Centre for Internet and Society

ICANN reveals hitherto undisclosed details of domain names revenues

geetha — 2014-12-12T05:08:02Z

Following requests from CIS, ICANN has shared a detailed list of its revenues from domain names for the fiscal year ending June 2014. Such level of detail has, until now, been unavailable. Historical data is still to be made available.

Five days ago, CIS received a detailed list of ICANN’s revenues from domain name sales and renewals for the fiscal year ending June 2014. The document, sent to us by ICANN’s India head Mr. Samiran Gupta, lists payments received by ICANN from registrars, registries, sponsors and other entities such as the NRO and Country Code TLD administrators. Such granular information is not available at the moment on ICANN’s website as part of its financial transparency disclosures. A summary has also been provided by ICANN.

This revenue disclosure from ICANN comes on the heels of public and email correspondence between CIS and ICANN staff. At the Asia Pacific Regional IGF (August 3-6, 2014), CIS’ Sunil Abraham sought granular data – both current and historical – on ICANN’s revenues from the domain name industry.

Again, at the ICANN Open Forum at IGF (4 September 2014), Sunil sought “details of a list of legal entities that give money to ICANN and how much money they give to ICANN every year”. In emails to Kuek Yu-Chuang (ICANN’s Asia Pacific head) and Xavier Calvez (ICANN CFO), CIS had asked for historical data as well.

The global domain name industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and ICANN sits at the centre of the web. ICANN is responsible for the policy-making and introduction of new Top Level Domains (TLDs), and it also performs technical coordination and maintenance of the Internet’s unique identifiers (domain names and IP addresses). For each domain name that is registered or renewed, ICANN receives payment through a complex contractual network of registries and registrars. The domain name industry is ICANN’s single largest revenue source.

Given the impending IANA transition and accountability debates at ICANN, and the rapid growth of the global domain name industry, one would imagine that ICANN is held up to the same standard of accountability as laid down in the right to information mechanisms of many countries. At the ICANN Open Forum (IGF Istanbul), Sunil raised this very point. Had a Public Information Officer in India failed to respond to a request for information for a month (as ICANN had to CIS’ request for granular revenue data), the officer would have been fined and reprimanded. Since there are no sufficiently effective accountability or reactive transparency measures at ICANN, such penalties are not in place.

In any event, CIS received the list of ICANN’s current domain name revenues after continual email exchanges with ICANN staff. This is undoubtedly heartening, as ICANN has shown itself responsive to repeated requests for transparency. But it remains that ICANN has shared revenue data only for the fiscal year ending June 2014, and historical revenue data is still not publicly available. Neither is a detailed list (current and historical) of ICANN’s expenditures publicly available. Perhaps ICANN could provide the necessary information during its regular Quarterly Stakeholder Reports, as well as on its website. This would go a long way in ascertaining and improving ICANN’s accountability and transparency.

The documents:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-receives-information-on-icanns-revenues-from-domain-names-fy-2014

ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy – I: DIDP Basics

Vinayak Mithal — 2014-07-01T13:01:34Z

In a series of blogposts, Vinayak Mithal analyses ICANN's reactive transparency mechanism, comparing it with freedom of information best practices. In this post, he describes the DIDP and its relevance for the Internet community.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) is a non-profit corporation incorporated in the state of California and vested with the responsibility of managing the DNS root, generic and country-code Top Level Domain name system, allocation of IP addresses and assignment of protocol identifiers. As an internationally organized corporation with its own multi-stakeholder community of Advisory Groups and Supporting Organisations, ICANN is a large and intricately woven governance structure. Necessarily, ICANN undertakes through its Bye-laws that “in performing its functions ICANN shall remain accountable to the Internet community through mechanisms that enhance ICANN’s effectiveness”. While many of its documents, such as its Annual Reports, financial statements and minutes of Board meetings, are public, ICANN has instituted the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy (“DIDP”), which like the RTI in India, is a mechanism through which public is granted access to documents with ICANN which are not otherwise available publicly. It is this policy – the DIDP – that I propose to study.

In a series of blogposts, I propose to introduce the DIDP to unfamiliar ears, and to analyse it against certain freedom of information best practices. Further, I will analyse ICANN’s responsiveness to DIDP requests to test the effectiveness of the policy. However, before I undertake such analysis, it is first good to know what the DIDP is, and how it is crucial to ICANN’s present and future accountability.

What is the DIDP?

One of the core values of the organization as enshrined under Article I Section 4.10 of the Bye-laws note that “in performing its functions ICANN shall remain accountable to the Internet community through mechanisms that enhance ICANN’s effectiveness”. Further, Article III of the ICANN Bye-laws, which sets out the transparency standard required to be maintained by the organization in the preliminary, states - “ICANN and its constituent bodies shall operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures designed to ensure fairness”.

Accordingly, ICANN is under an obligation to maintain a publicly accessible website with information relating to its Board meetings, pending policy matters, agendas, budget, annual audit report and other related matters. It is also required to maintain on its website, information about the availability of accountability mechanisms, including reconsideration, independent review, and Ombudsman activities, as well as information about the outcome of specific requests and complaints invoking these mechanisms.

Pursuant to Article III of the ICANN Bye-laws for Transparency, ICANN also adopted the DIDP for disclosure of publicly unavailable documents and publish them over the Internet. This becomes essential in order to safeguard the effectiveness of its international multi-stakeholder operating model and its accountability towards the Internet community. Thereby, upon request made by members of the public, ICANN undertakes to furnish documents that are in possession, custody or control of ICANN and which are not otherwise publicly available, provided it does not fall under any of the defined conditions for non-disclosure. Such information can be requested via an email to didp@icann.org.

Procedure

Upon the receipt of a DIDP request, it is reviewed by the ICANN staff.
Relevant documents are identified and interview of the appropriate staff members is conducted.
The documents so identified are then assessed whether they come under the ambit of the conditions for non-disclosure.
- Yes - A review is conducted as to whether, under the particular circumstances, the public interest in disclosing the documentary information outweighs the harm that may be caused by such disclosure.
- Documents which are considered as responsive and appropriate for public disclosure are posted on the ICANN website.
- In case of request of documents whose publication is appropriate but premature at the time of response then the same is indicated in the response and upon publication thereafter, is notified to the requester.

Time Period and Publication

The response to the DIDP request is prepared by the staff and is made available to the requestor within a period of 30 days of receipt of request via email. The Request and the Response is also posted on the DIDP page http://www.icann.org/en/about/transparency in accordance with the posting guidelines set forth at http://www.icann.org/en/about/transparency/didp.

Conditions for Non-Disclosure

There are certain circumstances under which ICANN may refuse to provide the documents requested by the public. The conditions so identified by ICANN have been categorized under 12 heads and includes internal information, third-party contracts, non-disclosure agreements, drafts of all reports, documents, etc., confidential business information, trade secrets, information protected under attorney-client privilege or any other such privilege, information which relates to the security and stability of the internet, etc.

Moreover, ICANN may refuse to provide information which is not designated under the specified conditions for non-disclosure if in its opinion the harm in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. Further, requests for information already available publicly and to create or compile summaries of any documented information may be declined by ICANN.

Grievance Redressal Mechanism

In certain circumstances the requestor might be aggrieved by the response received and so he has a right to appeal any decision of denial of information by ICANN through the Reconsideration Request procedure or the Independent Review procedure established under Section 2 and 3 of Article IV of the ICANN Bye-laws respectively. The application for review is made to the Board which has designated a Board Governance Committee for such reconsideration. The Independent Review is done by an independent third-party of Board actions, which are allegedly inconsistent with the Articles of Incorporation or Bye-laws of ICANN.

Why does the DIDP matter?

The breadth of ICANN’s work and its intimate relationship to the continued functioning of the Internet must be appreciated before our analysis of the DIDP can be of help. ICANN manages registration and operations of generic and country-code Top Level Domains (TLD) in the world. This is a TLD:

(Source: here)

Operation of many gTLDs, such as .com, .biz or .info, is under contract with ICANN and an entity to which such operation is delegated. For instance, Verisign operates the .com Registry. Any organization that wishes to allow others to register new domain names under a gTLD (sub-domains such as ‘benefithealth’ in the above example) must apply to ICANN to be an ICANN-accredited Registrar. GoDaddy, for instance, is one such ICANN-accredited Registrar. Someone like you or me, who wants to get our own website – say, vinayak.com – buys from GoDaddy, which has a contract with ICANN under which it pays periodic sums for registration and renewal of individual domain names. When I buy from an ICANN-accredited Registrar, the Registrar informs the Registry Operator (say, Verisign), who then adds the new domain name (vinayak.com) to its registry list, and then it can be accessed on the Internet.

ICANN’s reach doesn’t stop here, technically. To add a new gTLD, an entity has to apply to ICANN, after which the gTLD has to be added to the root file of the Internet. The root file, which has the list of all TLDs (or all ‘legitimate’ TLDs, some would say), is amended by Verisign under its tripartite contract with the US Government and ICANN, after which Verisign updates the file in its ‘A’ root server. The other 12 root servers use the same root file as the Verisign root server. Effectively, this means that only ICANN-approved TLDs (and all sub-domains such as ‘benefithealth’ or ‘vinayak’) are available across the Internet, on a global scale. Or at least, ICANN-approved TLDs have the most and widest reach. ICANN similarly manages country-code TLDs, such as .in for India, .pk for Pakistan or .uk for the United Kingdom.

All of this leads us to wonder whether the extent of ICANN’s voluntary and reactive transparency is sufficient for an organization of such scale and impact on the Internet, perhaps as much impact as the governments do. In the next post, I will analyse the DIDP’s conditions for non-disclosure of information with certain freedom of information best practices.

Vinayak Mithal is a final year student at the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab. His interests lie in Internet governance and other aspects of tech law, which he hopes to explore during his internship at CIS and beyond. He may be reached at vinayakmithal@gmail.com.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/icann2019s-documentary-information-disclosure-policy-2013-i-didp-basics

Report on ICANN 50

jyoti — 2014-10-12T05:42:04Z

Jyoti Panday attended ICANN 50 in London from 22-26 June. Below are some of the highlights from the meeting.

