ICANN was formed as an innovative governance organization and today it lived up to that reputation, announcing that it had hired a superhero as its new CEO.
Although it claimed that its new leader was an ordinary man named Rod Beckstrom, those in the know realize that the new CEO is really Aquaman, the Super Friend who frequents the Hall of Justice. These side-by-side photos of Aquaman and the purported “Mr. Beckstrom” make the connection clear…
The censorship of Internet communications by the Iranian theocracy has been known for years. Months ago, a Freedom House study singled out Iran as one of the four worst enemies of Internet freedom. Yet a 22 June Wall Street Journal article got about 100 times more publicity than the Freedom House report, by making what turns out to be a spurious claim. Nokia-Siemens Networks is alleged to have sold the theocrats deep packet inspection (DPI) equipment that made it possible for them to, in the reporter’s words, “not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes.”
The story was eaten up because it pushes hot buttons on both sides of the American political spectrum. For liberals and the left, the article fingered DPI technology, which many fear will be used to undermine if not destroy net neutrality. And to many in that camp, nothing could be more ideologically simpatico than to place some of the blame for the Iranian debacle on greedy capitalists. For conservative nationalists, on the other hand, the story hit an equally strong nerve. They tend to favor a hard-line foreign policy toward Iran, a charter member of the “axis of evil.” Their agenda is to isolate and demonize the Iranian government and, in a replay of the Cold War, push to cut off all trade and dialogue – if not to invade it outright. DPI becomes a proxy for nuclear weapons and a new kind of nonproliferation is advocated.
But even as the story was rippling through numerous email lists and blogs, I smelled something fishy about it.
The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNET) is a scholarly community that promotes the development of Internet Governance as a recognized, interdisciplinary field of study and facilitates informed dialogue on policy issues and related matters between scholars and governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society. On behalf of the Program Committee, we are pleased to announce the Call for Papers to the IV Annual Giganet Sympoium which will take place on November 14, 2009 – one day before the fourth UN Internet Governance Forum, in Sharm-El Sheik, Egypt.
The EU today issued a “Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and Council” that addressed the internationalization of ICANN and related Internet governance issues. We found this statement encouraging in part, but mostly disappointing. While its analysis of the problems of U.S. unilateralism and of ICANN are often valid, it makes no concrete proposals that move the debate forward, except that EU and US should negotiate (privately).
One of the more refreshing aspects of the NTIA's ongoing NOI regarding the expiration of the Joint Project Agreement with ICANN was the inclusion of an ex parte reporting requirement. It presumably added a
level of transparency to Internet governance matters and their relationship to the United States government which had not been seen before. Unfortunately, it was too good to be true. From yesterday's Federal Register, comes a clarification regarding ex parte procedures associated with NTIA's NOI.
Phillip Hallam-Baker, an Internet security pioneer and most recently Principal Scientist at VeriSign, has criticized current DNSSEC root signing arrangements in his comments to the Dept of Commerce as a “profoundly destabilizing technology” for the Internet. He recommends that NTIA “require that ICANN propose a technical solution for signing the DNS root zone that is endorsed by a clear majority of the national stakeholders.”
[Editors note: One factor which distinguishes the Internet Governance Project from the din of voices in the Internet governance policy world is the vigorous theoretically informed debate that occurs within our Scientific Committee. The fact is, we don't always agree as IGP forms consensus opinion, represented by our submitted comments. Below is one committee member's take on the JPA and its relationship to ICANN.]
The future of the JPA has been subject to a lot of debate. Some people argue that the JPA should end in September, others think it should be extended once again. It is striking that the disagreement on the future of the JPA cuts across stakeholders and nationalities. This also true for civil society groups who have come down on both sides of the issue. They associate the JPA with the unilateral control over critical Internet resources, which they would like to see terminated rather now than any time in the future. Yet they understand the JPA also as “the shadow of hierarchy” looming over ICANN and thereby keeping it in check.
The IGP has filed comments in the Department of Commerce proceeding on the “Assessment of the Transition of the Technical Coordination and Management of the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System” (Docket No. 090420688-9689-01). An excerpt from the summary is below:
“The global challenges we face demand global institutions that work.”
– President Barack Obama, 2008ICANN lacks accountability and its processes are full of problems, but the JPA is not the right tool to use to fix them. The JPA contributes to ICANN's failings. …it does nothing but invite the stakeholders in one privileged country to complain to their own government about policy outcomes they don't like. The U.S. government needs to let the JPA expire, and immediately initiate an international agreement that formalizes and completes the transition of ICANN to a stable form of multi-stakeholder global governance rooted in a nonprofit corporation.
One of the better side stories of yesterday's Congressional hearing on ICANN concerned Congressman Dingell's 5-minute intervention (see ~1:49:00 into the video) during witness questioning. In addition to raising the expected inquires into the expiration of the JPA, he also asked the witnesses their opinions concerning the 2006 ICANN-VeriSign negotiation of the .com contract.
When the witnesses were asked if the contract “suffered from a lack of transparency,” he got the expected answers. ICANN's CEO Paul Twomey, pointing out the contract was publicly available, said “no.” Ken Silva of VeriSign agreed. Go Daddy, VeriSign's largest customer, argued to the contrary. Yes, Christine Jones said, the contract was publicly available, but it was the secrecy-shrouded process that led up to it that was cause for concern, and that Go Daddy didn't agree with the outcome.
Apparently this concern is justified. Today, a 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruling indirectly supported Go Daddy's suspicions in its reversal of an earlier decision made in Plaintiff Coalition for ICANN Transparency (“CFIT”) vs. VeriSign.
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
Jack Goldsmith, Harvard Law School