Many of you are already aware of the important U.S. Commerce Dept. Notice of Inquiry on ICANN. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/frnotices/2006/NOI_DNS_Transition_0506.htm Comments are due July 7, and a public meeting will be held July 26 in Washington to discuss the results. It is important that the community respond to this. The discussion points below were developed by me and some colleagues at the Internet Governance Project. ============================ Initial Discussion Points on the NTIA proceeding The numbered points below correspond to the numbers in the NTIA Notice of Inquiry (NOI). 1. The 1998 White Paper articulated the following four principles to guide DNS policy: stability; competition; private, bottom-up coordination; and representation. Are these principles still relevant? This is probably the most important area to concentrate comments -- the level of principle. I would suggest that three of the four principles (stability, competition, and representation) are still relevant. Serious questions, however, arise around the principle of private, bottom-up coordination. In the original understanding at ICANN's creation, the special USG oversight role was supposed to end after two years. It never did. Last year, the USG asserted for the first time a principle that it will always retain a unilateral oversight role. This new principle deviates from the White Paper principles. We know from the WGIG Report and the Tunis Agenda that many in the international community do not approve of this. The pre-eminent position of the USG has enormous consequences for ICANN's accountability. The White Paper strategy was to "internationalize via privatization." ICANN would be made globally accountable and representative by relying on private, multi-stakeholder mechanisms for policy making while avoiding intergovernmental mechanisms. The term "privatization" is not popular among many in civil society but one must understand that in many respects it is easier for civil society and governments to hold ICANN accountable if it is a private, nonprofit corporation than if it is an international treaty organization or quasi-governmental entity. Private nonprofit corps are subject to all kinds of regulations regarding disclosure of financial information, etc. and cannot be shielded by powerful states such as the USG. The USG and international community must to come to grips with the contradiction between the principle of "internationalization via privatization" and the privileged position of one national government. Civil society and/or IGC comments should highlight this contradiction. The NTIA Notice of Inquiry speaks repeatedly of a "transition" to a "privatized DNS." We should ask, What is the end state of this transition? and make specific and practical proposals to find a way out of the contradictions of the US position. There are basically 4 options: a. Status quo. Leave things as they are. Unacceptable. b. Amelioration. Accept US control but take concrete steps to minimize and neutralize it; e.g., proposing that the U.S. issue a formal commitment not to make arbitrary changes. c. De-nationalization. End U.S. oversight, make ICANN a private corp. under a specific national law (California public benefit corporation law is quite good, by the way) and thus subject to all the normal legal checks that can be applied to corporations, such as antitrust law, contract law, etc. There are other details, such as a host country agreement that would exempt ICANN from being bound by certain national policies. There might also be a call for certain procedural safeguards and personnel changes needed to make this option secure. d. Internationalization. Involve more governments in ICANN?s supervision via a formal intergovernmental agreement. The degree of internationalization can be arranged on a spectrum ranging from the weakest (a very narrow DNS root-centered agreement, or an international body that managed a competitive bid process to award the IANA contract) to stronger, wider-scope forms of involvement (e.g., a framework convention). IGP has a paper from 6 months ago basically advocating #3. Some elements of #4 or even #2 could be acceptable. 2. Has ICANN achieved sufficient progress in accomplishing the tasks set out for it in the MoU? This question gets one involved in the details of the tasks set for ICANN by the NTIA. Strategically, I suggest that we not get too involved in this. If we do anything here, we should criticize ICANN's failure to develop a new TLD process and its bias against privacy in its handling of the Whois issue. The Whois bias can again be related to the USG?s unilateral oversight, showing how US policy toward privacy is foisted on the global community through its control of ICANN, and belying US claims of neutral stewardship. 3. Are these core tasks and milestones still relevant to facilitate this transition and meet the goals outlined in the DNS White Paper and the U.S. Principles on the Internet?s Domain Name and Addressing System? Should new or revised tasks/methods be considered in order for the transition to occur? And on what time frame and by what method should a transition occur? This item opens up discussion not only of the MoU substance, but the process of oversight as well. Here I think we should be ready with a specific timetable for change, based on elaboration of one of the four options discussed above. If our proposals involve any new tasks, such as a competitive bid process for IANA, it might go here. 4. Are stakeholder groups involved effectively? Are there additional stakeholder groups? CS actors from developing countries may wish to address this issue. I would not presume to speak for them so will await comments. From an ICANN-veteran perspective, the major issue revolves around the role of the At Large (ALAC). ALAC is supposed to represent the individual Internet user and domain name registrants. Its proposed structure under the "reformed" ICANN is not workable. IGP partners, especially Klein and Mueller, have always advocated a return to direct elections as a way of solving the collective action problem for representation of individual users. This section might also provide a way to discuss the issue of governments and the changing role of the GAC in ICANN. We could argue that governments are not involved properly -- instead of participating as equals in the development of policy they are trying for an after the fact veto, which is destructive. 5. Are ICANN SOs doing their job and functioning properly? For a broader civil society constituency I think this is a minor issue and need not be addressed. If it is addressed, we could make all the usual and obvious arguments about the biased constituency structure of the GNSO. Others with more information about the address SO and the country code SO might have something to say here. 6. Automation of request processing for root zone changes. This is one of the most promising areas where NTIA actually seems likely to introduce a meaningful change. Automated request processing basically reduces the power of the root administrator and allows ccTLDs and presumably other registries to modify the root zone file on their own. We should support this idea. 7. How can information exchange, collaboration and enhanced cooperation among these organizations be achieved as called for by the WSIS? Participate in good faith in the IG Forum. Here is a chance to elaborate the proper vision for the Forum, where cross-cutting issues are considered and international and intergovernmental organizations are subjected to independent assessment.