From 22- 26 June, ICANN hosted its 50^th meeting in London, the largest congregation of participants, so far. In the wake of the IANA transition announcement, Internet governance was the flavor of the week. ICANN’s transparency and accountability measures emerged as much contested notions as did references to NETmundial. This ICANN meeting clearly demonstrated that questions as to the role of ICANN in internet governance need to be settled.

ATLAS II

Coinciding with ICANN meeting was the 2^nd At-Large Summit, or ATLAS II, bringing together a network of regionally self organized and self supporting At-Large structures, representing individual Internet users throughout the world. The goal of the meeting was to discuss, reach consensus and draft reports around five issues organized around five issues organized around thematic groups of issues of concerns to the At-Large Community.

The subjects for the thematic groups were selected by the representatives of ALSes, each summit participant was allocated to thematic groups according to his/her preferences. The groups included were:

Future of Multistakeholder models
The Globalization of ICANN
Global Internet: The User perspective
ICANN Transparency and Accountability
At-Large Community Engagement in ICANN

Fahad Chehade Five Point Agenda

ICANN President, Mr Chehade in his address to the ICANN community covered five points which he felt were important for ICANN in planning its future role. The first topic was the IANA Stewardship and transition, and he stated that ICANN is committed to being a transparent organization and seeks to be more accountable to the community as the contract with the US government ends. Regarding the IANA transition, he remarked that ICANN had received thousands of comments and proposals regarding the transition of IANA stewardship and understood there would be much more discussion on this subject, and that a coordination group has been proposed of 27 members representing all different stakeholders in order to plot the course forward for IANA transition.

His second topic was about ICANN globalization and hardening of operations. He said that ICANN has about 2-3 years to go before he is comfortable that ICANN operations are where they need to be. He applauded the new service channels which allows customer support in many different languages and time zones, and mentioned local language support that would add to the languages in which ICANN content is currently available. Chehade spent a few minutes discussing the future of WHOIS "Directory" technology and highlighted the initial report that a working group had put together, led by Jean-Francois Poussard.

Next he covered the GDD, the Global Domains Division of ICANN and an update from that division on the New gTLD program. He mentioned the ICANN Auction, the contracts that had been signed, and the number of New gTLDs that had already been delegated to the Root. Internet Governance was Chehade's 4th topic of discussion, he applauded the NETmundial efforts, though he stressed that internet governance is one of the things that ICANN does and it will not be a high priority. He ended his speech with his last point, calling for more harmony within the ICANN community.

High Level Government Meeting

During ICANN London, UK government hosted a high-level meeting, bringing together representatives from governments of the world to discuss Internet Governance and specifically the NTIA transition of the IANA contract. Government representatives recognized that the stewardship of IANA should be a shared responsibility between governments and private sector groups, while other representatives stressed giving governments a stronger voice than other stakeholders. The consensus at the meeting held that the transition should not leave specific governments or interest groups with more control over the Internet, but that governments should have a voice in political issues in Internet Governance.

GAC Communiqué

GAC Communique, is a report drafted by the Governmental Advisory Committee, advising the ICANN board on decisions involving policy and implementation. Highlights from the communiqué include:

The GAC advises the Board regarding the .africa string, saying it would like to see an expedited process, especially once the Independent Review Panel comes to a decision regarding the two applicants for the string. They reaffirm their decision that DotConnectAfrica's application should not proceed.
The GAC mentioned the controversy surrounding .wine and .vin, where some European GAC representatives strongly felt that the applications for these strings should not proceed without proper safeguards for geographic names at the second level. However, the GAC was unable to reach consensus advice regarding this issue and thus did not relay any formal advice to the Board.
The GAC requested safeguards in the New gTLDs for IGO (Inter-Governmental Organization) names at the second level, and specifically related such advice for names relating to Red Cross and Red Crescent.

Civil Society in ICANN and Internet Governance

NCUC, or the Noncommercial Users Constituency www.ncuc.org, voice of civil society in ICANN’s policy processes on generic top level domain names and related matters, as well as other civil society actors from the ICANN community organized a workshop to provide an opportunity for open and vigorous dialogue between public interest advocates who are active both within and outside the ICANN community.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-icann-50

IANA Transition: Suggestions for Process Design

Smarika Kumar — 2014-06-22T09:15:21Z

With analysis of community-input and ICANN processes, Smarika Kumar offers concrete suggestions for process design. She urges the Indian government to take a stronger position in matters of IANA transition.

Introduction:

On 14 March 2014, the NTIA of the US Government announced its intention to transition key internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community. These key internet domain name functions comprise functions executed by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which is currently contracted to ICANN by the US government. The US Government delineated that the IANA transition proposal must have broad community support and should address the following four principles:

Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
Meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and
Maintain the openness of the Internet.

Additionally, the US Government asked ICANN to convene a multistakeholder process to develop the transition plan for IANA. In April 2014, ICANN issued a Scoping Document for this process which outlined the scope of the process, as well as, what ICANN thinks, should not be a part of the process. In the spirit of ensuring broad community consensus, ICANN issued a Call for Public Input on the Draft Proposal of the Principles, Mechanisms and Process to Develop a Proposal to Transition NTIA’s Stewardship of IANA Functions on 8 April 2014, upon which the Government of India made its submission.

ICANN is currently deliberating the process for the development of a proposal for transition of IANA functions from the US Government to the global multistakeholder community, a step which would have implications for internet users all over the world, including India. The outcome of this process will be a proposal for IANA transition. The Scoping Document and process for development of the proposal are extremely limited and exclusionary, hurried, and works in ways which could potentially further ICANN’s own interests instead of global public interests. Accordingly, the Government of India is recommended take a stand on the following key points concerning the suggested process.

Submissions by the Government of India thus far, have however, failed to comment on the process being initiated by ICANN to develop a proposal for IANA transition. While the actual outcome of the process in form of a proposal for transition is an important issue for deliberation, we hold that it is of immediate importance that the Government of India, along with all governments of the world, pay particular attention to the way ICANN is conducting the process itself to develop the IANA transition proposal. The scrutiny of this process is of immense significance in order to ensure that democratic and representative principles sought by the GoI in internet governance are being upheld within the process of developing the IANA transition proposal. How the governance of the IANA functions will be structured will be an outcome of this process. Therefore if one expects a democratic, representative and transparent governance of IANA functions as the outcome, it is absolutely essential to ensure that the process itself is democratic, representative and transparent.

Issues and Recommendations:

Ensuring adequate representation and democracy of all stakeholders in the process for developing the proposal for IANA transition is essential to ensuring representative and democratic outcomes. Accordingly, one must take note of the following issues and recommendations concerning the process.

Open, inclusive deliberation by global stakeholders must define the Scope of the Process for developing proposal for IANA transition:

The current Scoping Document was issued by ICANN to outline the scope of the process by which the proposal for IANA transition would be deliberated. The Scoping Document was framed unilaterally by ICANN, without involvement of the global stakeholder community, and excluding all governments of the world including USA. Although this concern was voiced by a number of submissions to the Public Call by ICANN on the Draft Proposal, such concern was not reflected in ICANN’s Revised Proposal of 6 June 2014. It merely states that the Scoping Document outlines the “focus of this process.” Such a statement is not enough because the focus as well as the scope of the process needs to be decided in a democratic, unrepresentative and transparent manner by the global stakeholder community, including all governments.

This unilateral approach to outline which aspects of IANA transition should be allowed for discussion, and which aspects should not, itself defeats the multistakeholder principle which ICANN and the US government claim the process is based on. Additionally, global community consensus which the US Govt. hopes for the outcome of such process, cannot be conceivable when the scope of such process is decided in a unilateral and undemocratic manner. Accordingly, the current Scoping Document should be treated only as a draft, and should be made open to public comment and discussion by the global stakeholder community in order that the scope of the process reflects concerns of global stakeholders, and not just of the ICANN or the US Government.

Accountability of ICANN must be linked to IANA Transition within Scope of the Process:

ICANN Accountability must not run merely as a parallel process, since ICANN accountability has direct impact on IANA transition. The current Scoping Document states, “NTIA exercises no operational role in the performance of the IANA functions. Therefore, ICANN’s role as the operator of the IANA functions is not the focus of the transition: it is paramount to maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the DNS, and uninterrupted service to the affected parties.” However this rationale to exclude ICANN’s role as operator of IANA from the scope of the process is not sound because NTIA does choose to appoint ICANN as the operator of IANA functions, thereby playing a vicarious operational role in the performance of IANA functions.

The explicit exclusion of ICANN’s role as operator of IANA functions from the scope of the process works to serve ICANN’s own interests by preventing discussions on those alternate models where ICANN does not play the operator role. Basically, this presumes that in absence of NTIA stewardship ICANN will control the IANA functions. Such presumption raises disturbing questions regarding ICANN’s accountability as the IANA functions operator. If discussions on ICANN’s role as operator of IANA functions is to be excluded from the process of developing the proposal for IANA transition, it also implies exclusion of discussions regarding ICANN’s accountability as operator of these functions.

Although ICANN announced a process to enhance its accountability on 6 May 2014, this was designed as a separate, parallel process and de-linked from the IANA transition process. As shown, ICANN’s accountability, its role as convenor of IANA transition process, and its role as current and/or potential future operator of IANA functions are intrinsically linked, and must not be discussed in separate, but parallel process. It is recommended that ICANN accountability in the absence of NTIA stewardship, and ICANN’s role as the operator of IANA functions must be included within the Scoping Document as part of the scope of the IANA transition process. This is to ensure that no kind of IANA transition is executed without ensuring ICANN’s accountability as and if as the operator of IANA functions so that democracy and transparency is brought to the governance of IANA functions.

Misuse or appearance of misuse of its convenor role by ICANN to influence outcome of the Process must not be allowed:

ICANN has been designated the convenor role by the US Govt. on basis of its unique position as the current IANA functions contractor and the global co-ordinator for the DNS. However it is this unique position itself which creates a potential for abuse of the process by ICANN. As the current contractor of IANA functions, ICANN has an interest in the outcome of the process being conducive to ICANN. In other words, ICANN prima facie is an interested party in the IANA transition process, which may tend to steer the process towards an outcome favourable to itself. ICANN has already been attempting to set the scope of the process to develop the proposal for IANA transition unilaterally, thus abusing its position as convenor. ICANN has also been trying to separate the discussions on IANA transition and its own accountability by running them as parallel processes, as well as attempting to prevent questions on ICANN’s role as operator of IANA functions by excluding it from the Scoping Document. Such instances provide a strong rationale for defining the limitations of the role of ICANN as convenor.

