The ICANN meeting at Bucharest has the potential of being
one of the historic meetings that can be a defining moment in the history of
I-Governance.
The two most important issues that are up for debate and
will have indelible impact on the Cyber society are the issues of
participation of National Governments in the management of ICANN and the use
of an "Election Process" for selecting incumbents for a part of the management
board.
Dr Lynn's proposal for modification of the management structure is
favourable to the Government participation. A sequel to this has already been
presented through the
report of a review committee which advocates a "Nomination Committee" to
select "non Ex-Officio members" to the management board and give a go by to
the election process that is presently in operation.
If accepted, this may lead to a permanent change in the
structure of the organization. If not, it could lead to a backlash which could
have a devastating impact.
Indications are that there will be a considerable debate on
these subject s during the Bucharest meet.
Presuming that the meet would discuss the issues in a
constructive manner, naavi.org places its views on some of the issues that are
relevant to the Netizen community and inter-alia provides suggestions on
possible structure for ICANN which allows independence for ICANN in some areas
while admitting the role for National Governments in some other areas.
Comments and suggestions from the visitors of this site are
welcome.
Naavi
Key Issues
Some of the issues that are likely to come up for discussion at the
Bucharest meeting are as follows:
1. Review of the role of ICANN and its core objectives.
2.Constitution of the Management Committee of ICANN and the representations
to be given to different interest groups.
3.Role of ICANN in relation to cc TLD managers
4.Role of ICANN in relation to International Domain Name System
5. Role of ICANN in relation to private DNS management systems such as
New.net and dotworlds.net
6. Need for separate TLD s such as .kids or .xxx
7.Role of ICANN in Domain Name Dispute resolution in general
8.Evolving a fair system of distribution of IP addresses when the new IPV6
protocol is introduced.
9. Role of national Governments in the administration of ICANN
1. Review of the role of ICANN and its Core objectives.
ICANN's core objectives at present has been
To support a viable Domain Name System
To Ensure Technology Coordination in Internet Management
To Ensure IP Number Space Administration
As a part of this process, ICANN has been drawn into the issue of
"Regulation" by being the implementation partner for WIPO for enforcing
Intellectual Property Rights applicable to the Meta Society in the Cyber
World.
There are several inconsistencies in applying Intellectual
Property Rights of the Meta Society to the Cyber Society. Neither ICANN nor
WIPO will be able to find answers to these inconsistencies.
In the long run it
is therefore preferable for ICANN to distance itself from assuming a "Regulatory Role"
which is not the Core Competency of ICANN. Any such involvement will be self
defeating since it will make the powers of ICANN subordinated to every
national regulatory authority and drag ICANN into several legal disputes
involving blocking of IP addresses, Domain Names etc.
Any attempt to assume the role of a "Regulator" and toe the
lines of WIPO in domain name issues will have the potential to create pockets
of dissention that may grow into a movement of Netizens that will challenge
the authority of ICANN. This will pit ICANN as an organisation working against
the community of Netizens rather than facilitating the growth of the
community.
It is strongly recommended that ICANN should keep itself away from involving in the "Regulatory" aspects
except under the directions of a competent court of a Country.
Borderless Society Proposal for Defining ICANN's
Interactions with Regulations:
Despite the best intentions, ICANN cannot however avoid
being dragged into too much of regulatory disputes since its functions are of
significance to the world community. We need to find out a mechanism therefore
that keeps the core ICANN insulated from too much of interference from
regulatory bodies. It is therefore suggested that for the purpose of determining the jurisdiction of Courts
on ICANN functions, ICANN should be declared as belonging to the "Border
less Society" and claim
separate status such as the UNO.
Any other status is indefensible against the claim of US
Government for full control on ICANN as a body coming within the jurisdiction
of US Courts completely, in which case,
Senator
Burns proposal should be carried through.
Under the "Border Less Society Proposal", ICANN should declare itself as a purely
virtual organization and any interaction with the Meta society Governments
would be through the "At Large Extensions" of each country. The At
Large units will be the Meta Society manifestations that will abide by the
regulations of the Meta Society and act as the intermediary channels of
communication between the geographical Meta Society and the border less Cyber
Society.
In countries where
At Large establishment are yet to come up, ICANN can designate the nearest At Large center to
represent itself in the subject country.
