BUCHAREST DIARY

Tuesday June 25

Jamie Love writes from Bucharest:

I'm here at the ICANN meeting, having arrived in the late afternoon. I briefly sat in on a meeting about the .org bids, and in another meeting organized by the "icannatlarge.com" organizing effort, which featured quite surprising presentations by Esther Dyson, followed by about 5 hours of gossip, drinks and food in the Marriott Grand Hotel, where the meeting is being held. . . .

Everything will lead up to the ICANN board meeting on Friday, and so far it looks like a depressing week. Most people say the June 20 "Blueprint for reform" document will be approved with a few changes on Friday. Among other things, ICANN is seeking to eliminate any possibility that there will ever be votes from the general public for anything, and doing its best to pass this off this as some consensus decision. ICANN also proposes to abandon an independent review board, and is seeking to adopt a statement on policy making that opens the door to just about anything.

The main thing here is about raising fears about what will happen if people don't go along with the ICANN "reform" proposal, no matter how bad it is. Many of these are seemingly inconsistent, and appeal as much to emotions as reason. Top on the list is the resentment toward the US for its current perceived control over the Internet DNS. Recent statements by members of Congress are being used to work people up over the US government taking over the ICANN functions. A large number of persons here find this a compelling reason to sign off on almost anything here, so that ICANN can (drum roll) sign a new MoU with the US DoC. Apparently having a really bad ICANN and DoC is held out as much better than DoC running the DNS without ICANN, as if this is something to worry about (plausible as a sustainable alternative), or the likely outcome of a failed ICANN.

Second on the list of feared things is the ITU, one possible replacement for the US DoC if there was international management of the DNS. The ITU is now receiving some member government support for taking a greater look a the DNS, particularly among developing countries. One of the issues here would be the redelegation issue for ccTLDs, an obvious role that ITU could play. A number of persons here express fear that this would lead to undesired national government involvement in the way some ccTLDs are run, on the theory that the current ambiguity of who controls the ccTLDs has prevented some countries from being too ambitious in regulating domestic Internet activity (or taking away lucrative franchises). Clearly some ccTLD operators are nervous about ICANN, and some ccTLDs are nervous about national governments. For those who are worried about domestic governments, they had hoped ICANN would provide a buffer.

I asked people, if you don't want the US DoC to have the DNS MoU, and you don't want the ITU, what do you want? The GAC? The answer among many was, nothing - they want ICANN without any government involvement. What seems missing from this wish is any evidence that governments will just turn everything over to ICANN and give ICANN a blank check to do whatever it wants, without any public accountability. Plus, ICANN is asking goverments to take a larger role, and they are.

Meanwhile, ICANN itself looks more and more like a cartel, or a quasi-government that seeks taxes and unwanted supervision of a cartel. Verisigin doesn't want an expansion of the name space, unless they can run everything, and neither do the ccTLDs. ICANN is doing approximately zero to introduce new TLDs. This problem is so obvious that ICANN is being warned that if can face antitrust law suits, an issue Joe Sims is advising the ICANN board on, I was told.

The at large organizing meeting was small and even I was surprised at how weak the support is here for elections of any kind. Esther Dyson and Denise Michel gave long presentations on how the board would not tolerate anything that involved the general public electing board members, and they described the new official ICANN "reform" version of the at large, which is a highly structured consultation system, that ICANN controls from the top, and which is not capable of holding votes from individuals. Esther went on about how unpopular elections and were in Asia and parts of Latin America, and how little support there was for elections among the non US members of the ICANN board.

At one point I said "look, in the White Paper, individuals were going to have 8 of 19 board seats. In Cairo this was reduced to 5 elected members. Then there was talk after Accra of having an at large as a supporting organization, with 3 board members. Now in the blueprint document, they will have 1 of 19 members of a nominating committee. Can you tell me how that 1 member will be chosen?" At this point, Dyson told me I should stop criticizing people, and be constructive. The answer, of course, is that the ICANN board cannot tolerate even the election of one person to a 19 member nominating committee. Apparently the mere existence of a system for having elections is a taboo, because it might lead to demands that elections be used for more important things, and could provide evidence that the public doesn't agree with the decisions of the hand picked board members. Of course, it is ironic that we having this meeting in Romania, and headed next to the People's Republic of China, to finish the job of eliminating democracy input or mechanisms to express dissent or popular opposition to ICANN Board policies.