Although ICANN’s Revised Proposal of 6 June 2014 stating that ICANN will have a neutral role, and the Secretariat will be independent of ICANN staff is welcome, additional safeguards need to be put in place to avoid conflicts of interest or appearance of conflicts of interest. The Revised Proposal itself was unilaterally issued, whereby ICANN incorporated some of the comments made on its Proposed Draft, in the revised Draft, but excluded some others without providing rationale for the same. For instance, comments regarding inclusion of ICANN’s role as the operator of IANA functions within the Scoping Document, were ignored by ICANN in its Revised Proposal.

It is accordingly suggested that ICANN should limit its role to merely facilitating discussions and not extend it to reviewing or commenting on emerging proposals from the process. ICANN should further not compile comments on drafts to create a revised draft at any stage of the process. Additionally, ICANN staff must not be allowed to be a part of any group or committee which facilitates or co-ordinates the discussion regarding IANA transition.

Components of Diversity Principle should be clearly enunciated in the Draft Proposal:

The Diversity Principle was included by ICANN in the Revised Proposal of 6 June 2014 subsequent to submissions by various stakeholders who raised concerns regarding developing world participation, representation and lack of multilingualism in the process. This is laudable. However, past experience with ICANN processes has shown that many representatives from developing countries as well as from stakeholder communities outside of the ICANN community are unable to productively involve themselves in such processes because of lack of multilingualism or unfamiliarity with its way of functioning. This often results in undemocratic, unrepresentative and non-transparent decision-making in such processes.

In such a scenario, merely mentioning diversity as a principle is not adequate to ensure abundant participation by developing countries and non-ICANN community stakeholders in the process. Concrete mechanisms need to be devised to include adequate and fair geographical, gender, multilingual and developing countries’ participation and representation on all levels so that the process is not relegated merely to domination by North American or European entities. Accordingly, all the discussions in the process should be translated into multiple native languages of participants in situ, so that everyone participating in the process can understand what is going on. Adequate time must be given for the discussion issues to be translated and circulated widely amongst all stakeholders of the world, before a decision is taken or a proposal is framed. To concretise its diversity principle, ICANN should also set aside funds and develop a programme with community support for capacity building for stakeholders in developing nations to ensure their fruitful involvement in the process.

The Co-ordination Group must be made representative of the global multistakeholder community:

Currently, the Co-ordination Group includes representatives from ALAC, ASO, ccNSO, GNSO, gTLD registries, GAC, ICC/BASIS, IAB, IETF, ISOC, NRO, RSSAC and SSAC. Most of these representatives belong to the ICANN community, and is not representative of the global multistakeholder community including governments. This is not representative of even a multistakeholder model which the US Govt. has announced for the transition; nor in the multistakeholder participation spirit of NETmundial.

It is recommended that the Co-ordination Group then must be made democratic and representative to include larger global stakeholder community, including Governments, Civil Society, and Academia, with suitably diverse representation across geography, gender and developing nations. Adequate number of seats on the Committee must be granted to each stakeholder so that they can each co-ordinate discussions within their own communities and ensure wider and more inclusive participation.

Framing of the Proposal must allow adequate time:

All stakeholder communities must be permitted adequate time to discuss and develop consensus. Different stakeholder communities have different processes of engagement within their communities, and may take longer to reach a consensus than others. If democracy and inclusiveness are to be respected, then each stakeholder must be allowed enough time to reach a consensus within its own community, unlike the short time given to comment on the Draft Proposal. The process must not be rushed to benefit a few.

Smarika Kumar is a graduate of the National Law Institute University, Bhopal, and a member of the Alternative Law Forum, a collective of lawyers aiming to integrate alternative lawyering with critical research, alternative dispute resolution, pedagogic interventions and sustained legal interventions in social issues. Her areas of interest include interdisciplinary research on the Internet, issues affecting indigenous peoples, eminent domain, traditional knowledge and pedagogy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/iana-transition-suggestions-for-process-design

CIS Policy Brief: IANA Transition Fundamentals & Suggestions for Process Design

geetha — 2014-07-08T08:39:41Z

In March 2014, the US government announced that it would transfer oversight of IANA functions to an as-yet-indeterminate global multi-stakeholder body. This policy brief, written by Smarika Kumar and Geetha Hariharan, explains the process concisely.

Short Introduction:

In March 2014, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multi-stakeholder community. Currently, the NTIA oversees coordination and implementation of IANA functions through contractual arrangements with ICANN and Verisign, Inc.

The NTIA will not accept a government-led or inter-governmental organization to steward IANA functions. It requires the IANA transition proposal to have broad community support, and to be in line with the following principles: (1) support and enhance the multi-stakeholder model; (2) maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS; (3) meet the needs and expectation of the global customers & partners of IANA services; (4) maintain the openness of the Internet.

ICANN was charged with developing a proposal for IANA transition. It initiated a call for public input in April 2014. Lamentably, the scoping document for the transition did not include questions of ICANN’s own accountability and interests in IANA stewardship, including whether it should continue to coordinate the IANA functions. Public Input received in May 2014 revolved around the composition of a Coordination Group, which would oversee IANA transition. Now, ICANN will hold an open session on June 26, 2014 at ICANN-50 to gather community feedback on issues relating to IANA transition, including composition of the Coordination Group.

CIS Policy Brief:

CIS' Brief on IANA Transition Fundamentals explains the process further, and throws light on the Indian government's views. To read the brief, please go here.

Suggestions for Process Design

As convenor of the IANA stewardship transition, ICANN has sought public comments on issues relating to the transition process. We suggest certain principles for open, inclusive and transparent process-design:

Short Introduction:

In March 2014, the US government through National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intention to transition key Internet domain name functions (IANA) to the global multi-stakeholder community. The NTIA announcement states that it will not accept a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution to replace its own oversight of IANA functions. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was charged with developing a Proposal for the transition.

At ICANN-49 in Singapore (March 2014), ICANN rapidly gathered inputs from its community to develop a draft proposal for IANA transition. It then issued a call for public input on the Draft Proposal in April 2014. Some responses were incorporated to create a Revised Proposal, published on June 6, 2014.

Responses had called for transparent composition of an IANA transition Coordination Group, a group comprising representatives of ICANN’s Advisory Committees and Supporting Organizations, as well as Internet governance organizations such as the IAB, IETF and ISOC. Also, ICANN was asked to have a neutral, facilitative role in IANA transition. This is because, as the current IANA functions operator, it has a vested interest in the transition. Tellingly, ICANN’s scoping document for IANA transition did not include questions of its own role as IANA functions operator.

ICANN is currently deliberating the process to develop a Proposal for IANA transition. At ICANN-50, ICANN will hold a governmental high-level meeting and a public discussion on IANA transition, where comments and concerns can be voiced. In addition, discussion in other Internet governance fora is encouraged.

CIS Policy Brief:

CIS' Brief on IANA Transition Principles explains our recommendations for transition process-design. To read the brief, please go here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-policy-brief-iana-transition-fundamentals-and-suggestions-for-process-design

Understanding IANA Stewardship Transition

Smarika Kumar — 2014-06-22T03:23:37Z

Smarika Kumar describes the process of the IANA stewardship transition, and enumerates what the NTIA announcement does and does not do.

NTIA Announcement and ICANN-convened Processes:

On 14 March 2014, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the US Government announced “its intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community”. These key Internet domain name functions refer to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions. For this purpose, the NTIA asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to “convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS)”. This was welcome news for the global Internet community, which has been criticising unilateral US Government oversight of Critical Internet Resources for many years now. NTIA further announced that IANA transition proposal must have broad community support and should address the following four principles:

Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
Meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and
Maintain the openness of the Internet.

Subsequently, during ICANN49 in Singapore (March 23-27, 2014), ICANN held flurried discussions to gather initial community feedback from participants to come up with a Draft Proposal of the Principles, Mechanisms and Process to Develop a Proposal to Transition NTIA’s Stewardship of the IANA Functions on 8 April 2014, which was open to public comments until 8 May 2014, which was further extended to 31 May 2014. Responses by various stakeholders were collected in this very short period and some of them were incorporated into a Revised Proposal issued by ICANN on 6th June 2014. ICANN also unilaterally issued a Scoping Document defining the scope of the process for developing the proposal and also specifying what was not part of the scope. This Scoping Document came under severe criticism by various commentators, but was not amended.

ICANN also initiated a separate but parallel process to discuss enhancement of its accountability on 6 May 2014. This was launched upon widespread distress over the fact that ICANN had excluded its role as operator of IANA functions from the Scoping Document, as well as over questions of accountability raised by the community at ICANN49 in Singapore. In the absence of ICANN’s contractual relationship with NTIA to operate the IANA functions, it remains unclear how ICANN will stay accountable upon the transition. The accountability process looks to address the same through the ICANN community. The issue of ICANN accountability is then envisioned to be coordination within ICANN itself through an ICANN Accountability Working Group comprised of community members and a few subject matter experts.

What are the IANA Functions?

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, or IANA functions consist of three separate tasks:

Maintaining a central repository for protocol name and number registries used in many Internet protocols.
Co-ordinating the allocation of Internet Protocol (IP) and Autonomous System (AS) numbers to the Regional Internet Registries, who then distribute IP and AS numbers to ISPs and others within their geographic regions.
Processing root zone change requests for Top Level Domains (TLDs) and making the Root Zone WHOIS database consisting of publicly available information for all TLD registry operators.

The first two of the abovementioned functions are operated by ICANN in consonance with policy developed at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Address Supporting Organisation (ASO) respectively, both of which exist under the ICANN umbrella.

The performance of last of these functions is distributed between ICANN and Verisign. NTIA has a Cooperative Agreement with Verisign to perform the related root zone management functions. The related root zone management functions are the management of the root zone “zone signing key” (ZSK), as well as implementation of changes to and distribution of the DNS authoritative root zone file, which is the authoritative registry containing the lists of names and addresses for all top level domains.

