[Privsec] CDT response to WGIG report

Tue Aug 16 04:15:05 BST 2005

Strangely enough i found this not on the ITU's WSIS site, but on the  
one maintained by the US state department.

http://www.state.gov/e/eb/cip/wsis2005/c15408.htm

Response to the Working Group on Internet Governance Report to the
World Summit on the Information Society
By The Center for Democracy & Technology
Preface:
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is a Washington-based  
nonprofit
organization that works to promote democratic values and  
constitutional liberties in the
digital age. CDT works with public interest groups, technology  
companies, individuals,
regulators and lawmakers to support rules and structures that  
preserve the essentially
democratizing nature of the Internet.
 From the outset of the global Internet governance debate, which  
began in earnest with the
establishment of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and  
Numbers (ICANN) in
1998, CDT has played an active role. Working through the ICANN  
process, CDT has
advocated for changes to make the organization more transparent and  
representative.
Outside of ICANN, through its Global Internet Policy Initiative, CDT  
has worked on the
ground in developing nations to promote the creation of legal and  
regulatory structures
that support open Internet development. CDT is actively committed to  
bringing together
voices from industry, civil society and governments to address the  
unique issues posed by
this global medium.
________________________________________________________________________
Introduction:
As a global medium for empowering individuals, promoting free speech and
democratizing control over mass communications, the Internet is an  
unparalleled success
story. Just as profoundly, it has become an essential element of  
worldwide economic
activity.
The Internet’s rapid evolution to a central role in global  
communications and commerce
has fueled a growing global debate over what sorts of institutions  
should oversee and
preserve the stability and accessibility of this resource on which  
we've all come to rely.
”Internet governance” poses a range of important questions, but in  
the heated climate of
the debate it has become too easy to lose sight of how well the  
Internet already functions
as a tool for commerce, democracy, and human development. While it is  
certainly
worthwhile to look for ways to improve the transparency and openness  
of the existing
governance structures, it is equally vital that we acknowledge that  
existing structures
have worked quite effectively to make the Internet the robust medium  
it is today.
Furthermore, to the extent that Internet development has been uneven,  
and that
developing and transitional countries in particular are at risk of  
being left behind in the
information society, much of the reason for that lies not in  
international structures, but in
national laws, especially the failure to reform the  
telecommunications sector and to create
a legal environment conducive to free enterprise. We must not fail to  
understand that the
current Internet governance regime -- made up of standards-setting  
bodies like ICANN
and others -- has been largely effective at performing its vital but  
limited mission. If we
ignore that reality and fail torecognize that many of the problems  
limiting further Internet
growth are national in origin, we risk jettisoning an effective, if  
flawed, governance
structure in favor of a new regime that could threaten the very  
security, accessibility and
openness we are all seeking to enhance.
The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was commissioned to  
address these
difficult questions and to provide recommendations to the United  
Nations' World Summit
on the Information Society (WSIS), which will convene for the last  
time in November
2005 in Tunisia. In July, WGIG issued its report on Internet  
governance, proposing four
possible alternatives to the current structure. The report is  
laudable on many counts. It
calls for the preservation of free speech rights online and the  
continued involvement of
multiple stakeholders (including representatives from industry,  
government and civil
society) in the governance process. Unfortunately, three of the four  
governance models
proposed by WGIG call for drastic, potentially destabilizing changes  
to the Internet
oversight structure -- changes that simply aren't supported by the  
current state of online
affairs. Indeed all four of the recommendations call for more hands- 
on involvement
bygovernment-dominated bodies, a development that would undercut the  
speedy, bottomup
decision-making process fostered by the existing network of non- 
governmental
management bodies that oversee the Internet's key functions. The  
report fails to
acknowledge that top-down governmental structures may not be the most  
effective – or
even the most representative – source of governance for the Internet.
