The
Devil is in the Details
On
September 25, 1999, a message from John Patrick of IBM
was posted on several DNS-related mailing lists. It is
certainly important for those of us monitoring ICANN's
activities to hear the reasons behind IBM's involvement
and bridge grant to ICANN. Nonetheless, as one who has
closely monitored and archived ICANN's development and
the evolution of the administration of the DNS for 3.5
years, I take great exception to several assertions that
Mr. Patrick's message contains.
No
dispute that it's hard to see what aspect of social,
educational, political and commercial life won't be
affected by the Internet. So what makes the Internet work
and who is responsible to ensure it will continue working
in the future as the growth continues? Mr. Patrick says
that's the role that ICANN was designed to
play.
ICANN,
originally the more generic Newco, was a concept to fill
the specific role of coordinating technical
administration. Every policy, every bylaws amendment,
every resolution and meeting should be measured against
whether ICANN is fulfilling that very specific role. I
claim that the ICANN board has gone far beyond its
original mandate, and that is a scary and dangerous
concern.
No
one denies that the Internet is a global entity and that
no one country should be on the hot seat as its ultimate
authority. Mr. Patrick asserts that a central, global,
non-profit private sector third party should oversee the
administration of Internet domain names. Instead of an
accountable contractor, IANA, we now have an
unaccountable non profit corporation, led by a board
handpicked by a handful of insiders through a secret
process. That cure is worse than the ill it was
established to resolve.
ICANN
has made many egregious errors, and the reason it has not
yet imploded is because people claim there is no
alternative, no structure that would receive global
approval. So technical coordination has transmogrified
into international political power-mongering. What an
improvement!
The
U.S. government, or, specifically, the Clinton
Administration, presented its fateful Presidential
Directive on Electronic Commerce on July 1, 1997, which
put this whole redirection of Internet administration
into play. Why didn't it look to see what other models
might be drawn from the cross border activities of
nations and their citizens. For example, the airline
industry is privatized, but the Federal Aviation
Administration still keeps U.S. standards on track. Its
funding comes, indirectly, from U.S. taxpayers, not from
international corporations who are major stakeholders in
the policies that will ensue from ICANN. I hold the
belief that there are no free lunches and that a loan or
grant gives the funding party an implied quid pro quo
advantage.
ICANN
is, indeed, mandated to address a narrow, well-defined
list of tasks that define the administration of the
Internet: a) coordinating the assignment of the top level
of the domain name system;b) overseeing the root name
server system; c) coordinating the assignment of
parameters for technical standards; and d) overseeing the
assignment of IP addresses.
However,
ICANN has quickly moved beyond these technical parameters
into onerous policy directives for individual domain name
registrants. If the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy is
accepted as proposed, registrants will have to assert
knowledge about third party usage of names that we cannot
possibly possess. We will have to sign a contract with
accredited registrars that gives them the sole discretion
to delete or change our use of a domain name. Further,
the policy asserts a process to acknowledge and protect
rights, but what rights?. Reduction of piracy, copyright
and trademark infringement are not components of
technical coordination. A legal system exists and has
been developed through generations of precedence. It will
survive the complexities of this borderless medium, just
as it survived the introduction of other
communication-enabling technologies.
The
only "achievement" ICANN can point to is the introduction
of competition into domain name registrations, although
NSI agreed to support that objective long before ICANN
was incorporated (see testimony
of Gabriel Baptista,
CEO of NSI before the Basic Research Committee of the
U.S. House of Representatives, Science Committee,
September 25, 1997) So much money, so much discussion to
allow 76 companies to be resellers for .COM, NET and ORG
domain names for Network Solutions!
The
ICANN bootstrapping process will not allow individual
users to directly elect their own board representatives.
Along the way, the bylaws have been reiterated five
times, with another change in the works. The structure
that ICANN has developed is so labyrinthian and
convoluted that one needs a road map to find the way
through the maze, to know who is allowed to propose an
initiate or vote on recommendations. The World
Internetworking Organization has posted an
organizational
chart
of the complicated organization that "ICANN lite" has
built.
Mr.
Patrick claims that if ICANN were to fail, the likely
result would be governmental agencies "subject, as
always, to political influences -taking over the
management of the Internet". He suggests that the
stability of the Internet depends upon ICANN's success
and encourages us to move forward with the transition
rapidly rather than arguing about the process. Esther
Dyson, ICANN's chair, shares this Machiavellian approach.
During a public
meeting
of the ICANN board on August 25, 1999, she
said,
"we are less interested in complaints about process" and
more interested in "doing real work and moving
forward."
In
the eyes of John Patrick and Esther Dyson, the end
justifies the means, and those means, be absolutely sure,
are politically and commercially self-motivated. This
does not bode well for the people around the world
relying on the Internet for "education, disease
management, entertainment, real-time communications and
collaboration, and even government services, to name just
a few uses.
If
the devil is in the details, read carefully
ICANN's
Registrar Accreditation
Guidelines
and the new Draft Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy that
will be posted in the next day or two. The Statement of
Registrar Accreditation Policy, adopted by ICANN on March
4, 1999, invokes this provision upon the domain name
registrants:
J.7.i.
The SLD holder shall agree that its registration of
the SLD name shall be subject to suspension,
cancellation, or transfer by any ICANN procedure, or
by any registrar or registry administrator procedure
approved by ICANN, (1) to correct mistakes by the
registrar or the registry administrator in registering
the name or (2) for the resolution of disputes
concerning the SLD name.
And
combine that with the more onerous provisions in the
proposed Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy:
3.d.
We may also cancel, transfer or otherwise make changes
to a domain name registration in accordance with the
terms of your Registration Agreement or other legal
requirements.
In
other words, ICANN's accreditation includes carte-blanche
control over the domain name registration of all .COM,
.NET and .ORG names. The devil that we don't know, ICANN,
is far worse than the one we did (IANA, under NSF
oversight), which focused on the zone delegation to
assure a workable scheme for domain name resolution.
I
don't believe the claim that the Internet will break if
ICANN doesn't succeed and assert control over trademark
disputes and registrar accreditations. Underneath the
Patrick PR pro-ICANN/GIP puffery send-up is the
revelation from ICANN: "We may also cancel,
transfer, or otherwise make changes to a domain name
registration. . . . "
Now
there''s a sodden thought, certain to inspire confidence
in ICANN's "technical administration" of the
Internet.
by
Ellen Rony
September 27, 1999