Currently, the US Government oversees this entire set of operations by contracting with ICANN as well as Verisign to execute the IANA functions. Though the US Government does not interfere generally in operations of either ICANN or Verisign in their role as operators of IANA functions, it cannot be denied that it exercises oversight on both the operators of IANA functions, through these contracts.

Import of the NTIA Announcement:

The NTIA announcement of 14th March intends to initiate the withdrawal of such oversight of IANA functions by the NTIA in order to move towards global multistakeholder governance. NTIA has asked ICANN to initiate a process to decide upon what such global multistakeholder governance of IANA functions may look like. The following diagram presents the current governance structure of IANA functions and the areas that the NTIA announcement seeks to change:

The IANA Oversight Mechanism (Source)

What does the NTIA Announcement NOT DO?

The NTIA announcement DOES NOT frame a model for governance of IANA functions once it withdraws its oversight role. NTIA has asked ICANN to convene a process, which would figure the details of IANA transition and propose an administrative structure for IANA functions once the NTIA withdraws its oversight role. But what this new administrative structure would look like has not itself been addressed in the NTIA announcement. As per the NTIA announcement, the new administrative structure is yet to be decided by a global multistakeholder community in accordance with the four principles outlined by the NTIA through a process, which ICANN shall convene.

The NTIA announcement DOES NOT limit discussions and participation in IANA transition process to within the ICANN community. NTIA has asked ICANN to convene “global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition” IANA functions. This means all global stakeholders participation, including that of Governments and Civil Society is sought for the IANA transition process. ICANN has been asked “to work collaboratively with the directly affected parties, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Society (ISOC), the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), top level domain name operators, VeriSign, and other interested global stakeholders”, in the NTIA announcement. This however does not signify that discussions and participation in development of proposal for IANA transition needs to be limited to the ICANN community or the technical community. In fact, ICANN has itself said that the list of events provided as “Timeline of Events” in its Draft Proposal of 8 April 2014 for engagement in development of a proposal for IANA transition is non-exhaustive. This means proposal for IANA transition can be developed by different stakeholders, including governments and civil society in different fora appropriate to their working, including at the IGF and WSIS+10.

The NTIA announcement DOES NOT mean devolution of IANA functions administration upon ICANN. NTIA chooses ICANN and Verisign to operate the IANA functions. If NTIA withdraws from its role, the question whether ICANN or Verisign should operate the IANA functions at all becomes an open one, and should be subject to deliberation. By merely asking ICANN to convene the process, the NTIA announcement in no way assigns any administration of IANA functions to ICANN. It must be remembered that the NTIA announcement says that key Internet domain name functions shall transition to the global multistakeholder community, and not the ICANN community.

The NTIA announcement DOES NOT prevent the possibility of removal of ICANN from its role as operator of IANA functions. While ICANN has tried to frame the Scoping Document in a language to prevent any discussions on its role as operator of IANA functions, the question whether ICANN should continue in its operator role remains an open one. There are at least 12 submissions made in response to ICANN’s Draft Proposal by varied stakeholders, which in fact, call for the separation of ICANN’s role as policy maker (through IETF, ASO, gNSO, ccNSO), and ICANN’s role as the operator of IANA functions. Such calls for separation come from private sector, civil society, as well as the technical community, among others. Such separation was also endorsed in the final NETmundial outcome document (paragraph 27). Governments have, in general, expressed no opinion on such separation in response to ICANN’s Draft Proposal. It is however urged that governments express their opinion in favour of such separation to prevent consolidation of both policy making and implementation within ICANN, which would lead to increased potential situations for the ICANN Board to abuse its powers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/understanding-iana-transition

Commonwealth Domain Name System Forum 2014

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T09:27:08Z

This event took place on 19 June 2014 from 09:00-17:30 BST at ICANN50 | London in the Viscount room. It was organized by the CTO, hosted by ICANN, and supported by Nominet and the Public Interest Registry.

Pranesh Prakash was a panelist for this event. The detailed brochure of the event can be downloaded here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/common-wealth-domain-name-system-forum-2014

WSIS+10 High Level Event: A Bird's Eye Report

geetha — 2014-06-20T15:57:32Z

The WSIS+10 High Level was organised by the ITU and collaborative UN entities on June 9-13, 2014. It aimed to evaluate the progress on implementation of WSIS Outcomes from Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005, and to envision a post-2015 Development Agenda. Geetha Hariharan attended the event on CIS' behalf.

The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) +10 High Level Event (HLE) was hosted at the ITU Headquarters in Geneva, from June 9-13, 2014. The HLE aimed to review the implementation and progress made on information and communication technology (ICT) across the globe, in light of WSIS outcomes (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005). Organised in three parallel tracks, the HLE sought to take stock of progress in ICTs in the last decade (High Level track), initiate High Level Dialogues to formulate the post-2015 development agenda, as well as host thematic workshops for participants (Forum track).

The High Level Track:

Opening Ceremony, WSIS+10 High Level Event (Source)

The High Level track opened officially on June 10, 2014, and culminated with the endorsement by acclamation (as is ITU tradition) of two Outcome Documents. These were: (1) WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes, taking stock of ICT developments since the WSIS summits, (2) WSIS+10 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015, aiming to develop a vision for the post-2015 global information society. These documents were the result of the WSIS+10 Multi-stakeholder Preparatory Platform (MPP), which involved WSIS stakeholders (governments, private sector, civil society, international organizations and relevant regional organizations).

The MPP met in six phases, convened as an open, inclusive consultation among WSIS stakeholders. It was not without its misadventures. While ITU Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun I. Touré consistently lauded the multi-stakeholder process, and Ambassador Janis Karklins urged all parties, especially governments, to “let the UN General Assembly know that the multi-stakeholder model works for Internet governance at all levels”, participants in the process shared stories of discomfort, disagreement and discord amongst stakeholders on various IG issues, not least human rights on the Internet, surveillance and privacy, and multi-stakeholderism. Richard Hill of the Association for Proper Internet Governance (APIG) and the Just Net Coalition writes that like NETmundial, the MPP was rich in a diversity of views and knowledge exchange, but stakeholders failed to reach consensus on crucial issues. Indeed, Prof. Vlamidir Minkin, Chairman of the MPP, expressed his dismay at the lack of consensus over action line C9. A compromise was agreed upon in relation to C9 later.

Some members of civil society expressed their satisfaction with the extensive references to human rights and rights-centred development in the Outcome Documents. While governmental opposition was seen as frustrating, they felt that the MPP had sought and achieved a common understanding, a sentiment echoed by the ITU Secretary General. Indeed, even Iran, a state that had expressed major reservations during the MPP and felt itself unable to agree with the text, agreed that the MPP had worked hard to draft a document beneficial to all.

Concerns around the MPP did not affect the review of ICT developments over the last decade. High Level Panels with Ministers of ICT from states such as Uganda, Bangladesh, Sweden, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and others, heads of the UN Development Programme, UNCTAD, Food and Agriculture Organisation, UN-WOMEN and others spoke at length of rapid advances in ICTs. The focus was largely on ICT access and affordability in developing states. John E. Davies of Intel repeatedly drew attention to innovative uses of ICTs in Africa and Asia, which have helped bridge divides of affordability, gender, education and capacity-building. Public-private partnerships were the best solution, he said, to affordability and access. At a ceremony evaluating implementation of WSIS action-lines, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), India, won an award for its e-health application MOTHER.

The Outcome Documents themselves shall be analysed in a separate post. But in sum, the dialogue around Internet governance at the HLE centred around the success of the MPP. Most participants on panels and in the audience felt this was a crucial achievement within the realm of the UN, where the Tunis Summit had delineated strict roles for stakeholders in paragraph 35 of the Tunis Agenda. Indeed, there was palpable relief in Conference Room 1 at the CICG, Geneva, when on June 11, Dr. Touré announced that the Outcome Documents would be adopted without a vote, in keeping with ITU tradition, even if consensus was achieved by compromise.

The High Level Dialogues:

Prof. Vladimir Minkin delivers a statement. (Source)

The High Level Dialogues on developing a post-2015 Development Agenda, based on WSIS action lines, were active on June 12. Introducing the Dialogue, Dr. Touré lamented the Millennium Development Goals as a “lost opportunity”, emphasizing the need to alert the UN General Assembly and its committees as to the importance of ICTs for development.

As on previous panels, there was intense focus on access, affordability and reach in developing countries, with Rwanda and Bangladesh expounding upon their successes in implementing ICT innovations domestically. The world is more connected than it was in 2005, and the ITU in 2014 is no longer what it was in 2003, said speakers. But we lack data on ICT deployment across the globe, said Minister Knutssen of Sweden, recalling the gathering to the need to engage all stakeholders in this task. Speakers on multiple panels, including the Rwandan Minister for CIT, Marilyn Cade of ICANN and Petra Lantz of the UNDP, emphasized the need for ‘smart engagement’ and capacity-building for ICT development and deployment.

A crucial session on cybersecurity saw Dr. Touré envision a global peace treaty accommodating multiple stakeholders. On the panel were Minister Omobola Johnson of Nigeria, Prof. Udo Helmbrecht of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA), Prof. A.A. Wahab of Cybersecurity Malaysia and Simon Muller of Facebook. The focus was primarily on building laws and regulations for secure communication and business, while child protection was equally considered.

The lack of laws/regulations for cybersecurity (child pornography and jurisdictional issues, for instance), or other legal protections (privacy, data protection, freedom of speech) in rapidly connecting developing states was noted. But the question of cross-border surveillance and wanton violations of privacy went unaddressed except for the customary, unavoidable mention. This was expected. Debates in Internet governance have, in the past year, been silently and invisibly driven by the Snowden revelations. So too, at WSIS+10 Cybersecurity, speakers emphasized open data, information exchange, data ownership and control (the right to be forgotten), but did not openly address surveillance. Indeed, Simon Muller of Facebook called upon governments to publish their own transparency reports: A laudable suggestion, even accounting for Facebook’s own undetailed and truncated reports.