Election as the Legitimization Process For At Large
Extensions
In order to provide a legally acceptable status to the "At Large
Extensions", the present voluntary establishments have to go through a
democratic process of election to legitimize their nominations. This
process has been explained in greater detail under the next heading.
This suggestion will inter-alia require that the At Large
bodies should not only be retained, but be strengthened. An Election process
should be the essence of building legitimacy for At Large Extensions in each
country and should continue even for selecting members for the ICANN
management board. The Nomination Committee proposal is unacceptable and a
unworthy replacement of a Global Democratic process by a Global Dictatorial
Process for the Cyber Society Administration.
If the practicality of conducting viable, free and fair
elections , is an issue, it can be addressed separately. Some suggestions are
contained in this regard in this note itself.
2.Constitution of the Management Committee of ICANN and the
representations to be given to different interest groups.
Presently, the ICANN management has 5 elected representatives of At Large
Members in the 19 member board. In the revised proposal of Dr Lynn, 5 members from the
individual At Large community are expected to continue but 5 more persons are
likely to be nominated by National Governments. The At Large Community
representation would also follow a nomination process from a nomination
committee and not an election process.
There are two major objections to this proposal.
One is that it replaces a "Democratic Proposal" by a
"Dictatorial Proposal". Inherently, this process is amenable to manipulation
by vested interests more than the democratic process. As already stated, if
there are difficulties in conducting the election process, we need to find a
solution to this process rather than dropping it. If this were a solution, USA
and India would be more comfortable with Presidents or Prime Ministers
nominated by a Nomination Committee rather than through an election process.
Secondly, the nomination process, particularly the
Governments is unlikely to be sufficient to represent the large body of
nations that would clamour for representation. For example, 5 top countries such as USA,
UK, Canada, China and Japan could nominate their representatives while the
other 100 odd countries may remain unrepresented. It is therefore necessary to ensure a system that does not prevent
representatives from other countries from participating in the ICANN process.
Suggested Process:
It is therefore suggested that the world is divided into 5 (Even 6 if required)
zones and one zonal representative from each zone is allowed a place in the Board.
The Government representative can be nominated from the group of countries
forming the zone. The Governments of each region can develop their own
mechanism to arrive at their nominations and use a rotational principle if they so
desire.
The public nominees are elected through a due process of
election. In order to simplify the election process and make it manageable,
the process can initially be conducted within each country and the country
heads can meet in a group of elected representatives and nominate the zonal
representative.
If at a future time it is possible to conduct viable
elections across countries, we can either replace the country wise election
with the Zone wise election or provide for additional representation through a
Zonal President elected by a second election process.
In order to facilitate this process, the At Large participants
who have volunteered at present to function as representatives, should also organize themselves in
structures representing each zone, and each country. They can further develop smaller
sub
divisions such as States or Cities to enable people participate in the
administrative process and public education process to the extent
their resources permit. Accordingly, there should be At Large City units, State
Units and Country units. Elections can be held for each of these
organizations even though it is envisaged that there should be nation wide
election to chose the national representative to the zonal structure.
This structure would take some time to develop and during this evolution
process some countries will still be unrepresented. However, since all
elections take place on line,
once a proper system is evolved it is possible to quickly complete the
elections.
Once developed, we will have a global
democratic set up consisting of Netizens electing their representatives
through a Netizen friendly process to the Netizen regulatory body.
A System of
governance of the Netizens, By the Netizens for the Netizens.
The Netizen ID process required for such elections can be done through
established processes such as the Thawte WOT process, which is
economical and more efficient than the earlier ICANN effort which involved
sending of passwords by post.
naavi.org has promoted
www.cyberdemocracy.org to give a try for this concept and given the right
kind of support and sponsorship, can evolve a model election process first for
India which can be repeated elsewhere. Cyber Democracy.org is ready to start the process
of Thawte WOT certification of Netizens in Chennai to those who are willing (free of
charge). This can be repeated in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad, the
principle cities of India without much effort. What is required is a little
publicity effort and corporate sponsorship or separate funds for such
publicity.
If ICANN at Bucharest gives its clearance in principle, Naavi will take
further steps in this direction.
3.Role of ICANN in relation to cc TLD Managers
The ccTLD policies presently followed by ICANN provide a
role for national Governments of different countries to manage the ccTLD
process for their respective countries.