Three members of the atlarge.com temporary steering committee (Vittorio Bertola, Izumi Aizu, and Wolfgang Kleinwaechter) and were at the at large meeting, and to my suprise, each of them signaled a willingness to accept the ICANN proposal to abandon any voting from individuals, in favor of a promise by ICANN to consulate with the public on issues. The Dyson, Michel suggestion is to be very docile, or the ICANN board won't even allow the consultation process. It is of course also relevant that the ICANN board wants to strip the ICANN General Assembly from the right to elect its own chair or vote on any motions.

I got into a debate with Denise about the value of pushing for a harder line on a role for the public in ICANN, mentioning the possibility that the US government could protect the rights of individuals in the ICANN process. Densie told us that she had 20 years of policy experience, and she knew exactly what was going to happen. She said: The US Senate would do nothing. The US House of Representatives would do nothing. The DoC would accept a slightly modified MoU in the fall, and the ICANN board would adopt the blueprint, without elections, in Shanghai.

Tonite Andy Mueller told me the ICANN board had one of its secret get togethers this evening, and agreed to approve the blueprint on Friday, with a few changes. The board is closing ranks, and trying only to cut whatever deals it needs to get the registries to go along. The $.25 per domain tax is not in the bag, according to some, while others say it will go through. There is an army of registry/registrars attending, but very few domain holders are here to complain about the tax, or to ask why they should have to pay, if they have no voice in the organization. The tax was just proposed on June 20. People have very low expectations that the US DoC will do anything to back consumer or civil society concerns about ICANN, and seem willing to give up on lots of things.

Wednesday June 26

I'm in the GA [General Assembly], and Denise, Esther [Dyson], Vittorio, and Izumi Aizu are on a panel to present a report on the at-large organizing effort.

Denise:

In Accra, the board has called for bottom up at large "structures." She reports $17k in contributions for at-large.org, and asks for more money. 16 "at large structures" have been created or designated by the effort. The implication is that all the groups who are listed on the at-large.org web page are on board with this new approach. There is some talk of creating a "structured role" in policy making, and input into the board decisions. She ends with a slide that says that greater involvement of governments and establishment of 'meaningful' participation by individuals are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Esther then jumped in to say some people didn't support a greater role by governments.

Izumi Aizu and Vittorio Bertola appeared on the pane with Esther and Denise, and were generally supportive of the presentation by Esther or Denise.

Esther made a confident (almost smug) presentation. She said "I hope you walk away with an appreciation by the huge amount of progress that has been made." Earlier the at large was an "incoherent" idea, now it is something with .5 million people engaged through the 16 groups, and a structure in place to provide input. If ICANN becomes government controlled, it will become too powerful. It is really important that ICANN be controlled by users, by the participants, than by governments.

I just had my time at the mike from the floor... and went through the basics... The proposal for "at large structures" eliminates any votes by individuals. The White Paper gave individuals 8 of 19 board seats. In Cairo this was reduced to 5. In Accra, the 5 elected seats were phased out, but there was some hope that there would be an at large SO with maybe 3 seats on the board. Now you have an at large "structure" that at best can place 1 member on a 19 member nominating committee for some board seats, and no one can explain even how that 1 person is selected. To present this as a success for enhancing the power of individual internet users is absurd. I said it was not true, as implied by Denise Michel's presentation, that the groups listed as part of the at-large.org effort support the elimination of elections for ICANN board members or the proposals in the blueprint to dismantle democratic mechanisms (http://www.at-large.org/at-large-members.htm).

