A BRIEFING ON PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES AFFECTING CIVIL LIBERTIES ONLINE
from
THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
CONTENTS:
(1) ICANN President Proposes Radical Changes to Net Management Body
(2) ICANN Reforms Fail to Constrain Authority, Activities
(3) CDT, Partners Restate Principles for ICANN's Public Legitimacy
(4) Board Should Continue Ongoing Processes on User Role at ICANN
(5) Online Resources About ICANN Restructuring
M. Stuart Lynn, President of a key private management body for the Internet, has proposed a new structure for his organization that raises serious questions about whether principles of public accountability and openness will be applied in the administration of critical Internet resources.
Lynn is chief officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the private non-profit body that coordinates certain important online domain name and addressing function -- such as the creation of new "top-level domains" like .com or .biz. The systems ICANN manages are global in nature, and CDT and others find ICANN's activities important enough that we have urged ICANN to provide means of participation for all affected interests.
The Lynn proposal provides an honest and forthright assessment of the problems facing ICANN. But its proposed remedies raise serious concerns. The Lynn proposal would scale back ICANN's accountability for its actions and its transparency before the online community. It would eliminate direct representation of users on ICANN's Board, replacing the nine members of ICANN's Board originally to be elected by the public "at-large" with five Board members selected by national governments. It would increase ICANN's budget 300-500% and seek funding from governments. It would change ICANN's relationships with the network operators it affects, requiring that they accept ICANN's authority and contribute financially in order to have a voice in its proceedings. Most important, it would do little to address core concerns about the unchecked growth of ICANN's powers and activities.
CDT harbors grave concerns about the Lynn proposal in its current form. We believe that the original conception of ICANN -- a non-governmental organization with a limited coordination function and committed to making sound technical decisions through open, bottom-up processes -- remains the best and most legitimate way to coordinate core Internet functions.
A top concern about ICANN is that what was once considered a narrow, "technical coordination" body could leverage its unique authority over Internet systems into much broader policy-setting activities - without adequate policy processes to ensure accountability to those affected by its decisions.
The Lynn proposal makes this problem worse, by reducing accountability while increasing the risk of "mission creep."
ICANN's central coordination role gives it the potential to exercise a great deal of power by conditioning how names and numbers are assigned. While the current ICANN Board admirably disavows any intent to set broader policies, a future Board will face tremendous pressure to use its authority to regulate the use of names, promote government taxation or consumer protection goals, or even control content.
There is already evidence that ICANN is exercising its powers beyond the minimal role set out in its founding documents. It has created massively detailed and regulatory contracts with the new top-level domains created in the last year. It exercised remarkable discretion in picking those seven new TLDs based on many factors besides technical merit -- including how names "sounded". It now turns its attention toward "keyword" systems that are not even part of the domain name system.
Unfortunately, the Lynn proposal fails to clarify ICANN's narrow, technical mission or to install safeguards that will prevent it from venturing beyond those prescribed limits. If anything, the proposal heightens the risk of "mission creep," most notably by seeking funding from governments and placing government-selected trustees on the ICANN Board. While governments have a role to play in the ICANN process, without clear guidelines such close ties to government will affect ICANN's independence and narrow mission.
CDT believes ICANN must get "back-to-basics" -- committing itself in a clear and tangible way to a core technical coordination mission, and providing checks and balances to ensure that its activities will remain limited. Without such a check on its authority, the user community will have difficulty ever trusting in ICANN.
ICANN has worked hard to incorporate key principles of transparency, representation, and bottom-up governance. CDT and its international partnership to examine ICANN, the NGO and Academic ICANN Study (NAIS), are concerned that the Lynn proposal constitutes a disappointing retreat from these elemental principles. The proposal:
If ICANN abandons these principles, it risks becoming further detached from the interests of the community it was meant to serve. CDT and its NAIS partners strongly urge ICANN to keep these principles close in mind as it reviews the Lynn and other proposals.
The NAIS statement is available at http://www.naisproject.org/020301statement.shtml
The Lynn proposal clearly merits attention, and will likely consume ICANN's attention for months to come. However, if the Board fails in Accra to pass bylaws preserving the At-Large Directors, then the outcome may be the same as if it took action to destroy them.
Dr. Lynn's publication of his reform proposal comes less than three weeks before ICANN's quarterly meeting in Accra, Ghana. At that meeting, the Board was expected to approve preparations for a new public election of five At-Large Directors. If preparations are not made, than an election will not take place this year and, as ICANN's current bylaws provide, the At-Large Directors will leave the Board without their replacements having been named. This would effectively terminate the role of the At-Large Membership at ICANN.
Moreover, the Lynn proposal has been released just as ICANN's own committee to examine the At-Large concept, the At-Large Study Committee (ALSC), is nearing completion of its work on reinvigorating the At-Large concept. Other groups, such as the NGO and Academic ICANN Study (NAIS), have made similarly large investments of time and energy in a process that is now being abridged.
The ICANN Board should not permit the introduction of this expansive new proposal to derail an ongoing process. In order to avoid prejudging the viability of the At-Large Membership, allowing all the effort so far expended to explore the public's role in ICANN to go to waste, the Board's Accra meeting should fully and openly treat the issue of At-Large membership before the Board moves on to new, more radical proposals.
NAIS has also issued a more recent statement on the public voice in ICANN, "A Defining Moment for the At-Large and ICANN," available at http://www.naisproject.org/020222statement.pdf.
For more information about ICANN and domain names management, visit http://www.cdt.org/dns/
Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/.
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Policy Post 8.04 Copyright 2002 Center for Democracy and Technology
