 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Internet Body Thinks Globally
by William New
At its board meeting this week, the organization that oversees the Internet-addressing system is facing crucial issues such as funding and international acceptance that could make or break its very existence. Yet few hard decisions are likely on those issues, attendees said. Instead, they said the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), just six years old and perennially underfunded and under attack, will face a barrage of debate and skepticism.
A nonprofit located in Marina del Rey, Calif., ICANN was established in 1998 under agreement with the U.S. government, which maintains ties to it. ICANN officials said on Sunday that the organization "has continued to successfully complete all of its objectives to date" under its agreement with the U.S. Commerce Department.
"ICANN is pleased to continue its successful collaboration with [Commerce] and to have [Commerce's] full support in solidifying ICANN's strategic outlook, corporate stability and support systems through the public-private partnership," Paul Twomey, ICANN CEO and president, said in a statement. "ICANN is turning the corner toward autonomous operation and is on path to full independent oversight of the ICANN functions under its global structure and with its global community."
Commerce officials also have indicated satisfaction with ICANN's progress.
The Agenda In Malaysia
This week's meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is the second of three annual meetings of the ICANN board. Officials report that turnout is expected to be good, estimated at some 500 people, with many of them from Asia.
Asian participation is considered important to ICANN's objectives. Key challenges facing the body since its inception have been overcoming perceptions that it is too U.S.-oriented and winning global support for ICANN's Internet oversight. Special sessions will be held during the week to address internationalization of ICANN and global Internet governance issues.
Markus Kummer, executive director at the secretariat of the working group on Internet governance called for by the U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in December, will be at the ICANN meeting. Kummer told National Journal's Technology Daily that he will be in Kuala Lumpur as an observer, without a specific role, "explaining my work and listening to the various actors." He added, "ICANN is of course an important actor in the process ahead of us, and it is important for me to know the key players and their concerns."
In addition to ICANN's global role, the top issue at this week's meeting is expected to be ICANN's proposal to double its budget, from $8.3 million to $15.8 million. That would include a $2 million increase for legal expenses and some sensitive plans to tap constituents for more revenue. Some domain-name registrars, who resell Internet addresses to users, are said to be preparing to fight for changes to the budget proposal.
Other agenda items during the week include ICANN's role in global Internet governance; privacy and intellectual property issues pertaining to the "Whois" contact information ICANN makes public for each Web site; and the ability of VeriSign, the manager of the .com and .net domain-name endings, to innovate in those spaces.
The board also may address its current process for creating domains this year. It has received 10 applications for new "sponsored" domains, under which domain suffixes such as .museum are limited to entities fitting certain descriptions.
Another subplot is ICANN's relationship with the managers of the nearly 250 country-based domain suffixes, such as .de for Germany. As part of its effort to divorce itself from the U.S. Commerce Department, ICANN must meet a number of agreed-upon targets, including forming contracts with the managers of such domains.
At its last meeting, in March in Rome, ICANN announced the creation of a constituency advisory group for such domains, but it has little participation so far. Among the issues scheduled to arise at the joint ICANN-U.N. country-name workshop this week, a group will describe progress toward implementing Arabic-script domains
.
Criticism From Every Corner
In the days before the meeting, a number of reports -- including some critical of ICANN -- have been released.
On Friday, the Progress and Freedom Foundation released a report asserting that ICANN is "overstepping its bounds and must be reigned in." The report, by PFF Senior Policy Counsel William Adkinson, targets ICANN's perceived deficiencies as a regulator and its power to stifle innovation. Adkinson argues that the organization must narrow its focus to "core DNS [domain-name system] missions."
Adkinson's view echoes that of a report by Alan Davidson of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). That group said ICANN is "arguably straying from its original design as a private-sector, bottom-up, consensus-based, technical coordination body." Failure to narrow its focus to its core mission could cause it to be replaced or "radically altered," CDT said.
Former ICANN board member Karl Auerbach, a critic of the body, criticized the CDT report on his online journal for saying that ICANN is a "technical coordination body." "That is incorrect," he said, "ICANN avoids technical issues as if they carried the plague."
In addition, he criticized the suggestion that ICANN's power is limited. Auerbach said ICANN really focuses on economic activity and has directly influenced $100 million worth of business in domain names.
ICANN also released a report on VeriSign's introduction last fall of Site Finder, a tool that directed to a VeriSign search engine people who mistyped .com and .net domains. The report defended ICANN's decision to force VeriSign to suspend the service for disturbing the functioning of the Internet. VeriSign later sued ICANN over that and other issues that it says have prevented VeriSign from competing in the Internet market beyond its contract to manage .com and .net domains.
Companies such as Pool.com that represent a multimillion-dollar industry for reselling Internet services will have representatives in Kuala Lumpur, too. That industry emerged over the past year as ICANN considered, and ultimately approved, VeriSign's plan for a wait-listing service for expired domains.
The Issues Of Tomorrow
ICANN further must decide who will manage .net domains after June 2005, and in Kuala Lumpur the board will look at a process for making the selection. A report by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) suggested that an auction for the right to manage .net would be more appropriate than the current approach of ICANN soliciting applications and choosing one based on criteria.
Three recent reports focus on how to address longstanding complaints about the inaccuracy of the Whois data and about and abuse of that data by marketers. ICANN requires registrars to collect the data and make it public. Privacy advocates worried about people facing persecution for posting their views want more protection for the data, while intellectual property owners and law enforcement insist that they need the data to be public and more accurate.
Last week also saw the launch of an academic initiative called the Internet Governance Project, a multi-university partnership to analyze global Internet policy issues. The group's research agenda is closely related to the ongoing U.N. review of Internet governance, and the group is seeking to map existing global rules and institutions.
The effort involves two research centers at Syracuse University and one at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
