jedi council was annihilated," Tonkin said. "Let's hope that doesn't happen here." He called for better decision-making to avoid litigation, as well as better compliance with and more analysis of and public input into ICANN decisions. ICANN continues to face problems of multilingualism, both on the Internet and in its internal operations. Some participants praised the opening of a second office in Brussels, Belgium, because French and English are spoken there and the location helps alleviate time-zone problems in terms of contacting the main office in Los Angeles. But critics also complained that participation in ICANN still requires English because there is no translation service for meetings or documents. Some noted with favor the increase in the government advisory committee's membership from 70 to 91 in the past year. By William New _____________________________ 03-08-2004 Domains: ICANN OKs Wait-Listing System For Expired Domain Names The governing body of the Internet-addressing system on Saturday overwhelmingly approved a waiting list for redistributing expired domain names. National Journal's Technology Daily Senior Writer William New reports that the service now moves to the Commerce Department for final approval. In August 2002, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) first approved the wait-listing service proposed by VeriSign, the registry that manages domains ending in .com and .net. On Saturday, the board approved the conditions for implementing the service that had been negotiated by the two sides since that time. A Commerce spokesman said the department would review the proposal in light of pricing and competition concerns in the domain market. National Journal's Technology Daily -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Frannie Wellings Policy Fellow, Electronic Privacy Information Center Coordinator, The Public Voice 1718 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Suite 200 Washington, D.C. 20009 USA [log in to unmask] +1 202 483 1140 extension 107 (telephone) +1 202 483 1248 (fax) http://www.epic.org http://www.thepublicvoice.org -----------------------------------------------------------------