In a nutshell, the post-2015 Development Agenda dialogues repeatedly emphasized the importance of ICTs in global connectivity, and their impact on GDP growth and socio-cultural change and progress. The focus was on taking this message to the UN General Assembly, engaging all stakeholders and creating an achievable set of action lines post-2015.

The Forum Track:

Participants at the UNESCO session on its Comprehensive Study on Internet-related Issues (Source)

The HLE was organized as an extended version of the WSIS Forum, which hosts thematic workshops and networking opportunities, much like any other conference. Running in parallel sessions over 5 days, the WSIS Forum hosted sessions by the ITU, UNESCO, UNDP, ICANN, ISOC, APIG, etc., on issues as diverse as the WSIS Action Lines, the future of Internet governance, the successes and failures of WCIT-2012, UNESCO’s Comprehensive Study on Internet-related Issues, spam and a taxonomy of Internet governance.

Detailed explanation of each session I attended is beyond the scope of this report, so I will limit myself to the interesting issues raised.

At ICANN’s session on its own future (June 9), Ms. Marilyn Cade emphasized the importance of national and regional IGFs for both issue-awareness and capacity-building. Mr. Nigel Hickson spoke of engagement at multiple Internet governance fora: “Internet governance is not shaped by individual events”. In light of criticism of ICANN’s apparent monopoly over IANA stewardship transition, this has been ICANN’s continual response (often repeated at the HLE itself). Also widely discussed was the role of stakeholders in Internet governance, given the delineation of roles and responsibilities in the Tunis Agenda, and governments’ preference for policy-monopoly (At WSIS+10, Indian Ambassador Dilip Sinha seemed wistful that multilateralism is a “distant dream”).

This discussion bore greater fruit in a session on Internet governance ‘taxonomy’. The session saw Mr. George Sadowsky, Dr. Jovan Kurbalija, Mr. William Drake and Mr. Eliot Lear (there is surprisingly no official profile-page on Mr. Lear) expound on dense structures of Internet governance, involving multiple methods of classification of Internet infrastructure, CIRs, public policy issues, etc. across a spectrum of ‘baskets’ – socio-cultural, economic, legal, technical. Such studies, though each attempting clarity in Internet governance studies, indicate that the closer you get to IG, the more diverse and interconnected the eco-system gets. David Souter’s diagrams almost capture the flux of dynamic debate in this area (please see pages 9 and 22 of this ISOC study).

There were, for most part, insightful interventions from session participants. Mr. Sadowsky questioned the effectiveness of the Tunis Agenda delineation of stakeholder-roles, while Mr. Lear pleaded that techies be let to do their jobs without interference. Ms. Anja Kovacs raised pertinent concerns about including voiceless minorities in a ‘rough consensus’ model. Across sessions, questions of mass surveillance, privacy and data ownership rose from participants. The protection of human rights on the Internet – especially freedom of expression and privacy – made continual appearance, across issues like spam (Question 22-1/1 of ITU-D Study Group 1) and cybersecurity.

Conclusion:

The HLE was widely attended by participants across WSIS stakeholder-groups. At the event, a great many relevant questions such as the future of ICTs, inclusions in the post-2015 Development Agenda, the value of muti-stakeholder models, and human rights such as free speech and privacy were raised across the board. Not only were these raised, but cognizance was taken of them by Ministers, members of the ITU and other collaborative UN bodies, private sector entities such as ICANN, technical community such as the ISOC and IETF, as well as (obviously) civil society.

Substantively, the HLE did not address mass surveillance and privacy, nor of expanding roles of WSIS stakeholders and beyond. Processually, the MPP failed to reach consensus on several issues comfortably, and a compromise had to be brokered.

But perhaps a big change at the HLE was the positive attitude to multi-stakeholder models from many quarters, not least the ITU Secretary General Dr. Hamadoun Touré. His repeated calls for acceptance of multi-stakeholderism left many members of civil society surprised and tentatively pleased. Going forward, it will be interesting to track the ITU and the rest of UN’s (and of course, member states’) stances on multi-stakeholderism at the ITU Plenipot, the WSIS+10 Review and the UN General Assembly session, at the least.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/wsis-10-high-level-event-a-birds-eye-report

Multi-stakeholder Models of Internet Governance within States: Why, Who & How?

geetha — 2014-06-16T14:27:38Z

Internet governance, for long a global exercise, has found new awareness within national frameworks in recent times. Especially relevant for developing countries, effective national IG mechanisms are important to raise awareness and ensure multi-stakeholder participation at technical, infrastructural and public policy levels.

This post is a surface-level overview of national IG bodies, and is intended to inform introductory thoughts on national IG mechanisms.

A Short Introduction

The previous decade has seen a proliferation of regional, sub-regional and national initiatives for Internet governance (IG). Built primarily on the multi-stakeholder model, these initiatives aim at creating dialogue on issues of regional, local or municipal importance. In Asia, Bangladesh has instituted a national IGF, the Bangladesh IGF, with the stated objective of creating a national multi-stakeholder forum that is specialized in Internet governance issues, and to facilitate informed dialogue on IG policy issues among stakeholders. India, too, is currently in the process of instituting such a forum. At this juncture, it is useful to consider the rationale and modalities of national IG bodies.

The Internet has long been considered a sphere of non-governmental, multi-stakeholder, decentralized, bottom-up governance space. The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow’s defiant articulation of the Internet’s freedom from governmental control, is a classic instance of this. The Internet is a “vast ocean”, we claimed; “no one owns it”.[1] Even today, members of the technical community insist that everyone ought to “let techies do their job”: a plea, if you will, of the complexity of cyber-walls and –borders (or of their lack).

But as Prof. Milton Mueller argues in Ruling the Root, the Internet has always been a contentious resource: battles over its governance (or specifically, the governance of the DNS root, both the root-zone file and the root servers) have leapt from the naïveté of the Declaration of Independence to a private-sector-led, contract-based exploitation of Internet resources. The creation of ICANN was a crucial step in this direction, following arbitrary policy choices by Verizon and entities managing the naming and numbering resources of the Internet.

The mushrooming of parallel tracks of Internet governance is further evidence of the malleability of the space. As of today, various institutions – inter-governmental and multi-stakeholder – extend their claims of governance. ICANN, the World Summit of Information Society, the World Conference on International Telecommunications, the Internet Governance Forum and the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation under the ECOSOC Committee for Science, Technology and Development are a few prominent tracks. As of today, the WSIS process has absorbed various UN special bodies (the ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD, UNDP are but a few), with the UNESCO instituting a separate study on Internet-related issues. A proposal for a multilateral Committee on Internet-Related Policies remains stillborn.

Amongst these, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) remains a strong contender for a truly multi-stakeholder process facilitating dialogue on IG. The IGF was set up following the recommendation of the Working Group of Internet Governance (WGIG), constituted after the Geneva phase of the WSIS.

Rationale: Why Have National IG bodies?

The issue of national multi-stakeholder cooperation/collaboration in IG is not new; it has been alive since the early 2000s. The Tunis Agenda, in paragraph 80, encourages the “development of multi-stakeholder processes at the national, regional and international levels to discuss and collaborate on the expansion and diffusion of the Internet as a means to support development efforts to achieve internationally agreed development goals and objectives, including the Millennium Development Goals” (emphasis supplied).

In its June 2005 Report, the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) emphasizes that “global Internet governance can only be effective if there is coherence with regional, subregional and national-level policies”. Towards this end it recommends that “coordination be established among all stakeholders at the national level and a multi-stakeholder national Internet governance steering committee or similar body be set up” (emphasis supplied). The IGF, whose creation the WGIG recommended, has since been commended for its impact on the proliferation of national IGFs.

The rationale, then, was that multi-stakeholder steering committees at the national level would help to create a cohesive body to coordinate positions on Internet governance. In Reforming Internet Governance, WGIG member Waudo Siganga writes of the Internet Steering Committee of Brazil as a model, highlighting lessons that states (especially developing countries) may learn from CGI.br.

The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) was set up in 1995 and is responsible, inter alia, for the management of the .br domain, distribution of Internet addresses and administration of metropolitan Internet exchange points. CERT.br ensures network security and extends support to network administrators. Siganga writes that CGI.br is a “well-structured multistakeholder entity, having representation from government and democratically chosen representatives of the business sector, scientific and technological community and an Internet expert”.

Why is CGI.br a model for other states? First, CGI.br exemplifies how countries can structure in an effective manner, a body that is involved in creating awareness about IG issues at the national level. Moreover, the multi-stakeholder nature of CGI.br shows how participation can be harnessed effectively to build capacity across domestic players. This also reflects the multi-stakeholder aspects of Internet governance at the global level, clarifying and implementing the WSIS standards (for instance). Especially in developing countries, where awareness and coordination for Internet governance is lacking at the national level, national IG committees can bridge the gap between awareness and participation. Such awareness can translate into local solutions for local issues, as well as contributing to an informed, cohesive stance at the global level.

Stakeholders: Populating a national IG body

A national IG body – be in steering committee, IGF or other forum – should ideally involve all relevant stakeholders. As noted before, since inception, the Internet has not been subject to exclusive governmental regulation. The World Summit on Information Society recognized this, but negotiations amongst stakeholders resulted in the delegation of roles and responsibilities: the controversial and much-debated paragraph 35 of the Tunis Agenda reads:

Policy authority for Internet-related public policy issues is the sovereign right of States. They have rights and responsibilities for international Internet-related public policy issues.
The private sector has had, and should continue to have, an important role in the development of the Internet, both in the technical and economic fields.
Civil society has also played an important role on Internet matters, especially at community level, and should continue to play such a role.
Intergovernmental organizations have had, and should continue to have, a facilitating role in the coordination of Internet-related public policy issues.
International organizations have also had and should continue to have an important role in the development of Internet-related technical standards and relevant policies.

This position remains endorsed by the WSIS process; the recent WSIS+10 High Level Event endorsed by acclamation the WSIS+10 Vision for WSIS Beyond 2015, which “respect mandates given by Tunis Agenda and respect for the multi-stakeholder principles”. In addition to government, the private sector and civil society, the technical community is identified as a distinct stakeholder group. Academia has also found a voice, as demonstrated by stakeholder-representation at NETmundial 2014.