Denise said that CPSR was in fact supportive of the new "at large structures" approach, and had joined in submissions on this to the ICANN reform. I'll let Andy Oram and Hans Klein respond with any helpful clarificatons on this point.

====================

This was followed by a presentation on the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), which recently concluded its elections. Alexander Svensson then asked a series of good questions, asking about how the elected members addressed issues of mission creep, why participation has declined in elections, and about "outreach" in the elections. I asked if there was fraud? And also, how much does it cost to audit the elections? The CIRA rep said that mission creep had not been a problem, the board had kept things fairly narrow, and that many people seemed satified with the CIRA operation, and were just didn't feel the need to be bother as long as things were working ok. The last CIRA election had about 1,000 voters. The CIRA has an external audit function, which ended up questioning about 100 votes, and ended up rejecting about 10. The cost of the audit and verification proceedure was about $3,000 for the June 2002 election.

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Well, the GA just concluded the discussion the blueprint proposals to eliminate elections for the GA chair to to prevent the GA from having votes on anything. Alexander Svensson asked for discussion. I was the *only* person to speak on this issue, and indeed, all morning I believe there has only between two or three other persons making any comments from the floor on anything. This has been the quietest GA meeting I have ever seen. No one else from the NCC or the at large spoke from the floor.

My point was that ICANN was seeking to eliminate every opportunity for ordinary people to register disagreement with the ICANN board positions. The elimination of at large elections was also part of this.

With respect to the GA votes on the two motions asking for a rebid (the blunt and more "diplomatic" version), Alexander did not mention either motion in his presentation, even though he had opposed having the votes earlier, on the grounds that it would lead to the elimination of the GA. [Interesting note: apparently Paul Twomey did not allow the GAC to discuss the GA vote during the GAC meeting, it has become an official non-event) Now we are in a situation where the GA will be changed in such a way that the public will not be able to choose its leader, there will be no unmoderated discussions, and no votes on anything.

In my opinion, the value of the GA being able to elect its own leaders and to register its own independent views is to provide evidence that the ICANN board is out of step with the Internet community (when this happens), and to prevent the ICANN board from claiming a global consensus, when they don't have one. It's a saftey value and a modest system for accountability, which apparently is why is being eliminated.

Thursday June 27

Today was grueling, in part because no one is getting much sleep and some tempers are short. Last evening the 11 .org bids were presented and today there was an ICANN public forum, which lasted all day. I'll start with a few words about the .org bid process.

DOT ORG

The various applications are quite detailed and take a while to understand. Nearly all of them appear to be mostly for the benefit of for profit companies, with an occasional non-profit group or "policy body" as window dressing, and maybe some true non-profits, as the IMS and Internet Software Consortium appears to be. It cost $35k just to provide a bid that most people thought was wired for ISOC/Afilias from the beginning, but there were still 11 bids, all of them serious. The asset is worth a lot. With a ~$5-6 per domain wholesale price and a cost of $1 to $2.5 to operate (according to some bidders) with 2.3 million registrations, I have heard estimates that .org is worth $35 to $100+ million, for #35k is cheap.

There is a lot of talk about Verisign, Register.com and maybe some others having a stake in more than one bid. ICANN had a "consensus" recommendation to award the bid to a non-profit, but at the urging of Robert Blokzijl and other board members, the ICANN board decided to eliminate the non-profit requirement in Accra. Rober Blokzijl's wife worked for Nuestar, one of the commercial bidders who is not teamed up with a non-profit, and. now Blokzijl is named as potential board member for Organic Names, another commercial only bidder.. Someone said Blokzijl and Amadeu Abril Abril have recused themselves on org at this meeting, but Amadeu was questioning some of the bidders anyway.

People who were working on this said the ICANN staff did a decent job of following the ICANN Names Council recommendation on the .org bid, which Milton Mueller worked on (given the fact that the ICANN board got rid of one of the primary requirements, that the bid be given to non-profit).

