A BRIEFING ON PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES AFFECTING CIVIL LIBERTIES ONLINE
from
THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
CONTENTS:
(1) Department of Commerce Selects .us Operator
(2) Net Managing Body Likely To Focus on Security, Delay Public Input Decision
(3) Study Recommendations Raise Questions, Limit User Voice
(4) ICANN Requires Limits To Its Authority, Real Accountability
The U.S. Department of Commerce has selected NeuStar, Inc., as the new registry operator for the .us Internet domain. Like .com and .org, .us is a space on the Internet in which web pages and other resources are located. But unlike those globally-oriented domains, .us is intended to be exclusively for Internet resources that are American in nature.
The Department of Commerce's announcement is the culmination of a proceeding that began in June 2001. At that time, CDT joined a coalition of concerned non-profit groups, companies, community groups, and government agencies to advocate responsible, fair policy-making practices for .us. The coalition proposed to cooperate with the .us registry operator to create a .us "Policy Development Council" (usPDC) that would include a broad diversity of perspectives, to help resolve difficult policy questions.
While NeuStar has indicated a willingness to implement good policy practices in .us, it has not yet committed to any specific course of action, or to cooperation with any of the partners in the usPDC coalition. Over the next few weeks, CDT and its coalition partners hope to work with NeuStar and the Commerce Department to ensure that .us's policy processes are in keeping with democratic values.
On November 1, the House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing substantially focused on the .us proceeding and specifically on the possibility of creating a .kids or .kids.us domain for child-friendly material. CDT issued a letter raising questions about whether .kids could be properly and fairly implemented.
Additional information about the Commerce Department's award of .us is available at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/usca/index.html.
CDT's letter to the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet regarding the proposed .kids legislation is available at: http://www.cdt.org/dns/011031dotkids.shtml.
More information is available at: http://www.cdt.org/dns/.
The group that manages some of the Internet's most critical functions has indicated that it will delay a long-scheduled decision on how (and whether) Internet users will have a voice in policy discussions that affect the Internet worldwide.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the naming and addressing systems that make the Internet run smoothly and reliably. ICANN also makes important policy decisions like adding new domains to the Internet -- such as the recently-activated .info and .biz -- or maintaining trademark protections online. CDT strongly believes that the broad impact of ICANN's policy powers creates a need for Internet users to be strongly represented in ICANN's processes.
The question of public participation has been a defining one since ICANN's creation in 1998. ICANN's Board since then has been dominated by Internet companies and other private actors who do not have the mission of representing the public interest, and the public role in ICANN, while frequently alluded to, has not been defined in any of ICANN's organizational documents.
The Board was expected to resolve this question at its upcoming annual meeting in Marina del Rey, California, on November 12-15. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, however, it has indicated that it will not do so, and will instead change its agenda to focus on issues of security. ICANN has also asked that its stakeholder constituencies be prepared to make their own reports on how they are promoting security in the Internet's core systems.
Security of the Internet's naming and addressing systems is one of ICANN's most important and appropriate responsibilities, and CDT believes this is a fitting time for ICANN to take up the issue. However, the ICANN Board and the entire ICANN community must resist the urge to allow such immediate issues to derail other long-standing and important questions. ICANN must commit itself soon to resolving too-long-outstanding questions about the public's interest in Internet policy.
Information on the November meeting of the ICANN Board: http://www.icann.org/mdr2001/
Last year, the ICANN Board commissioned a study to examine issues of public participation, stating that it would make its decision when that study was complete. That study group (known as the At-Large Study Committee (ALSC)) released a short initial report in early September; a final report is due in November.
The ALSC's September draft report would greatly restrict users' participation in ICANN. Most troublingly, the ALSC recommended that the number of publicly-elected seats on ICANN's nineteen-member Board be reduced from the current nine to six. This reduction would mean that all ICANN policy decisions, no matter how sweeping (even including changes to ICANN's basic mission and authorities), could be passed by corporate and technical representatives over the unanimous objection of the Board's publicly-elected Directors.
The report also recommended that voting rights in ICANN be limited to owners of Internet domain names and payment of some not-yet-described membership fee. In CDT's view, ICANN affects all users of the Internet, not just those who own domain names. By limiting the public voice in ICANN, the ALSC recommendations would put ICANN beyond the control of the people affected most by ICANN's activities. In CDT's opinion, such an approach would threaten the Internet's openness and empowering potential. Membership fees pose the danger of disenfranchising Internet users from the developing world.
These and other recommendations by the ALSC stand in contrast to the conclusions of the NGO and Academic ICANN Study, an independent, international study of ICANN (of which CDT was a member). The NAIS report, issued in June 2001, advocated a more open, responsive vision of ICANN in which voting rights are available to all Internet users with an interest in participating and who have verifiable e-mail and postal addresses. The NAIS report recommended an ICANN Board of Directors that balances private technical and professional interests with elected representatives of the public interest.
The ICANN ALSC draft report is online at http://atlargestudy.org/
The NAIS report is online at http://www.naisproject.org/report/final/
Since hundreds of millions of users depend on ICANN-managed systems for smooth Internet access, ICANN's potential authority to affect the Internet as a whole is very broad. Right now, there are no effective controls to keep ICANN from abusing that authority some time in the future. CDT believes that, if ICANN is to safely serve the global Internet community, its activities must be constrained to the technical management for which it was designed.
These constraints should include:
These and other steps were recommended by CDT and Common Cause in a joint report issued in March 2000: http://www.cdt.org/dns/study.shtml
Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/.
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Policy Post 7.12 Copyright 2001 Center for Democracy and Technology