A study of the Internet Society (ISOC) on Assessing National Internet Governance Arrangements, authored by David Souter, maps IG stakeholders at the global, regional and national levels. At the global level, primary stakeholders include ICANN (not-for-profit, private sector corporation involved in governance and technical coordination of the DNS), the IETF, IAB and W3C (technical standards), governments and civil society organizations, all of which participate with different levels of involvements at the IGF, ICANN, ITU, etc.

At the national/municipal level, the list of stakeholders is as comprehensive. Governmental stakeholders include: (1) relevant Ministries (in India, these are the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology – the Department of Electronics and Information Technology under the MCIT is particularly relevant), and (2) regulators, statutory and independent (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, for example). At the national level, these typically seek inputs from other stakeholders while making recommendations to governments, which then enact laws or make policy. In India, for instance, the TRAI conducts consultations prior to making recommendations to the government.

Within the private sector, there may be companies (1) on the supply-side, such as infrastructure networks, telecommunications service companies, Internet Service Providers, search engines, social networks, cybercafés, etc., and (2) on the demand-side, online businesses, advertising/media, financial service providers, etc. who use the Internet. There may also be national registries managing ccTLDs, such as the Registro.br or the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). There may also the press and news corporations representing both corporate and public interest under specific circumstances (media ownership and freedom of expression, for distinct examples).

Civil society organisations, including consumer organisations, think-tanks and grassroots organisations, participate at various levels of policy-making in the formal institutional structure, and are crucial in representing users and public interest. The complexity of stakeholders may be seen from Souter’s report, and this enumeration is but a superficial view of the national stakeholder-population.

Processes: Creating effective national IG bodies

National IG bodies – be they steering committees, IGFs, consultative/working groups or other forums – may be limited by formal institutional governmental settings. While limited by the responsibility-gradient in paragraph 35 of the Tunis Agenda, an effective national IG body requires robust multi-stakeholder participation, as Souter notes, in technical governance, infrastructure and public policy issues. Its effectiveness also lies in governmental acquiescence of its expertise and recommendations; in short, in the translation of the IG body’s decisions into policy.

How do these stakeholders interact at the national level? In addition to the Brazilian example (CGI.br), an ISOC study by Souter and Monica Kerretts-Makau, Internet Governance in Kenya: An Assessment, provides a detailed answer. At the technical level, the registry KENIC manages the .ke domain, while the Kenya Computer Incident Response Team Coordination Centre coordinates national responses to incidents and collaborates internationally on cyber-security issues. A specific IPv6 Force to promote Kenya’s transition to IPv6 was also created.

At the infrastructural level, both the government and the private sector play important roles. Directly, ministries and government departments consult with infrastructure providers in creating policy. In India, for instance, the TRAI conducts multi-stakeholder consultations on issues such as telecom tariffs, colocation tariffs for submarine cable stations and mobile towers, etc. The government may also take a lead in creating infrastructure, such as the national optic fibre networks in India and Kenya, as also creating investment opportunities such as liberalizing FDI. At the public policy level, there may exist consultations initiated by government bodies (such as the TRAI or the Law Commission), in which other stakeholders participate.

As one can see, government-initiated consultations by ministries, regulators, law commissions or specially constituted committees. Several countries have also set up national IGFs, which typically involve all major stakeholders in voluntary participation, and form a discussion forum for existing and emerging IG issues. National IGFs have been considered particularly useful to create awareness within the country, and may best address IG issues at the domestic policy level. However, Prof. Mueller writes that what is necessary is a “reliable mechanism reliable mechanisms for consistently feeding the preferences expressed in these forums to actual global policy-making institutions like ICANN, RIRs, WIPO, and WTO which impact distributional outcomes”.

[1] M. Mueller, Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace 57 (2002).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/multi-stakeholder-models-of-internet-governance-within-states-why-who-how

Comments to ICANN Supporting the DNS Industry in Underserved Regions

jyoti — 2014-07-04T06:48:36Z

Towards exploring ideas and strategies to help promote the domain name industry in regions that have typically been underserved, ICANN published a call for public comments on May 14, 2014. In particular, ICANN sought comments related to existing barriers to Registrar Accreditation and operation and suggestions on how these challenges might be mitigated. CIS contributed to the comments on this report, which will be used to determine next steps to support the domain name industry in underserved regions.

Domain names and the DNS are used in virtually every aspect of the Internet, and without the DNS, the Internet as we know it, would not exist. The DNS root zone has economic value and ICANN's contract with Verisign delineates the selling of domain names via only ICANN accredited registrars. By the indirect virtue of its control of the root, ICANN has the power and capacity to influence the decisions of entities involved in the management and operations of the DNS, including registrars.

Too far, too many?

We acknowledge some of the efforts for improvements, in particular with reference to barriers to participation in DNS-related business in regions such as Africa and the Middle East, including the creation of a fellowship program, and increased availability of translated materials. However, despite these efforts, the gaps in the distribution of the DNS registrars and registries across the world has become an issue of heightened concern.

This is particularly true, in light of the distribution of registrars and given that, of the 1124 ICANN-accredited registrars, North America has a total of 765 registrars. US and Canada together, have more than double the number of registrars than the rest of the world taken collectively. To put things further into perspective, of the total number of registrars 725 are from the United States alone, and 7 from the 54 countries of Africa.

A barrier to ICANN's capacity building initiatives has been the lack of trust, given the general view that, ICANN focuses on policies that favour entrenched incumbents from richer countries. Without adequate representation from poorer countries, and adequate representation from the rest of the world's Internet population, there is no hope of changing these policies or establishing trust. The entire region of Latin America and the Caribbean, comprising of a population of 542.4 million internet users[1] in 2012, has only 22 registrars spread across a total of 10 countries. In Europe, covering a population of 518.5 million internet users[2], are 158 registrars and 94 of those are spread across Germany, UK, France, Spain and Netherlands. The figures paint the most dismal picture with respect to South Asia, in particular India, where just 16 registrars cater to the population of internet users that is expected to reach 243 million by June 2014[3].

While we welcome ICANN's research and outreach initiatives with regard to the DNS ecosystem in underserved regions, without the crucial first step of clarifying the metrics that constitute an underserved region, these efforts might not bear their intended impact. ICANN cannot hope to identify strategies towards bridging the gaps that exist in the DNS ecosystem, without going beyond the current ICANN community, which, while nominally being 'multistakeholder' and open to all, grossly under-represents those parts of the world that aren't North America and Western Europe.

The lack of registries in the developing world is another significant issue that needs to be highlighted and addressed. The top 5 gTLD registries are in the USA and it is important that users and the community feels that the fees being collected are equivalent compensation for the services they provide. As registries operate in captive markets that is allocated by ICANN, we invite ICANN to improve its financial accountability, by enabling its stakeholders to assess the finances collected on these registrations.

Multistakeholderism—community and consensus

As an organization that holds itself a champion of the bottom-up policy development process, and, as a private corporation fulfilling a public interest function, ICANN, is in a unique position to establish new norms of managing common resources. In theory and under ICANN’s extensive governance rules, the board is a legislative body that is only supposed to approve the consensus decisions of the community and the staff wield executive control. However in reality, both board and the staff have been criticised for decisions that are not backed by the community.

The formal negotiations between ICANN and Registrar Stakeholder Group Negotiating Team (Registrar NT) over the new Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), is an example of processes that have a multistakeholder approach but fail on values of deliberation and pluralistic decision making.[4] ICANN staff insisted on including a "proposed Revocation (or "blow up") Clause that would have given them the ability to unilaterally terminate all registrar accreditations" and another proposal seeking to provide ICANN Board ability to unilaterally amend the RAA (identical to proposal inserted in the gTLD registry agreement - a clause met with strong opposition not only from the Registry Stakeholder Group but from the broader ICANN community).

Both proposals undermine the multistakeholder approach of the ICANN governance framework, as they seek more authority for the Board, rather than the community or protections for registrars and more importantly, registrants. The proposed amendments to the RAA were not issues raised by Law Enforcement, GAC or the GNSO but by the ICANN staff and received considerable pushback from the Registrar Stakeholder Group Negotiating Team (Registrar NT). The bottom-up policy making process at ICANN has also been questioned with reference to the ruling on vertical integration between registries and registrars, where the community could not even approach consensus.[5] Concerns have also been raised about the extent of the power granted to special advisory bodies handpicked by the ICANN president, the inadequacy of existing accountability mechanisms for providing a meaningful and external check on Board decisions and the lack of representation of underserved regions on these special bodies. ICANN must evolve its accountability mechanisms, to go beyond the opportunity to provide comments on proposed policy, and extend to a role for stakeholders in decision making, which is presently a privilege reserved for staff rather than bottom-up consensus.

ICANN was created as a consensus based organisation that would enable the Internet, its stakeholders and beneficiaries to move forward in the most streamlined, cohesive manner.[6] Through its management of the DNS, ICANN is undertaking public governance duties, and it is crucial that it upholds the democratic values entrenched in the multistakeholder framework. Bottom up policy making extends beyond passive participation and has an impact on the direction of the policy. Presently, while anyone can comment on policy issues, only a few have a say in which comments are integrated towards outcomes and action. We would like to stress not just improving and introducing checks and balances within the ICANN ecosystem, but also, integrating accountability and transparency practices at all levels of decision making.

Bridging the gap

We welcome the Africa Strategy working group and the public community process that was initiated by ICANN towards building domain name business industry in Africa, and, we are sure there will be lessons that will applicable to many other underserved regions. In the context of this report CIS, wants to examine the existing criteria of the accreditation process. As ICANN's role evolves and its revenues grow across the DNS and the larger Internet landscape, it is important in our view, that ICANN review and evolve it's processes for accreditation and see if they are as relevant today, as they were when launched.

The relationship between ICANN and every accredited registrar is governed by the individual RAA, which set out the obligations of both parties, and, we recommend simplifying and improving them. The RAA language is complex, technical and not relevant to all regions and presently, there are no online forms for the accreditation process. While ICANN's language will be English, the present framing has an American bias—we recommend—creating an online application process and simplifying the language keeping it contextual to the region. It would also be helpful, if ICANN invested in introducing some amount of standardization across forms, this would reduce the barrier of time and effort it takes to go through complex legal documents and contribute to the growth of DNS business.