Unfortunately, not all ccTLD authorities are functioning in the desired
manner. Even in countries such as India which is a leading Computer literate
country compared to many others, the ccTLD administration is highly
inefficient. As a result, only around 5154 registrations of ccTLDs have so far
taken place in India as of 7th May 2002, since its inception in 1995.
Netizens in India have been more enthusiastic in
gobbling up gTLD domain names and .tv or .ws domain names in preference to .in
domain names. Even though the gTLD names are available in India at less
than US $10 per year, the dot-in domain names cost around US $20 per year (Minimum
registration is for 2 years and procedure is relatively more complicated than
gTLD registrations).
The ccTLD administration at least in India has therefore failed to bring down
the cost of registration or make the process netizen friendly. It is likely that many other countries may be in a similar
situation.
Why ccTLD Organizations have failed?
The principle reason for this situation is that there is no
dedicated agency that is directly responsible for "Domain Space Management"
in countries like India . It
is therefore neglected and ignored. Only South Africa has through the ECT-2002
is slated to create a "Domain Name Authority" for the ccTLD applicable to them.
In the long run, it is essential that the local
Governments are given some space to operate in the Domain Name Management
regime and this could be ideally in the ccTLD domain. ICANN will strategically
gain by letting local Governments handle the management of ccTLDs while they
keep off the gTLD domain to the ICANN. It is in the interest of ICANN and
within its core objectives to ensure that the ccTLD systems succeed.
However, the countries may need guidance and support to
effectively manage the ccTLD domain space and it is the responsibility of
ICANN to facilitate this. Through such involvement, ICANN can ensure that the
ccTLDs develop their policies in an organized manner acceptable to a large
number of other ccTLD managers.
Domain Name Authorities Structure
It is therefore suggested that ICANN should encourage
countries to set up their own Domain Name Authorities for management of ccTLDs
on the lines of what South Africa has done and create a "Federation of such
Domain Name Authorities" as a general assembly of ccTLD managers which is
managed through a board which they elect and
in which two or three places should be reserved for ICANN as a permanent
member with certain "Golden Vote" powers. (Similar to Veto powers in the UNO).
One member of this federation can also be a permanent
member in the ICANN Board in addition to the 5 zonal members already
discussed.
At large Representatives in each country can co-ordinate
with the ccTLD authorities in their respective countries on behalf of ICANN to
improve the functioning of the ccTLD organizations.
If the ccTLD organizations are weak, then the interference
of the Governments of different countries in the affairs of ICANN will
increase. IF ccTLD organizations are strong, then ICANN is likely to be spared
of the pressures to accommodate national Governments in its core functions. In
such an event, its independence will be lost and there
will be more politicization of the organisation. While the non Governmental
management is not free from possibilities of politicization, it is inevitable
in the event of Governmental involvement.
This is as much true of other countries as of USA where
senators like Mr Conrad Burns have already started demanding higher
involvement of US Government in the affairs of ICANN.
4. Role of ICANN in relation to International Domain Name System
The problems that have surfaced in the ccTLD domain name
management is likely to resurface when the International domain names acquire
official recognition after the testing process is successfully completed. The
management of International Domain Name space is more dependent on the local
population of a country in view of the language barriers. Along with the
ccTLDs therefore, the local Governments may require a greater involvement in
the International Domain Name systems.
It may be necessary to concede this point and the
national Domain Name Authorities should be encouraged to coordinate the
efforts of making International Domain Name systems truly interoperable.
5. Role of ICANN in relation to private DNS management systems such as
New.net and dotworlds.net
The private DNS management systems such as New.net and
dotworlds.net have created the possibilities of infinite TLD extensions
without disturbing the ICANN's DNS system.
It is claimed by these operators that nearly 20 % of the
Netizens are today equipped with the necessary plug-ins to resolve the domain
names offerred by these service providers. Even if this is partially true, it
does indicate the popularity of the service.
As a technology development of the free world, this effort
should be allowed to coexist with a measure of control necessary for ensuring
the smooth operation of the domain name system. ICANN management should
therefore create an exclusive single representation in its Board for the
representatives of this private DNS industry as it may be referred to. Like
organizing the ccTLD managers, ICANN should encourage these private operators
to organize themselves into a federation and send one representative from them
to the ICANN Board as a nominee. Correspondingly, these organizations can be
made to work without destabilizing ICANN's systems.
