HIGH TECH TUESDAY
The Web's Secret Gatekeeper
Edited by B. Virtual
By Bobson Wong,
Digital Freedom Network
(April 9, 2002) Amid
accusations of financial mismanagement, secrecy, and lack of focus,
the anonymous organization that manages the Internet is working
to impose sweeping changes to itself that in the long run will
fundamentally affect what people around the world can do online.
The Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a private U.S.-based
nonprofit organization that coordinates the technical management
of the Internet. Their main function is to manage the Domain Name
System (DNS), the set of rules that allow Web sites to be accessed
by letter names like www.yahoo.com. By controlling the distribution
of Internet addresses and the maintenance of the core systems
at the heart of the Internet, ICANN acts as the Internet's gatekeeper.
U.S. government
origins
ICANN was formed in
1998 after a long debate over how the Internet should be governed.
In its early days, the Internet was a computer network run by
the U.S. Department of Defense for researchers, universities,
and government employees to share information and resources.
Volunteers, the National
Science Foundation, U.S. government contractors, and grant recipients
handled many of the Internet's essential technical functions.
Since these contractors received government money, the U.S. became
the de facto controller of the DNS. As commercial institutions
and individuals around the world were allowed to connect to the
Net, the number of users grew, making management of the Internet
more difficult.
By the mid-1990s,
the Internet had become an international commercial and communication
network. A number of groups were increasingly dissatisfied with
the ad hoc way in which the Internet was run. Conflicts between
trademark holders and "cybersquatters," individuals
who registered domain names (Web addresses) identical to existing
trademarks and then tried to sell the addresses to the trademark
holders for profit, became more frequent. Meanwhile, the Internet
was still governed by U.S. research agencies who were not accountable
to the increasing number of Internet users who lived outside the
U.S. or who represented commercial or individual interests.
In 1998, after consulting
with various interest groups and soliciting public opinion, the
U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it would privatize
the administration of domain names. That year, ICANN was incorporated.
The Memorandum of Understanding between the Commerce Department
and the new entity spelled out ICANN's four functions:
- setting policy
for and directing the allocation of blocks of Internet addresses;
- overseeing the operation of the root server system, the special
network that enables computers connected to the Internet to find
each other;
- overseeing policy for determining the circumstances under
which new top-level domains (TLDs), the suffixes that appear in
Internet domain names, would be added;
- coordinating the assignment of other technical parameters
necessary to keep the Internet running.
Early achievements
With this new mandate
in hand, ICANN implemented a number of Internet policies over
the next few years, with mixed results.
COMPETITION AMONG REGISTRARS
Ending the lucrative monopoly of Network Solutions
(NSI), now known as VeriSign, ICANN allowed competing companies
like Register.com to register domain names. Most people welcomed
this move since it encouraged competition.
NEW TOP-LEVEL DOMAINS
In November 2000, after years of contentious debate, ICANN added
seven new top-level domains (the suffixes to domain names; they
are called global because they would not be limited to registrants
from a particular country) - dot-aero, dot-biz, dot-coop, dot-info,
dot-museum, dot-name, and dot-pro. Other organizations paid tens
of thousands of dollars in non-refundable fees to be considered,
but ICANN rejected their applications. The organization has given
no indication as to when it might approve additional top-level
domains.
UNIFORM DISPUTE RESOLUTION POLICY
ICANN devised a controversial procedure in which disputes
over who should own a trademarked domain name would go to arbitration
before one of several groups approved by ICANN. Critics have charged
that the ICANN-approved arbitrators issue decisions inconsistently,
encouraging those who bring complaints to go to the arbitrator
most likely to issue a favorable decision. Critics also say that
by creating a new type of regulation that transcends national
law, ICANN has overstepped its mandate of focusing purely on technical
coordination of the Internet. Others warned that the policy unfairly
protected large corporations with the money to launch and defend
against lawsuits. Defenders of the policy say that something needed
to be done to protect legitimate trademark owners.
GLOBAL REPRESENTATION
When ICANN was created, it agreed to abide by the principles of
stability, competition, worldwide representation, and "bottom-up"
management. The Memorandum of Understanding signed by the ICANN
and the Department of Commerce stated that ICANN was supposed
to "promote the design, development, and testing of mechanisms
to solicit public input, both domestic and international, into
a private-sector decision making process." However, ICANN
later decided that it would have no members and only five (not
nine, as the U.S. Department of Commerce had originally proposed)
of its 18 directors would be elected at large by Internet users
around the world. In 2000, elections for the five at-large positions
— one for each major region of the world — were held
over the Internet. Two of the five at-large positions were filled
by very vocal ICANN critics — Karl Auerbach of the U.S.,
representing North America, and Andy Mueller-Maguhn of Germany,
representing Europe.