The existing accreditation process for registrars requires applicants to procure US$70,000 or more for the ICANN accreditation to become effective. The applicants are also required to obtain and maintain for the length of accreditation process, a commercial general liability insurance with a policy limit of US$500,000 or more. The working capital and the insurance are quite high and create a barrier to entrance of underserved regions in the DNS ecosystem.

With lack of appropriate mechanisms registrars resort to using US companies for insurance, creating more foreign currency pressures on themselves. The commercial general liability insurance requirement for the registrars is not limited to their functioning as a registrar perhaps not the most appropriate option. ICANN should, and must, increase efforts towards helping registrars find suitable insurance providers and scaling down the working capital. Solutions may lie in exploring variable fee structures adjusted against profits, and derived after considering factors such as cost of managing domain names and sub-domain names, expansion needs, ICANN obligations and services, financial capacities of LDCs and financial help pledged to disadvantaged groups or countries.

Presently, the start-up capital required is too high for developing countries, and this is reflected in the number of registries in these areas. Any efforts to improve the DNS ecosystem in underserved regions, must tackle this by scaling down the capital in proportion to the requirements of the region.

Another potential issue that ICANN should consider, is that users getting sub-domain names from local registrars located in their own country, are usually taxed on the transaction, however, online registration through US registrars spares users from paying taxes in their country.[7] This could create a reverse incentive for registering domain sub-names online from US registrars. ICANN should push forward on efforts to ensure that registrars are sustainable by providing incentives for registering in underserved regions and help towards maintain critical mass of the registrants. The Business Constituency (BC)—the voice of commercial Internet users within ICANN, could play a role in this and ICANN should endeavour to either, expand the BC function or create a separate constituency for the representation of underserved regions.

[1] Internet Users and Population stats 2012. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm

[2] Internet Users and Population stats 2012. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm

[3] Times of India IAMAI Report. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/India-to-have-243-million-internet-users-by-June-2014-IAMAI/articleshow/29563698.cms

[4] Mar/07/2013 - Registrar Stakeholder Group Negotiating Team (Registrar NT) Statement Regarding ICANN RAA Negotiations.http://www.icannregistrars.org/calendar/announcements.php

[5] Kevin Murphy, Who runs the internet? An ICANN 49 primer. http://domainincite.com/16177-who-runs-the-internet-an-icann-49-primer

[6] Stephen Ryan, Governing Cyberspace: ICANN, a Controversial Internet Standards Body http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/governing-cyberspace-icann-a-controversial-internet-standards-body

[7] Open Root-Financing LDCs in the WSIS process. See: http://www.open-root.eu/about-open-root/news/financing-ldcs-in-the-wsis-process

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-supporting-the-dns-industry-in-underserved-regions

CIS Comments: Enhancing ICANN Accountability

geetha — 2014-06-10T13:03:57Z

On May 6, 2014, ICANN published a call for public comments on "Enhancing ICANN Accountability". This comes in the wake of the IANA stewardship transition spearheaded by ICANN and related concerns of ICANN's external and internal accountability mechanisms. Centre for Internet and Society contributed to the call for comments.

Introduction:

On March 14, 2014, the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced its intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multi-stakeholder Internet governance community. ICANN was tasked with the development of a proposal for transition of IANA stewardship, for which ICANN subsequently called for public comments. At NETmundial, ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé acknowledged that the IANA stewardship transition and improved ICANN accountability were inter-related issues, and announced the impending launch of a process to strengthen and enhance ICANN accountability in the absence of US government oversight. The subsequent call for public comments on “Enhancing ICANN Accountability” may be found here.

Suggestions for improved accountability:

In the event, Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) wishes to limit its suggestions for improved ICANN accountability to matters of reactive or responsive transparency on the part of ICANN to the global multi-stakeholder community. We propose the creation and implementation of a robust “freedom or right to information” process from ICANN, accompanied by an independent review mechanism.

Article III of ICANN Bye-laws note that “ICANN and its constituent bodies shall operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures designed to ensure fairness”. As part of this, Article III(2) note that ICANN shall make publicly available information on, inter alia, ICANN’s budget, annual audit, financial contributors and the amount of their contributions, as well as information on accountability mechanisms and the outcome of specific requests and complaints regarding the same. Such accountability mechanisms include reconsideration (Article IV(2)), independent review of Board actions (Article IV(3)), periodic reviews (Article IV(4)) and the Ombudsman (Article V).

Further, ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy (“DIDP”) sets forth a process by which members of the public may request information “not already publicly available”. ICANN may respond (either affirmatively or in denial) to such requests within 30 days. Appeals to denials under the DIDP are available under the reconsideration or independent review procedures, to the extent applicable.

While ICANN has historically been prompt in its response to DIDP Requests, CIS is of the view that absent the commitments in the AoC following IANA stewardship transition, it would be desirable to amend and strengthen Response and Appeal procedures for DIDP and other, broader disclosures. Our concerns stem from the fact that, first, the substantive scope of appeal under the DIDP, on the basis of documents requested, is unclear (say, contracts or financial documents regarding payments to Registries or Registrars, or a detailed, granular break-up of ICANN’s revenue and expenditures); and second, that grievances with decisions of the Board Governance Committee or the Independent Review Panel cannot be appealed.

Therefore, CIS proposes a mechanism based on “right to information” best practices, which results in transparent and accountable governance at governmental levels.

First, we propose that designated members of ICANN staff shoulder responsibility to respond to information requests. The identity of such members (information officers, say) ought to be made public, including in the response document.

Second, an independent, third party body should be constituted to sit in appeal over information officers’ decisions to provide or decline to provide information. Such body may be composed of nominated members from the global multi-stakeholder community, with adequate stakeholder-, regional- and gender-representation. However, such members should not have held prior positions in ICANN or its related organizations. During the appointed term of the body, the terms and conditions of service ought to remain beyond the purview of ICANN, similar to globally accepted principles of an independent judiciary. For instance, the Constitution of India forbids any disadvantageous alteration of privileges and allowances of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts during tenure.

Third, and importantly, punitive measures ought to follow unreasonable, unexplained or illegitimate denials of requests by ICANN information officers. In order to ensure compliance, penalties should be made continuing (a certain prescribed fine for each day of information-denial) on concerned officers. Such punitive measures are accepted, for instance, in Section 20 of India’s Right to Information Act, 2005, where the review body may impose continuing penalties on any defaulting officer.

Finally, exceptions to disclosure should be finite and time-bound. Any and all information exempted from disclosure should be clearly set out (and not merely as categories of exempted information). Further, all exempted information should be made public after a prescribed period of time (say, 1 year), after which any member of the public may request for the same if it continues to be unavailable.

CIS hopes that ICANN shall deliver on its promise to ensure and enhance its accountability and transparency to the global multi-stakeholder community. To that end, we hope our suggestions may be positively considered.

Comment repository:

All comments received by ICANN during the comment period (May 6, 2014 to June 6, 2014) may be found at this link.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-comments-enhancing-icann-accountability

Net Freedom Campaign Loses its Way

sunil — 2014-05-27T11:07:04Z

A recent global meet was a victory for governments and the private sector over civil society interests.

The article was published in the Hindu Businessline on May 10, 2014.

One word to describe NetMundial: Disappointing! Why? Because despite the promise, human rights on the Internet are still insufficiently protected. Snowden’s revelations starting last June threw the global Internet governance processes into crisis.

Things came to a head in October, when Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, horrified to learn that she was under NSA surveillance for economic reasons, called for the organisation of a global conference called NetMundial to accelerate Internet governance reform.

The NetMundial was held in São Paulo on April 23-24 this year. The result was a statement described as “the non-binding outcome of a bottom-up, open, and participatory process involving … governments, private sector, civil society, technical community, and academia from around the world.” In other words — it is international soft law with no enforcement mechanisms.

The statement emerges from “broad consensus”, meaning governments such as India, Cuba and Russia and civil society representatives expressed deep dissatisfaction at the closing plenary. Unlike an international binding law, only time will tell whether each member of the different stakeholder groups will regulate itself.

Again, not easy, because the outcome document does not specifically prescribe what each stakeholder can or cannot do — it only says what internet governance (IG) should or should not be. And finally, there’s no global consensus yet on the scope of IG. The substantive consensus was disappointing in four important ways:

Mass surveillance : Civil society was hoping that the statement would make mass surveillance illegal. After all, global violation of the right to privacy by the US was the raison d'être of the conference.

Instead, the statement legitimised “mass surveillance, interception and collection” as long as it was done in compliance with international human rights law. This was clearly the most disastrous outcome.

Access to knowledge: The conference was not supposed to expand intellectual property rights (IPR) or enforcement of these rights. After all, a multilateral forum, WIPO, was meant to address these concerns. But in the days before the conference the rights-holders lobby went into overdrive and civil society was caught unprepared.

The end result — “freedom of information and access to information” or right to information in India was qualified “with rights of authors and creators”. The right to information laws across the world, including in India, contains almost a dozen exemptions, including IPR. The only thing to be grateful for is that this limitation did not find its way into the language for freedom of expression.

Intermediary liability: The language that limits liability for intermediaries basically provides for a private censorship regime without judicial oversight, and without explicit language protecting the rights to freedom of expression and privacy. Even though the private sector chants Hillary Clinton's Internet freedom mantra — they only care for their own bottomlines.

Net neutrality: Even though there was little global consensus, some optimistic sections of civil society were hoping that domestic best practice on network neutrality in Brazil’s Internet Bill of Right — also known as Marco Civil, that was signed into law during the inaugural ceremony of NetMundial — would make it to the statement. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

For almost a decade since the debate between the multi-stakeholder and multilateral model started, the multi-stakeholder model had produced absolutely nothing outside ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit body), its technical fraternity and the standard-setting bodies.

The multi-stakeholder model is governance with the participation (and consent — depending on who you ask) of those stakeholders who are governed. In contrast, in the multilateral system, participation is limited to nation-states.

Civil society divisions

The inability of multi-stakeholderism to deliver also resulted in the fragmentation of global civil society regulars at Internet Governance Forums.

