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From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 11:15 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Policy Post 7.01: Congress Examines ICANN Decision-making on Top Level Domains CDT POLICY POST Volume 7, Number 1, February 8, 2001 A BRIEFING ON PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES AFFECTING CIVIL LIBERTIES ONLINE from THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY CONTENTS: (1) CONGRESS EXAMINES ICANN DECISION-MAKING ON TOP LEVEL DOMAINS (2) ICANN PROCESS UNDERREPRESENTS USER INTERESTS IN MAJOR ISSUES (3) CDT ADVOCATES INTERNAL REFORMS TO ICANN STRUCTURE (4) INTERNATIONAL STUDY TEAM BEGINS EXAMINING AT-LARGE REPRESENTATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) CONGRESS EXAMINES ICANN DECISION-MAKING ON TOP LEVEL DOMAINS Last year's selection of seven new global Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) continues to generate controversy. On February 8, 2001, the Subcommittee on Telecommunications of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing to examine the procedures of ICANN, the organization that oversees Internet domain names and other addressing functions. CDT Associate Director Alan Davidson testified at the hearing, describing the public's interest in ICANN, and the ways in which that interest can be best protected. The decision to adopt new gTLDs -- names that would join ".com," ".net," and ".org" as organizers of Internet content -- affects Internet users worldwide. The current gTLDs are highly congested and poorly differentiated, making it more difficult for users to find names that appropriately identify new online resources. New gTLDs, if properly introduced, could alleviate that problem and provide new opportunities for online expression. But a poorly managed rollout of new gTLDs could badly interfere with users' abilities to find and publish online content. The gTLD decision, like many of ICANN's decisions, is therefore of public interest. CDT believes that ICANN has a responsibility to ensure that the public is well-represented when such decisions are made. CDT's testimony is available at: http://www.cdt.org/testimony/010208davidson.shtml ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) ICANN PROCESS UNDERREPRESENTS USER INTERESTS IN MAJOR ISSUES Members of the Internet user community and advocates for user interests have been under-represented throughout ICANN, and as a result have been excluded from important decisions. ICANN holds quarterly in-person meetings at locations all over the world, at which most of its major decisions are made. The expenses associated with physical attendance at such meetings place participation out of reach of many NGOs and public interest advocates. As a result, decisions made by the ICANN Board of Directors are made without benefit of broad input from the user community. In theory, the ICANN Board of Directors includes representatives from the user community, but only five of the allotted nine seats for such "At-Large" Directors have so far been filled through online elections. Moreover, even the five elected Directors were not permitted to participate in ICANN's gTLD selection, nor have they participated in any of ICANN's decisions to date. Besides the Board, ICANN also includes structures meant to encourage broad participation, but they do so only imperfectly. While ICANN explicitly provides representation to a number of commercial interests, it fails to represent properly the millions of individuals that own Internet domain names or have an interest in ICANN's decisions. The main outlet for individual participation -- the General Assembly of the Domain Names Supporting Organization -- appears increasingly ineffective. Non-commercial organizations have a constituency, the Non-Commercial Constituency, but it is only one of seven groups making up one of the three supporting organizations. Overall, considering the broad impact of its decisions, ICANN does not presently provide adequate means for public input into its activities. CDT believes that major changes are necessary if ICANN is to achieve the degree of responsibility and legitimacy required for it to administer such important Internet functions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (3) CDT ADVOCATES INTERNAL REFORMS TO ICANN STRUCTURE For the last fifteen months, CDT has advocated strongly for broadly representative, fair mechanisms to provide this representation to ICANN. In March 2000, CDT and its partner Common Cause prepared a study of ICANN's election system, concluding that an "indirect election" system proposed by ICANN would not adequately represent the public's voice. In response, ICANN agreed to hold more democratic direct elections -- eventually held in October 2000 -- but has yet to settle on a permanent system to select "At-Large" Directors representing users. CDT also believe that the process used to select gTLDs was flawed in this instance, and that reform is needed to ensure that all of ICANN's future decisions are transparent, objective, and obviously fair. Policies such as the non-refundable $50,000 fee ICANN requires just to apply for a gTLD need to be modified in such a way that ICANN is able to recoup its expenses without shutting the door on non-commercial applications. And, prior to making any decisions, ICANN should publish and adhere to a set of clear, objective criteria. Finally, ICANN should always provide full justification for its choices, so as to allow maximum opportunity for review and/or appeal. Above all, ICANN needs to find ways to enforce a more limited mission statement. ICANN was designed as a technical management organization, not a policy-making institution for the Internet. Although some of its decisions may have policy implications, we believe ICANN is not equipped to make its choices based on anything but narrow, technical considerations. To its credit, the current ICANN Board has reiterated its desire to keep ICANN to a strictly technical mission and out of troubling policy matters. However, CDT believes that for ICANN to truly become both responsible and legitimate, it must adopt a three-pronged approach to its decision-making structure. First, and to the extent possible, ICANN must limit its activities to the purely technical. Second, ICANN needs to return to the bottom-up consensus-building processes envisioned in its founding documents. Finally, ICANN should implement meaningful representation for the entire Internet community throughout its organization, so that the all of the diverse interests found on the Internet may contribute to ICANN's activities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (4) INTERNATIONAL STUDY TEAM BEGINS EXAMINING AT-LARGE REPRESENTATION CDT and a team of international researchers from the non-profit and academic community have recently begun examining the specifics of last year's ICANN election in order to identify areas of success and shortcoming. The study project, known as the NGO and Academic ICANN Study (NAIS), will examine the nature of public representation in ICANN, and will provide recommendations to the Board and the community. CDT and its partner Common Cause serve as project coordinators for NAIS, as well as North American researchers. On February 7, the NAIS team transmitted a letter to the head of ICANN's own Study Committee, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. In that letter, NAIS members requested that the Committee make important data from last year's election -- web logs, voting data, technical specifications, etc. -- available to the public for thorough evaluation. NAIS urged ICANN to be forthcoming with a wide variety of details from several months of voter registration and campaigning, while at the same time protecting the individual privacy of voters as fully as possible. ICANN's first meeting of 2001 will be held in Melbourne, Australia, in early March. The NAIS team expects to hold a workshop immediately prior to the meeting, to inform the community about NAIS's progress and to solicit opinions about the direction of NAIS's work. The final NAIS report will be presented to the ICANN Board of Directors at ICANN's second meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 4. A copy of NAIS's letter to Carl Bildt is available at: http://www.cdt.org/dns/icann/nais/010207bildt.shtml An overview of the NAIS project, including a list of participants, is available at: http://www.cdt.org/dns/icann/nais/010207overview.shtml ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/. This document may be redistributed freely in full or linked to http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_7.01.shtml. Excerpts may be re-posted with prior permission of [log in to unmask] Policy Post 7.01 Copyright 2001 Center for Democracy and Technology --------------------------------------- CDT Policy Post Subscription Information To subscribe to CDT's Policy Post list, send mail to [log in to unmask] In the BODY of the message type "subscribe policy-posts" without the quotes. 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