The three most troubling recommendations in the report are premised  
on the flawed
notion that drastic change is necessary to make the Internet  
governance structure more
open and transparent, particularly to less developed nations. Before  
WGIG was formed, it
became clear that many in the UN were operating under the assumption  
that existing
Internet governance structures were unresponsive to developing  
country concerns or were
closed to their participation. Although UN officials were publicly  
agnostic about some of
the sweeping early proposals for Internet governance "regime change"  
from member
states, they openly rebuffed any suggestion that the UN may do better  
by simply keeping
its hands off the process altogether. Given that stance, it's not  
surprising that the WGIG
report calls for drastic, overreaching changes. However, the report  
fails to document its
premise that existing structures have not responded to needs of the  
international
community, and fails to consider how, to the extent they are  
unrepresentative, they could
be made representative without overreaching and unnecessary change.  
The report does
not examine the underlying notion that the Internet governance  
structure is broken
beyond repair and should be shelved in favor of an untested alternative.
The least problematic recommendation in the WGIG report is a call to  
create a permanent
global forum to discuss the issues surrounding Internet governance.  
The Summit has
proven, if nothing else, that these are issues comprise a major  
global concern. Strong
safeguards would need to be established to prevent such an  
institution from taking on
regulatory duties or disturbing the existing governance structures,  
but a properly
implemented international forum would provide a platform for  
governments, civil society
groups and companies to voice their concerns and offer  
recommendations for
improvements. It is not necessarily the case that such a forum would  
need to be
established through the WSIS structure, but it seems clear that some  
form of new
platform is needed to foster greater international communication on  
Internet-related
issues.
in sum, the WGIG report is a thoughtful document that warrants  
consideration by
governments and members of the global Internet community. Some of the  
conclusions
contained in the consensus document are unassailable, such as the  
need to preserve free
speech online and to involve multiple stakeholders in the governance  
process.
Unfortunately, too many of the recommendations in the report are  
premised on an
unreasonably dim view of the existing governance structure, coupled  
with a troubling
belief that an intergovernmental bureaucracy could assume control  
over key Internet
management functions without dragging the governance process into a  
political
quagmire.
________________________________________________________________________
Existing Governance Structures Should Be Reformed, Not Abandoned
Although the WGIG report properly extends its definition of "Internet  
governance"
beyond the technical management functions overseen by the non-profit  
Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), much of the  
report is devoted
to discussing concerns with the ICANN process and proposing severe  
changes to how it
operates.
ICANN is an easy and frequent target of criticism within the global  
Internet community,
and not without reason. The organization, created in 1998 to  
introduce competition to the
sale of domain names, has yet to achieve the lofty goals of  
simplicity, transparency and
public representation with which it was founded. As ICANN's efforts  
to make itself more
open have foundered, the organization has also occasionally reached  
beyond the limited
technical oversight mission for which it was conceived. The  
combination of limited
representation and the perception of an expanding mission have given  
the Internet
community considerable pause. CDT shares these concerns and has  
worked since
ICANN’s founding to address them, calling both for better  
representation and for a
limited mission. However, despite efforts to internationalize its  
board and membership,
the group is still widely perceived as being overly beholden to US  
interests. In defending
existing Internet structures, it's important not to minimize the need  
to improve and open
the ICANN process.
Yet for all of the concerns associated with ICANN, the group has  
tallied a slate of
accomplishments over the past seven years that would have been  
unheard of for an
intergovernmental body operating under the same timeline. Since its  
inception, ICANN
has introduced competition to both the retail and wholesale domain  
name businesses
(both former monopolies), drastically driving down prices for  
consumers worldwide. By
adding new Internet domains -- .info and .biz, for example -- ICANN  
has expanded the
Internet space, and created more choices for users seeking to  
communicate. It has
established procedures for re-delegation of country code Top Level  
Domains (ccTLDs)
and has approved the re-delegation of numerous ccTLDs to local  
organizations more
representative of the national Internet community. The organization,  
which boasts an
internationally representative board, headed by an Australian, Paul  
Twomey, has also
gone to pains to involve developing countries in the standard setting  
process, holding its
meetings all over the world, on every continent except Antarctica.