6. Need for separate TLD s such as .kids or .xxx
For some time there has been a demand from certain quarters
that in order to prevent the proliferation of Cyber Pornography, there has to
be filtering mechanisms of various kinds. One of the suggestions put forward
is to either create a separate TLD for kids so that minors are allowed freely
in this domain space, or a separate TLD space is created for hosting the adult
sites so that the filtering mechanisms can be more effective.
If this request is not granted, several Countries will
start using their powers to filter Internet content and use it also as a
license for censorship of various kinds.
Amongst the two alternatives, it would be better to create
the .xxx TLD and move all adult sites by force to this domain space. Any
violators should be controlled ruthlessly at the ISP level and any delinquent
ISP s will have to be regulated by the IP number space control.
7. Role of ICANN in Domain Name Dispute resolution in general
As a result of blindly following the WIPO thought process, today, an
organization that can claim a trade mark right on a name in some member
country can threaten the web existence of hundreds of domain names which can
be held similar or confusingly similar to the trade mark name either in its
entirety or as a part of any other extended name.
In the process, the system has given a go by to "First in the Market Place"
principle that is inherent in the Trade Mark system, disregarded the TLD
as a part of the "name" and the prior existence of similar names in different
classes and countries managing the Trade Mark system.
This has made a mockery of ICANN 's own system of TLD s since
acceptance of rights on one central name is any way binding on all TLD
extensions under the principle of Confusing Similarity. The continuation of
the multiple TLD system is therefore a "Fraud" on the public since the rights
on the domain can be questioned by the Trade Mark owner who had registered a
trade mark earlier in his country or can claim that his name is better known than another subject. The
several stop gap arrangements presently offerred such as providing an initial
priority booking time ( or wait list ) for the Trade Mark owner when a new TLD is introduced
etc is only leading to an organized fraud on the individual domain name
aspirants.
Today an individual Netizen is not even capable of registering a domain name
in his own personal name and holding on to it since there is a
possibility of some body else a little more popular in some other part of the
world snatching the
name because he is a celebrity.
There are too many examples of this kind to need a mention here.
But the summary is that the current UDRP system which recognizes the right
of a Meta Society Trade Mark owner in the Cyber Space and places it above the
right of a Netizen to carry on business in the name and style of his choice
without either "Passing Off" or "Defrauding" the public is totally
unfair. ICANN has to either withdraw the current multi TLD system or accept
that the system is prone to individual's rights being always subordinated to
other Trade Mark owners.
When more and more TLD s are introduced and International
Domain Names and Voice based Domain Name Resolution systems are introduced in
future, the conflicts in the existing UDRP will grow beyond resolution.
I therefore suggest that a system such as "Verify For Look Alikes",
which is a trusted third party disclaimer service (described in detail at
http://www.verify4lookalikes.com)
should be officially endorsed by ICANN so that most of the so called
"Confusingly Similar Domain Names" can co-exist without any legal hindrance.
8.Evolving a fair system of distribution of IP addresses when the new
IPV6 protocol is introduced.
In the next couple of years, the IPV 6 protocol is likely
to replace the current IPV 4 system. The present IP number allocation is
largely considered skewed against non US countries. When the new system is
introduced there is therefore a need for evolving a proper system of fair
distribution of IP numbers to different countries.
The distribution has to obviously depend on the number of
users. It is suggested that each year, the block of IP addresses allocated to
different countries is directly proportional to the number of verifyable user
base. Probably the number of registered ISP members could be one such
criteria.
The essence of the system should be that the discretionary
element be replaced with a system based on ground realities. The
allocations can be reviewed every year and readjusted if necessary.
9. Role of National Governments in the administration of ICANN
In the foregoing paragraphs, several suggestions have
been made to provide a separate operational domain for the national
Governments in the form of ccTLDs and International Domain Names. Their
concern on Cyber Pornography has also been facilitated with the suggestion on
.xxx TLD in the gTLD domain space.
In view of the above, it is suggested that National
Governments would be satisfied with leaving the gTLD domain space management
with the existing ICANN structure while representing their interests through
the zonal representatives.
Simultaneously, there can be a new body "General Assembly
of ccTLD managers" where ICANN will have permanent members with veto type
powers.
The At Large representatives of ICANN in each country will
act as the extended arms of ICANN in supporting ccTLD managers to improve
their service and coordinate in any other matter between ICANN and the
national Government.
I welcome suggestions and comments on these thoughts.
Naavi
June 17, 2002
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