I had raised concerns much earlier about the bidding system, and had asked the ICANN staff and board to have a two stage process, where it picked the non-profit first, and then the non-profit picked the operator. My thinking was that the non-profit would then have serious bargaining power, and could get the operator for a competitive price, maybe $1 or less per year per domain (creating an interesting PR issue for the .com and other TLD registries that charge up to $6 per name, wholesale).. The two stage bid wasn't done, and as I had predicted, most bids are financed and controlled by the operators, who will make a bundle if the ICANN board likes them enough. Like a lot of what goes on here it is about who makes money off domain names.

Transparency issues

Well, I asked the ICANN board to stick to the unofficial secret meetings, and stop holding official secret meetings, a serous point that got a laugh. I also asked them to follow the DNSO Names Council example and provide MP3 files of their telephone meetings, which currently are closed and not recorded. Next, I asked what ICANN was spending on its litigation with Karl Auerbach over his efforts to have access to the ICANN books, and was told I could not have that information by Stuart Lynn. I sent Stuart and Vint a follow up message and talked to Vint and Hans, but apparently not only are the ICANN books secret, the amount of money spent on lawyers to keep it secret is also secret. One would like to complain to the GAC about this, but they also hold secret meetings, give the ICANN board secret documents, and won't meet with the public, so this is hard to do.

At-Large

Back in the old days when democracy was considered a good thing, "at large" membership meant you allowed individuals to elect people to the board. The ICANN board was supposed to have 9 elected members, then 5, then maybe 3, and more recently, and far more pathetically, maybe 1 of 19 members of a nominating committee that elected only part of the board. But apparently it can get even worse. Now Esther Dyson, Denise Michel and Lyman Chapin are pursuing a version of this that would seem more appropriate for Romania or the USSR in the "old" days.. The new idea for the "at large" is to have ICANN determine which groups "really" represent user interests, and to manage their "constructive input" into the ICANN process, sans elections for anything. Also, this apparently (in Lyman Chapin's proposal) provides a nice opportunity for the board to further stack the ICANN "NomCom", which is the body that is supposed to pick ICANN board members. and maybe other "bottom up" other bodies Apparently if you pick your cronies but call them the "at large" you can do this.

GAC

The GAC communique was long and detailed, and reflected a highly unusual amount of dissent among GAC member countries, almost as if they had minds of their own. The scribe's notes will probably do justice to the fine points, but allow me to briefly complain about my own GAC member, the USG. Earlier (a while ago) Robin Layton had promised many NGOs that the US would demand that ICANN address civil society concerns. None of this was reflected in the GAC communique. The fact that ICANN holds secret meetings, refused to record its telephone board meetings, doesn't disclose how it spends its money, has proposed eliminating elections for individuals, won't allow the GA to vote or elect its own chair, has transformed the "at large" into a board/staffed managed PR exercise, is acting more like a cartel than a consumer protection agency, and has refused to implement the independent review process is of course just great, as long as this is "private sector led." DoC's Robin Layton has done a great job of avoiding eye contact all week, so we haven't had a chance to understand why we are getting zero action from DoC yet. But I am informed that Robin is doing a good job of keeping track of the FBI's concerns over WHOIS data, and in close touch with US registry groups bidding on .org, so I guess this is all a matter of priorities.

My own presentation to the GAC was cut short, as usual, by Vint Cerf, who seems to have made a point this week of interrupting me from making any tough criticism of the ICANN process. Before Vint stopped me yet again from expressing any criticism of ICANN, I was telling Paul Towmey, the private sector former Australian government employee (who reportedly has a business with former Clinton administration official Ira Magaziner) but still chairs the GAC, that we would like to know which international policy making group is willing to talk to civil society. It is quite clear that ICANN itself is not making any space at all for civil society or consumer concerns, and is only interested in business interests, and so it is natural to ask, if not ICANN, who can we talk to on matters such as intellectual property policy, privacy, consumer protection, transparency, conflicts of interest, or competition policy? The GAC communique seemed to say that the GAC is the body that must control all of these issues. Of course, the GAC is more closed to civil society than any international body on earth, so this makes us wonder, what are we supposed to do? Nothing?