Although many of us have been dissatisfied with ICANN's efforts to  
make its processes
more transparent and representative, the organization has been  
responsive to the
complaints raised by businesses and public interest advocates. ICANN  
has juggled its
internal governance structure several times, and while many feel that  
the organization
hasn't yet struck the proper balance, its willingness to work with  
the Internet community
to resolve such issues contrasts favorably with even the best multi- 
national bodies, which
tend to be impenetrable to all but their member nations.
Complaints that ICANN has failed to adequately involve the  
international community in
its decision-making process are not unfounded, but the volume of that  
outcry seems badly
out of proportion to the limited nature of ICANN's mission. ICANN was  
commissioned
to oversee a narrow set of technical management functions for the  
Domain Name System.
Though it is worthwhile to make ICANN more internationally  
representative, reformers
should be devoting the bulk of their efforts to containing the  
ICANN's scope, which has
grown beyond its initial charter. Taking steps to limit ICANN's role  
could help alleviate
global concerns about representation.
Winston Churchill famously said of democracy: "It is the worst form  
of government,
except for all the others." That's a particularly apt description of  
ICANN, which, despite
its flaws, remains our best hope for properly overseeing the vital  
functions of the
Internet's global addressing system. ICANN is a young organization  
and is by no means
beyond repair. Working together, the global Internet community should  
continue to apply
pressure to encourage ICANN to narrow its scope and make its  
processes clearer. In the
meantime, the group must be given more time to evolve into the  
organization it should
be. Further, any proposal to change that structure or to alter the  
balance of control over
Internet governance must fully vetted and found to pose no danger to  
the stability and
security of the Internet.
________________________________________________________________________
Analysis of WGIG Proposals
1) Creation of a World Internet Governance Forum
The WGIG report contains several recommendations, but the one major  
proposal that
runs through the document is a call to create a new international  
forum to address Internet
governance issues. Although not without concerns, such a forum,  
properly implemented,
could be a valuable resource, both for the global Internet community  
and for world
leaders who feel that their voice is not being adequately heard in  
the Internet governance
debate.
Creating such a forum poses two major concerns. First, without a very  
clear charter
circumscribing the powers and scope of the new entity, there is a  
danger that a new
international forum could attempt to assume some sort of regulatory  
function, or expand
its involvement into areas that are the province of sovereign  
governments. Secondly, even
if the forum were established in such a way that it had a limited  
scope and mission,
"Internet governance" is a vast topic and could yield many years of  
discussions on
literally dozens of issues. Such an open-ended structure could force  
Internet policy
experts to commit thousands of hours of work that may be better used  
addressing the
immediate problems of Internet management.
One possible solution is, instead of creating a single, open-ended  
forum, the global
Internet community could address issues like spam, electronic  
copyright, and free
expression is a series of time-limited, issue specific forums. Such  
an approach addresses
concerns about mission creep and would allow experts in specific  
areas to convene
around the issues that are important to them without committing to  
years of discussion on
the overarching issue of Internet governance.
2) Proposals for Internet Governance "Regime Change"
At the heart of the WGIG report are four proposals recommending  
changes to the current
Internet governance structure. Of the four proposals, three (models  
one, three and four in
the report) call for the creation of a new intergovernmental body,  
likely based in the
United Nations, which would assume some level of control over the  
Internet's core
systems. The first and third proposals call for the new body to  
assume some sort of
oversight of ICANN, while the fourth calls for the elimination and  
replacement of
ICANN with a new entity.
It is not necessary to parse the differences among the three  
recommendations. Any of the
three would entail drastic changes to the way the Internet operates,  
with unpredictable but
quite likely negative results. Although they vary in the severity of  
the changes they
propose, all three would shift control of the Internet's core systems  
from a flexible
bottom up nongovernmental management structure to a vast  
intergovernmental
bureaucracy akin to the United Nations' International  
Telecommunications Union (ITU).
Although WGIG insists that none of its proposals call for governments  
to play a role in
the "day-to-day" management of the Internet, these three proposals  
certainly would
appear to hand veto power over day-to-day management decisions to  
multi-governmental
body. Forcing ICANN to clear all of it's decisions through a body  
made up of UN
member states is not substantially different from simply handing that  
decision-making
power over to the UN directly.
