United States cedes control of the internet - but what now?
By Kieren McCarthy

July 27, 2006, The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/27/ntia_icann_meeting/

In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United
States government last night conceded that it can no longer
expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over
the internet.

Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its
voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to
transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing
organisation ICANN, making the organisation a more
international body.

However, assistant commerce secretary John Kneuer, the US
official in charge of such matters, also made clear that the
US was still determined to keep control of the net's root zone
file - at least in the medium-term.

"The historic role that we announced that we were going to
preserve is fairly clearly articulated: the technical
verification and authorisation of changes to the authoritative
root," Kneuer explained following an afternoon of explicit
statements from US-friendly organisations and individuals that
it was no longer viable for one government to retain such
power over the future of a global resource.

Despite the sentiments, however, it was apparent from the
carefully selected panel and audience members that the
internet - despite its global reach - remains an English-
speaking possession. Not one of the 11 panel members, nor any
of the 22 people that spoke during the meeting, had anything
but English as their first language.

While talk centered on the future of the internet and its
tremendous global influence, the people that sat there
discussing it represented only a tiny minority of those that
now use the internet every day. Reflections on the difficulty
of expanding the current internet governance mechanisms to
encompass the global audience inadvertently highlighted the
very parochialism of those that currently form the ICANN in-
crowd.

When historians come to review events in Washington on 26 July
2006, they will no doubt be reminded of discussions in
previous centuries over why individual citizens should be
given a vote. Or, perhaps, why landowners or the educated
classes shouldn't be given more votes than the masses.

There was talk of voting rights, or what the point was of
including more people in ICANN processes, and even how people
could be educated sufficiently before they were allowed to
interact with the existing processes.

Ironically, it was ICANN CEO Paul Twomey who most accurately
put his finger on what had to be done. One of the most
valuable realisations that ICANN has ever come to, he noted,
was that when it revamped itself last time, it recognised it
hadn't got it right. Even more importantly, Twomey noted, was
the fact the organisation recognised that "it would never get
it right. And so ICANN put a review mechanism into its
bylaws".

The reason Twomey's observations are particularly noteworthy
is that it is Paul Twomey himself who has consistently - and
deliberately - failed to open ICANN up, keeping meetings
secret, and refusing to release information about discussions
either before a meeting and, in some cases, after the meeting.

A stark warning came from the Canadian government - the only
government except for the US government invited to speak.
Recent arrival, but highly knowledgeable representative, Bill
Graham was extraordinarily clear. "It is time for ICANN to
recognise that it is in many ways a quasi-judicial body and it
must begin to behave that way," he said.

"The ICANN board needs to provide adequate minutes of all its
meetings. There needs to be a notice of what issues will be
considered, and the timeframe when a decision is made. A
written document needs to be posted setting out the background
and context of the issues. There needs to be an acknowledgment
and a summary of the positions put forward by various
interested parties; there needs to be an analysis of the
issues; there needs to be an explanation of the decisions and
the reasons for it; and ultimately there needs to be a
mechanism for the board to be held accountable by its
community."

Everyone recognised the meeting as an historic turning point
in the future of the internet, causing a strange amount of
one-upmanship among those taking part, most of it covering how
long they had been involved with ICANN. Paul Twomey referred
to the Berlin meeting (1999); an irregular ICANN contributor
(on the panel thanks to US governmental influence) spoke of
"being there before ICANN was even created". The swagger got
so bad that several well-informed contributors were forced to
apologise because they had only been to three ICANN meetings.

Ultimately, what came out of a gathering of the (English-
speaking) great and the good regarding the internet was two
things:

    1. That the US government recognises it has to transition
    its role if it wants to keep the internet in one piece (and
    it then has to sell that decision to a mindlessly patriotic
    electorate)
    2. That ICANN has to open up and allow more people to
    decide its course if it is going to be allowed to become
    the internet's main overseeing organisation

If you ignore the fact that the conversation only happened
within a tiny subset of the people that actually use the
internet, everyone can feel quite content in walking away
feeling that at least people now understand their point of
view.

As a rare non-US contributor, Emily Taylor, Nominet's lawyer,
UK citizen, and a member of the IGF Advisory Group told us she
felt that "the fact that the meeting took place was as
valuable as anything that was discussed".

That much is certainly true. The US has recognised that it can
no longer hope to control the internet. The next step is for
everyone invited into the party this time to recognise that
they too play only a small role in the global revolution that
is this jumble of interconnected computer networks. ® Related
stories

Future of the net to be decided tomorrow (25 July 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/25/ntia_public_meeting/
US government urged again to end net role (21 July 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/21/burr_cade_usg_paper/
US government told to take its hands off internet (15 July
2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/15/ntia_inquiry_results/
The internet needs YOU! (2 July 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/02/ntia_icann_consultation/
Governments to decide future of net (28 June 2006)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/28/gac_icann_communique/

© Copyright 2006
S. E. Anderson
author- "The Black Holocaust For Beginners" a Writers and Readers
book