Evolution and Reform and Debate

It was long, it was interesting, it was a lot of going along to get along, but not always, and it was a lot of loose ends, particularly in terms of if the registries would pay for ICANN.

My contribution had to be brief and focused. Vint Cerf had cut me off every time I had talked on other issues, and of course, he did it once again. I started with thanking Alejandro Pisanty and Vint for their willingness to engage us in the debate, and for making some real changes in the really bad earlier proposals, to the current confusingly vague elitist proposals. (actually stated much more diplomatically). I noted the problems with transparency, nuking elections of individuals while keeping them for self selected business groups, and talked a bit about the NomCom proposal (the group that will actually elect ICANN board members),, and the decision to strip the GA of the ability to elect its own leaders. Then I switched gears and talked about mechanisms to decentralize ICANN decision making

I noted that I had engaged in extensive discussions of decentralization with Alejandro and Vint,on this topic, which had been ignored completely in the June 20 report. What we proposed was to acknowledge that there were few benefits in a "one size fits all" DNS regulatory approach, and that the process should reverse gears, and explore ways that global coordination would be minimalist.

I said, for example, that ICANN didn't need to do every regulatory function with new TLDS, they only needed to address issues such as uniquenesses of TLD strings, and whatever minimum standards for IP and consumer protection policy that were considered necessary from a global perspective, and to encourage others to address as many issues as possible. In my "several gatekeepers" comment, I talked about a scenario with about 7 or more mini-ICANNs, for different types of TLDs, each with its own management structure and objectives. These included a ccTLD group, 1 for treaty based organizations, 2 for commercial gTLDs groups, one for non-commercial, one for academic and one more I can't remember, as starters. The idea is to prevent a single group from becoming a barrier to innovation or competition (exactly what has happened in ICANN), and to create some competition among groups, so that people could choose where to register domains.

In this view, if you created competition among "gatekeeopers", there would be incentives to "get it right." Every busiess thaqt wanted to run a TLD string would have to be adopted by a "mini-DNSO." Mini DNSOs that had too much or too little consumer protection would not be able to attract much market share. At this point, Vint cut me off. As I walked away, Alejandro said that he could never understand how the decentralization would work, technically. If I had the opportunity to talk, I would have discussed the many different ways that this could work in terms of "solving" the uniqueness, issue,such as first come first serve, lotteries or arbitration based upon merit. But I am exhausted, and will turn in.

Earlier notes

In the public forum, Esther Dyson and Denise Michel just presented the at-large proposal. It is essentially a top down proposal, which allows organizations but not individuals to join, and will later develop a yet to be defined method of managing public input. The group not only did not propose the development of any mechanisms for votes by individuals, but its only suggested the board "consider" allowing this effort to "select" its own steering committee, and even then, under "Board-approved guidelines."

http://www.at-large.org/submission-to-evolution-and-reform-cmt.htm "We also recommend the Board consider allowing the At-Large Supporting Organization to select their Steering Committee and Board members under Board-approved guidelines/criteria."

Vint asked Denise if there would be methods of determining if the representatives of these groups actually represented the interests of their own users, and elaborated on his concern that they may only represent their own views. Denise said that they would be working on this issue, and Esther took the floor and discribe a system used by two merging corporations to confidentially poll (shareholders/stakeholders?). She also noted that when the results were contrary to what was desired, the poll results were not made public, and then she suggested this polling firm might be available to provide services for the at-large structures consultation. It was not obvious why Esther had come up with this example, or where she was going with it. There was another exchange regarding Esther's comment that she hoped for the development of "parties" that cut across regions, prompting Vint to indicate that he hoped this would not happen, which prompted Esther to appear to back off, and Denise to emphasize their understanding that the process would be managed in such as way to help faciliate consensus.