Even if there was no danger of an intergovernmental Internet  
oversight agency being
hijacked or stalled by governments seeking to impose anti-democratic  
controls on
Internet communications, the amount of time it would take such a body  
to reach any
substantive decision could stifle Internet development. Major  
initiatives of the sort that
ICANN completed in matters of months -- such as introducing  
competition to the Internet
addressing market and authorizing the creation of new domain names --  
could take years
or decades if they had to be approved through a new UN agency. In a  
medium defined by
the speed of its own evolution, such delay could be even more  
dangerous than regressive
policy proposals, which can at least be defeated.
The second of the four models comes the closest to offering an  
acceptable path forward
in Internet governance. Importantly, it does not call for the  
creation of an
intergovernmental body, or for a change in the existing oversight  
structure. Instead it
relies on the forum concept (described above) to give world  
governments a more
consistent voice in the Internet governance debate. Under this  
approach, the forum would
launch "initiatives" on various governance-related issues, providing  
analyses and
recommendations to ICANN.
This model raises issues of its own. It includes a recommendation  
that it "may be
necessary" to broaden the role of ICANN's Government Advisory  
Committee (GAC).
Made up of government representatives from several countries, the GAC  
provides the
ICANN board with the government perspective on policy matters.  
Although the GAC
does not have a voting role in the ICANN process, it is already one  
of the most influential
supporting groups within the organization. It is difficult to imagine  
how that role could be
increased without upsetting the balance of influence in ICANN and  
potentially
weakening the input of the many other stakeholder groups that  
participate in the ICANN
process. Also, while the WGIG report does not offer details on how  
the Internet
governance forum would interact with ICANN, that interaction would  
have to be limited
to offering non-binding recommendations. Anything more and it veers  
dangerously close
to providing an oversight function, which would erase the second  
model's advantages
over the others.
Like the forum concept, the viability of the second model depends  
almost entirely on the
refining language used to implement it. Properly defined, it could  
offer a path that
preserves the stability and openness of the Internet while at the  
same time addressing the
concerns of stakeholders who feel underrepresented in the existing  
governance apparatus.
________________________________________________________________________
Conclusion:
That WGIG was able to produce a document that garnered the consensus  
approval of its
own diverse base of participants is impressive. The report includes a  
commendable
commitment to preserving free expression, as well as to involving all  
stakeholders --
including governments, public interest groups and businesses -- in  
the governance
process. Further developed and properly limited, some of the  
recommendations contained
in the report may help to alleviate growing pressure from world  
governments to play a
greater role on the Internet governance process.
Regrettably, much of the report seems based on two fundamentally  
flawed concepts:
First, that the existing Internet governance apparatus is broken so  
badly that it should be
replaced by a new and untested structure; and second, that more  
government involvement
is necessary in future Internet governance efforts. Neither  
assumption is supported by
history, or by the current state of the Internet, which is, and would  
likely remain, stable,
open and secure absent any changes to the governance structure. Those  
incorrect
assumptions give way to a handful of needlessly drastic  
recommendations that would
threaten the openness and stability of the Internet. As governments  
ponder these
proposals, they must ask whether they want to risk destroying the  
effective, if flawed,
system for managing one of the world's most vital technological  
resources, only to
replace it with an untested system that could hinder the course of  
development from
which all Internet users have benefited.
If there is an overarching message to be taken from the report, and  
from the Internet
governance debate within WSIS thus far, it is that many governments  
feel inadequately
represented by existing Internet governance structures. Regardless of  
what comes out of
WSIS, it is vital for the U.S. Internet community to play a role in  
broadening the dialogue
over Internet policy issues to include voices from around the world.  
Such a dialogue will
highlight our common interests and perhaps illuminate areas where we  
can work together
to improve the governance framework without disturbing the security  
of the Internet.
________________________________________________________________________
For Information Contact:
Paula Bruening, Staff Counsel
pbruening at cdt.org
or
David McGuire, Director of Communications
dmcguire at cdt.org
(202) 637-9800

--
Robert Guerra <rguerra at privaterra.org>
Managing Director, Privaterra <http://www.privaterra.org>