While opening the
registrar business to competition received a generally positive
response, most of ICANN's other actions were sharply criticized.
Much of the criticism leveled at ICANN also raised questions about
the fairness of its structure.
Harsh criticism
and the surprising response
To its credit, ICANN's
leaders include several distinguished and knowledgeable members
of the Internet community. Vinton Cerf, who played a key role
in the development of Internet security technology and served
as founding president of the well-respected Internet Society,
is the chair of the board. ICANN President M. Stuart Lynn was
chief information officer in the University of California System.
Other board members include a former president of Radcliffe College
(now a school at Harvard University), a founding member of a European
open forum for Internet networking, and former telecommunications
and Internet executives from around the world.
Despite its talented
leadership, ICANN has been accused of overspending money, making
policy decisions secretly and unilaterally without proper input,
and straying too far from its original mission of preserving the
stability and openness of the Internet. In testimony before the
U.S. Senate, Auerbach noted that ICANN has become a regulatory
body accountable only to the attorney general in the U.S. state
of California, where ICANN is incorporated. Auerbach and others
have proposed remedies like limiting ICANN's powers, reducing
its complicated bureaucratic structure, forcing the organization
to focus on technical coordination, and increasing the transparency
of its decision-making.
However, ICANN responded
with proposals to limit public input even further. In February,
Lynn published a 30-page document saying that the organization
needed "deep, meaningful, structural reform." He expressed
frustration that ICANN depended on voluntary cooperation of many
entities, including governments and organizations controlling
country-code top-level domains (Internet suffixes like dot-uk
and dot-us that are the Internet equivalent of telephone country
codes), with little funding. Calling the election of several ICANN
board members "fatally flawed," he complained that the
dispute surrounding the election of at-large members had "occupied
a considerable portion of very limited resources."
Lynn proposed radical
changes, including allowing representatives nominated by national
governments to serve on ICANN's board, eliminating the election
of board members, giving the organization more power, and increasing
its budget. "Governments or bodies appointed with government
involvement can, it seems to me, certainly take a better claim
to truly reflect the public interest than a few thousands of self-selected
voters scattered around the world," Lynn argued in his paper.
He noted that several governments have given critically needed
support to Internet development over the years, but they had no
formal mechanism for input except for an advisory committee.
Fast track to reorganization
Lynn's document has
intensified criticism of ICANN. U.S. Senator Conrad Burns requested
that the U.S. Congress hold public hearings on ICANN. On March
13, several members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent
a letter to the Commerce Department expressing concern about the
proposed changes. However, no hearing date has been set. Five
days later, Auerbach, with the help of the U.S.-based Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF), sued ICANN in a U.S. court to get access
to the organization's financial records.
Meanwhile, ICANN has
already taken steps to implement Lynn's proposal. During a meeting
held in Accra, Ghana last month, ICANN's board voted to eliminate
future worldwide elections for board members, meaning that elected
board members like Auerbach and Mueller-Maguhn will probably not
be replaced when their terms expire. On March 30, ICANN released
its preliminary 2002-03 budget, which called for a 28 percent
increase in expenditures from the previous year but allowed expenditures
for at-large support "only to the extent that separate external
funding support is received." The budget suggests that the
money be spent not to hold public elections but to help form at-large
organizations. The Committee on ICANN Evolution and Reform, created
by ICANN last month, has set up a Web-based forum HERE
to solicit public opinion. According to ICANN, though, the committee's
"expedited schedule" means that comments received after
April 29 "are likely to be significantly less useful than
those received by that date." (The committee is scheduled
to make recommendations to ICANN's board at its meeting in Bucharest,
Romania on June 28.) So far, only a handful of people have posted
comments on the forum, and most of them lambast Lynn's proposal
as arrogant, ignorant, and undemocratic.
For now, everyone
agrees that ICANN has failed. ICANN's plans for reforming itself
seem to be on the fast track to implementation, but there is no
consensus on how ICANN can be fixed. The outcome of the debate
will ultimately affect how people access the Internet and what
they can do online.
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