There were several persons in the room who have worked on At Large efforts, including for example Aizu Izumi, Vittorio Bertola and Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, who were recently elected leaders for incannatlarge.com[1], Esther's previous at-large effort, and persons who were involved in the NAIS and ALSC efforts. Only two persons from the floor spoke on the Michel/Dyson report, myself and Harold Felt from Media Access Project, a US NGO that works on free speech issues.

I began by noting that we are meeting in Romania, a country that has only recently abandoned a governance system that limited political freedom. I said that I opposed the top down managed public particpation system that Denise and Esther were proposing, and that it was likely to be used to control and supress criticism of ICANN, and that if ICANN was to get the trust of the public and governments, there had to be mechanisms for people to freely express opposition to its policies, and to freely choose their own leaders. I noted that ICANN is comfortable allowing a handful of select selected businesses represent all businesses on earth, but was unwilling to allow individuals to represent themselve directly, even in a structure that has little or no real power.

Vint said the board was short on time, and I was cut off. There will be further opportunties to discuss these issues later during the period to discuss the ERC report.

Harold Felt echoed some concerns about the at-large proposal.

[1] I was also elected to the "temporary" steering committee of icannatlarge.com. This body was supposed to hold a new election within 90 days. When it became clear that the panel was not going to hold a new election within the 90 days, I resigned.

CPTech statement on ICANN meeting
Friday - June 28, 2002

"I've posted a number of reports from here which reflect our views on the ICANN meeting, but now that the Board has approved with June 20 Blueprint plan, one week after anyone had seen it, it is time for governments to wake up and look at what is being created. Despite countless letters from the US Congress and contractual requirements to do so, ICANN is refusing to create an independent review panel. ICANN is eliminating the ability of individuals to freely debate issues with the ICANN system, even going so far as to remove the ability of the public to elect their own leaders or have votes in public forums that have no legal power. The original concept of a public "at-large" membership that would elect board members has been replaced with cynical top down staff/board managed PR exercise that will ironically be used by the board to pack key committees,including the new "NomCom" with cronies. Esther Dyson, who is making a career out of protecting ICANN from its critics or government oversight is currently in charge of deciding who "really" speaks for the public, and what constitutes "constructive" input. This is a huge mistake, because Esther is completely out of touch with the public, and would likely have no support in any at-large strucutre that was democratic.

The board can freely meet in secret, and makes no efforts to even record telephone board meetings, even when making decions that effect millions of internet users, such as the delegation of .org, a "business" that is probably worth $40 to $100 million. It will not provide its own board members access to its books, or tell the public how much ICANN is spending on litigation to prevent such access.

Everyone is searching to understand what the new "reformed" ICANN is, and it appears to be partly like the unacccountable International Olympic Committee (IOC), and partly like OPEC. The clique of insiders who control ICANN are not willing to give up control, the unelected board members who promised years ago to leave ICANN are still there, and the at-large elected members will soon be moved off the board.

The GAC itself is part of the problem. It does not meet with the public, is surounded by secrecy itself, and has done nothing at all to address the transparency or accountability issues for itself or ICANN. The member countries for the GAC should hold public consultations at home and also jointly to allow civil society to have a voice. The Internet is too important, ICANN's proposals for policy making authority too sweeping and ambitious, and the costs of cartel like activity too high to allow ICANN to operate outside of all known systems of accountablity.

Most important, the GAC and the member countries have to allow new ideas for DNS management to be given a fair hearing, the subject of the last motions the ICANN General Assembly was permited to vote on. At yesterday's meeting the ICANN board said it did not understand how it could decentralize policy making, as if there were some technical hurdles it could not overcome. This of course is no more true than saying the entire global phone system should be regulated by a single agency just become someone has to allocate country codes for phones. The entire DNS management issue needs to be much more decentralized, and the groups that act as gatekeepers to new TLDs should be spit up and put into a new framework that would have pro-competitive incentives, and give the public a choice and also a chance to create TLDs that they can control themselves. We expect to participate in a meeting on these and other ICANN issues on September 9-10 in Geneva, and we ask others who are interested in serious policy discussions about ICANN to also participate."

Jamie

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