[chapter-delegates] FYI - in the coming discussion of the WGIG questionnaire

[Fred Baker]

On Jun 6, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
>  Suggesting that WSIS/WGIG wants to dismantle ICANN and is a danger 
> for the free Internet is plain FUD.

I generally agree with your thoughts on this article, Patrick. I don't 
think the article serves ICANN very well, because of the obvious 
rhetoric it contains, and because Tucows (an internet registrar) is an 
interested party in the discussion.

The matter of whether ICANN is a US organization or a global one 
depends, I think, a lot on one's perspective. As you know, I (speaking 
for myself) think that US DoC/NTIA should have terminated its 
relationship with ICANN, ceding matters to it, a long time ago. When 
ICANN was formed in 1997, there was a presidential directive ordering 
them to do so, and the contract terms were that DoC would cede the 
functions to ICANN entirely in 2000. That has been renewed a couple of 
times and IIRC expires in 2006. DoC should, IMHO, at that time let it 
drop.

Now, suppose it did. Elliot's argument is not that ICANN is global 
because it meets outside the US. He argues that it is global because 
its directors are majority non-US and because a variety of 
stake-holders, including non-US governments, have defined seats at the 
table, and because outside of the operational relationship with DoC, 
the US Government has an identical seat to everyone else's. If one 
assumes that DoC does not renew its contract with ICANN but rather 
cedes control to ICANN entirely, would his arguments about ICANN then 
persuade you that ICANN is a global organization that happens to be 
incorporated in California, much like ITU is a global organization that 
happens to have a physical instantiation in Geneva? If not, why not? Is 
this simply anti-US sentiment on your part, or is it based on something 
more solid?

You are correct that WSIS/WGIG is not directly an attack on ICANN. I 
think it is fair to say, however, that the ITU would like to use WSIS 
to unseat ICANN and get the functions ICANN performs awarded to it, and 
that there are factions in WGIG that would like to similarly move power 
and control to the UN. The questionnaire that made the rounds not too 
long ago, asking rhetorically whether the UN should form an oversight 
body and then diving into all the details assuming that the answer was 
"yes" was very symptomatic of that. That discussion is in fact where 
the term "internet governance" originated, with three essential sets of 
parties arguing about who should or should not have power in the 
management of the root zone - those who want the ICANN-managed system, 
those who want to set up random roots, and those who want some 
variation on governmental control of national roots managed through the 
ITU along the model used by the telephone network for national dialing 
plans.

Something that would serve the discussion better, I think, would be a 
requirements analysis. This would involve at least three parts - a 
cessation of discussion of "Internet Governance" as a topic and 
replacement of that discussion with several discussions of the 
questions discussed under that title, a frank discussion of the 
money+power issues (this is all about money and power), and a technical 
discussion of what would best serve the Internet. If technically the 
best solution is to have national roots, maybe it would be simplest to 
discuss switching to that model. If switching to a directory model has 
technical merit (as John Klensin has suggested) in handling the 
trademark and IDN issues, maybe we should do so. But we can't have a 
rational technical discussion without technical proposals and technical 
analyses of the trade-offs. If one wants to talk about Digital Divide 
issues, which come up under the rubric of Internet Governance, maybe 
one should talk about them as Digital Divide issues. If ITU or UN is 
actually a good place to manage the root or roots from, we should be 
able to get technical and organizational documentation from them that 
would demonstrate the relevant competencies.