But in the run-up to NetMundial more divisions began to appear. If we ignore nuances — we could divide them into three groups. One, the ‘outsiders’ who are best exemplified by Jérémie Zimmermann of the La Quadrature du Net. Jérémie ran an online campaign, organised a protest during the conference and did everything he could to prevent NetMundial from being sanctified by civil society consensus.

Two, the ‘process geeks’ — for these individuals and organisations process was more important than principles. Most of them were as deeply invested in the multi-stakeholder model as ICANN and the US government and some who have been riding the ICANN gravy train for years.

Even worse, some were suspected of being astroturfers bootstrapped by the private sector and the technical community. None of them were willing to rock the boat. For the ‘process geeks’, seeing politicians and bureaucrats queue up like civil society to speak at the mike was the crowning achievement.

Three, the ‘principles geeks’ perhaps best exemplified by the Just Net Coalition who privileged principles over process. Divisions were also beginning to sharpen within the private sector. For example, Neville Roy Singham, CEO of Thoughtworks, agreed more with civil society than he did with other members of the private sector in his interventions.

In short, the ‘outsiders’ couldn't care less about the outcome and will do everything to discredit it, the ‘process geeks’ stood in ovation when the outcome document was read at the closing plenary and the ‘principles geeks’ returned devastated.

For the multi-stakeholder model to survive it must advance democratic values, not undermine them.

This will only happen if there is greater transparency and accountability. Individuals, organisations and consortia that participate in Internet governance processes need to disclose lists of donors including those that sponsor travel to these meetings.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hindu-business-line-may-10-2014-sunil-abraham-net-freedom-campaign-loses-its-way

NETmundial Day 2

achal — 2014-04-25T04:58:26Z

Fadi Chehade, the ICANN boss, closed NETmundial 2014 with these words "In Africa we say if you want to go first, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together." He should have added: And if you want to go nowhere, go multi-stakeholder.

For all the talk of an inclusive global meeting, there was exactly one governmental submission from the African continent, and it was from Tunisia; and the overall rate of submissions from Africa and West Asia were generally very low.

The outcome document perfectly reflects the gloss that the "multi-stakeholder" model was designed to achieve: an outcome that is celebrated by businesses (and by all embedded institutions like ICANN) for being harmless, met with relief by governments for not upsetting the status quo, all of it lit up in the holy glow of "consensus" from civil society.

Of course there was no consensus. Civil society groups who organised on Day 0 put up their position: the shocking omission of a strong case for net neutrality, ambiguous language on surveillance, weak defences of free expression and privacy. All valid points. But it's striking that civil society takes such a pliant position towards authority: other than exactly two spirited protests (one against the data retention in Marco Civil, and the other against the NSA's mass surveillance program) there was no confrontation, no provocation, no passionate action that would give civil society the force it needs to win. If we were to compare this to other international struggles, the gay rights battle, or its successor, the AIDS medicines movement, for instance - what a difference there is. People fought to crush with powerful, forceful action. Only after huge victories with public and media sympathy, and only after turning themselves into equals of the corporations and governments they were fighting, did they allow themselves to sit down at the table and negotiate nicely. Internet governance fora are marked by politeness and passivity, and perhaps - however sad - it's no wonder that the least powerful groups in these fora always come away disappointed.

It's also surprising that there is no language in the outcome document that explicitly addresses the censorious threat posed by the global expansion of a sovereign application of copyright, as seen most vividly in the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation in the United States. The outcome document has language that seems to more or less reflect the civil society proposal, and it's possible that a generous interpretation of the language could mean that it opposes the selective, restrictive and damaging application of what the intellectual property industries want to accomplish on the Internet. But it's puzzling that the language isn't stronger or more explicit, and even more puzzling that civil society doesn't seem to want to fight for such language.

This seems like an appropriate time to end the multi-stakeholder diaries. Hasn't the word been used enough? Here is one last instalment. We thank the kind folks who gave us their time.

Q: What does "multi-stakeholder" mean? What is "multi-stakeholderism"?

A large part of the discourse prior to the NETmundial conference has been centered around the issue of what is the best structural system to regulate a global network – this has commonly been portrayed as a choice between a multistakeholder system – which broadly speaking, aims to place ‘all stakeholders’ on equal footing – against multilateralism – a recognized concept in International law / the Comity of Nation States, where a nation state is recognized as the representative of its citizens, making decisions on their behalf and in their interests.

In our opinion, the issue is not about the dichotomy between multilateralism and multistakeholderism; it is about what functions or issues can legitimately be dealt with through each of the processes in terms of adequately protecting civil liberties and other public interest principles – including the appropriate enforcement of norms. For instance, how do you deal with something like cyber warfare without the consent of states? Similarly, how do we address regulatory issues such as determining (and possibly subsidizing) costs of access, or indeed to protect a right of a country against unilateral disconnection?

.....The crux of the matter rests in deciding which is the best governance ‘basket’ to include a particular issue within – taken from both a substantive and enforcement perspective. The challenge is trying to demarcate issues to ensure that each is dealt with effectively by placing it in an appropriate bucket. (The full post can be accessed here).
Rishab Bailey from the Society for Knowledge Commons (India)

If I would have signed the campaign http://wepromise.eu as a candidate to the European Parliament I would have made it an election promise to defend "the principle of multistakeholderism".

That means that I "support free, open, bottom-up, and multi-stakeholder models of coordinating the Internet resources and standards - names, numbers, addresses etc" and that I "support measures which seek to ensure the capacity of representative civil society to participate in multi-stakeholder forums." Further, I "oppose any attempts by corporate, governmental or intergovernmental agencies to take control of Internet governance."

My very rudimentary personal view is basically that it's a bad idea to institutionalise conflicting competences.
Erik Josefsson, Adviser on Internet policies for the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament

And so it ends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-day-2

NETmundial: Tracking Multistakeholder across Contributions

sumandro — 2014-04-25T09:53:37Z

This set of analysis of the contributions submitted to NETmundial 2014 is part of the effort by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, to enable productive discussions of the critical internet governance issues at the meeting and elsewhere.

Created by Sumandro using Google Charts.
Google Terms of Use and Data Policy.
Data compiled by Sumandro and Jyoti.
Download the data .

This scatter plot shows the number of times the word *multistakeholder* (including *multi-stakeholder* and *multistakeholderism*) appears across contributions submitted to NETmundial.

X axis (horizontal) gives the serial number of contributions and Y axis (vertical) gives the number of times the word appears on a contribution.

Click on the types of organisation below the chart to highlight the corresponding organisations on the chart.

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness, and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

The visualisations are done by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, based on data compilation and analysis by Jyoti Panday, and with data entry suport from Chandrasekhar.

Built on Bootstrap by Sumandro

All code, content and data is co-owned by the author(s) and Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 India license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-tracking-multi-stakeholder-across-contributions

Brazil passes Marco Civil; the US-FCC Alters its Stance on Net Neutrality

geetha — 2014-04-24T10:05:32Z

Hopes for the Internet rise and fall rapidly. Yesterday, on April 23, 2014, Marco Civil da Internet, the Brazilian Bill of Internet rights, was passed by the Brazilian Senate into law.

Marco Civil, on which we blogged previously, includes provisions for the protection of privacy and freedom of expression of all users, rules mandating net neutrality, etc. Brazil celebrated the beginning of NETmundial, a momentous first day about which Achal Prabhala blogs, with President Rousseff’s approval of the Marco Civil.

At about the same time, news broke that the US Federal Communications Commission is set to propose new net neutrality rules. In the wake of the Verizon net neutrality decision in January, the proposed new rules will prohibit Internet service providers such as Comcast from slowing down or blocking traffic to certain websites, but permit fast lane traffic for content providers who are willing to pay for it. This fast lane would prioritise traffic from content providers like Netflix and Youtube on commercially reasonable terms, and result in availability of video and other content at higher speeds or quality. An interesting turn-around, as Marco Civil expressly mandates net neutrality for all traffic.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/brazil-passes-marco-civil-us-fcc-alters-stance-on-net-neutrality

Centre for Internet and Society

ICANN reveals hitherto undisclosed details of domain names revenues

ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy – I: DIDP Basics

What is the DIDP?

Procedure

Time Period and Publication

Conditions for Non-Disclosure

Grievance Redressal Mechanism

Why does the DIDP matter?

Report on ICANN 50

IANA Transition: Suggestions for Process Design

Introduction:

Issues and Recommendations:

Open, inclusive deliberation by global stakeholders must define the Scope of the Process for developing proposal for IANA transition:

Accountability of ICANN must be linked to IANA Transition within Scope of the Process:

Misuse or appearance of misuse of its convenor role by ICANN to influence outcome of the Process must not be allowed:

Components of Diversity Principle should be clearly enunciated in the Draft Proposal:

The Co-ordination Group must be made representative of the global multistakeholder community:

Framing of the Proposal must allow adequate time:

CIS Policy Brief: IANA Transition Fundamentals & Suggestions for Process Design

Short Introduction:

CIS Policy Brief:

Suggestions for Process Design

Short Introduction:

CIS Policy Brief:

Understanding IANA Stewardship Transition

NTIA Announcement and ICANN-convened Processes:

What are the IANA Functions?

Import of the NTIA Announcement:

What does the NTIA Announcement NOT DO?

Commonwealth Domain Name System Forum 2014

WSIS+10 High Level Event: A Bird's Eye Report

The High Level Track:

The High Level Dialogues:

The Forum Track:

Conclusion:

Multi-stakeholder Models of Internet Governance within States: Why, Who & How?

A Short Introduction

Rationale: Why Have National IG bodies?

Stakeholders: Populating a national IG body

Processes: Creating effective national IG bodies

Comments to ICANN Supporting the DNS Industry in Underserved Regions

CIS Comments: Enhancing ICANN Accountability

Introduction:

Suggestions for improved accountability:

Comment repository:

Net Freedom Campaign Loses its Way

NETmundial Day 2

NETmundial: Tracking *Multistakeholder* across Contributions

Brazil passes Marco Civil; the US-FCC Alters its Stance on Net Neutrality

NETmundial: Tracking Multistakeholder across Contributions