[ga] Fwd: [Random-bits] Brock Meeks on ICANN "reform"

[Darrell Greenwood <lists1@mac.com>]

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From: "James Love" <james.love@cptech.org>
To: <random-bits@venice.essential.org>
Subject: [Random-bits] Brock Meeks on ICANN "reform"
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 08:53:46 -0400

http://www.msnbc.com/news/759558.asp

      Cannibals in cyberspace

      Internet governing body feasts on itself

      OPINION
      By Brock N. Meeks
      MSNBC

      WASHINGTON, May 30 - The issue of Internet governance has all the
appeal of a rare intestinal disease and less political clout than an orphan
drug. There is no Julia Roberts waiting in the wings to testify before
Congress on behalf of democratic values in cyberspace. So as the private
body tasked with overseeing the stability of the Internet hovers on the
brink of disaster it comes as no surprise that few are aware of the
situation and that even fewer care.

            THE INTERNET CORPORATION for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
is the non-profit organization tapped by the U.S. government nearly four
years ago to shepherd control of the Internet from a government centric
network and mainstream it into the hyperbolic world known as "the New
Economy."
             ICANN, however, has served only to become a real-time parody of
its acronym.
             The brutal truth is, ICANN can't. It can't handle the task
initially given to it, can't handle the tasks it usurped along the way in
classic Washingtonian mission creep style, can't keep its promises and can't
manage to stay away from controversy. ICANN has eaten itself and then
proceeded to ask for seconds and thirds.
             But don't take my word for it. Stuart Lynn, ICANN's CEO admits
that his organization "is viewed by many key stakeholders as more of a
debating society than as an effective operational body. Thus, ICANN as it
now stands is, at best, an incomplete experiment."
             Maybe it's just me, but I find it odd that with the stability
of a global resource, the Internet, at stake, ICANN sees fit to reduce its
fundamental mission so off-handedly to merely an "experiment."
             Perhaps that's because ICANN has forever been held
ideologically hostage by the big moneyed, commercial interests, looking to
protect their own assets in cyberspace and making sure any rules or
procedures adopted by ICANN were stacked in their favor.

             Or perhaps ICANN is perceived as a failure because, despite a
governmental mandate that it do business and create policy in a transparent
and open manner it continues to hold secret meetings and votes and only
informs the public afterward of its decisions. Such criticism has dogged
ICANN from its very beginning. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., during an ICANN
oversight hearing said, "We know more about how the Cardinals select a new
Pope at the Vatican than we do about ICANN's internal affairs."
             One of ICANN's elected board members is in fact suing to gain
access to its financial records after ICANN officials stonewalled his
repeated requests to have a look at them. ICANN counters that this director
can look all he wants, as long as he promises to sign a confidentiality
agreement and keep his mouth shut about anything he sees or uncovers.
             ICANN officials bristle just at claims they aren't transparent.
Joe Simms, ICANN's lawyer and de facto Washington power broker, defended the
organization's penchant for closed door meetings in a recent public mailing
list comment saying that transparency shouldn't be interpreted to mean
"discussion and actions have to be taken in full public view. Why this is so
is not intuitively obvious."
             Simms rambled on that, "Transparency to me means that all
actions taken are disclosed and explained on the public record, for all to
see and react to, not that they can only be done in a stadium or on a web
cast."
             The fact that many would like an active, participatory voice in
a group that is supposed to operate, by its own bylines, from a "bottom up"
approach, leaves Simms to simply scratch himself and bleat about ICANN's
critics: "The fact that they would like to listen in to every conversation
does not rise to the level of a condition precedent to openness."

      SO NOT FOR THE PEOPLE

            ICANN experimented with a global voting process in which it
elected five "at large" members to its board of directors. The process was
less than fluid; there were some warts, but the elections were held and
those elected came from the vast sea of "stakeholders" known as Internet
users.
             Could the process have been smoother? Yes. Were there
allegations of voting impropriety? Yes, but compared to the last
presidential election ICANN's at-large vote was a show of a hands at a PTA
meeting to elect the next bake sale chairman.
             But these pesky representatives of the people have just, well,
become a bother it seems for the ICANN power structure. And so over a few
bottles of moderately expensive wine ICANN officials recently decided-though
did not make it "official"- to simply do away with further public elections
preferring instead to throw over the process for a nomination and selection
exercise that becomes the purview of governments not the grassroots.
             And now just as the going gets real tough Lynn announces that
he is abandoning ship in March of next year due to health and personal
reasons. But before he jumps from this sinking ship, Lynn has left behind a
major policy paper in which he lays out his ideas for how ICANN might reform
itself.

             The reforms boil down to this: toss most of the responsibility
back to government. This idea is so bereft of intellectual heft that even
members of the U.S. Congress can grok the dangers in such a plan.
             "It is our belief that such proposals will make ICANN even less
democratic, open and accountable than it is today," wrote House Energy and
Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., along with ranking member
John Dingell, D-Mich., in a letter to Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. The
Commerce Department has the ultimate authority over ICANN by means of a
contract or "Memorandum of Understanding" it signed with the organization
that gave ICANN whatever power it has today.
             That contract is coming up for renewal and a group of 14
different organizations that have kept track of ICANN's travails weighed in
on the subject Wednesday in a letter to Secretary Evans asking him to
"re-bid" the contract a move that would put ICANN's future in doubt.
             "Requiring ICANN to compete against qualified bidders will
provide a strong incentive for ICANN to engage in a thorough housecleaning
and become more genuinely responsive to the comments of stakeholders," the
letter says. "It will also ensure that, if ICANN cannot put its house in
order, the Department will have alternatives."
             Billions of dollars in electronic commerce and the fate of the
electronic global community hang in the balance and depend on those
decisions.


--------------------------------
James Love mailto:james.love@cptech.org
http://www.cptech.org +1.202.387.8030 mobile +1.202.361.3040


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