[ncdnhc-discuss] What about 5 (or more) ICANNs?

[James Love]

I think Chris Bailey raises a number of important issues in his missive.
There may be a number of issues where different cultures, nations or regions
have fundamental disagreements, or might just have different ways of doing
things.   Much of the problems come from the movement to centralize decision
making.  This one size fits all approach leads to a lot of conflict, and
attracts people who seek to control the Internet in ways that should have
nothing to do with the DNS.

Perhaps the "solution" is to push for much greater decentralization of
decision making.  Maybe 5 (or more) regional ICANNs could negotiate with
each other, but maintain some independence too.

  Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Bailey" <chrisbailey at gn.apc.org>
To: <discuss at icann-ncc.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 10:19 AM
Subject: [ncdnhc-discuss] governments and ICANN


> Sorry, for the length of this mailing, but it seems to me a very important
> discussion has started that requires some considerable thought.
>
> Dear Jamie,
>
> Having followed your contributions to the NCDNHC over quite a long period
I
> certainly do not think you are bigoted, ignorant or arrogant. I have
> generally found your contributions to be anything but that. However, in
> your present argument concerning imposing the "benefits" of US democracy
on
> the rest of the world I think you are making a serious mistake.
>
> First of all, as Dany is essentially pointing out, there are different
> conceptions and traditions of democracy. In particular, there is a big
> difference between the US (and to a large degree British) conception of
> democracy as "freedom from government" (based on John Locke) and the
> European continental conception (Rechtsstaat, etat de droit, stato di
> diritto, etc). As Dany says:
>
> >Not sure I could circumvent the problem shortly, but I would say first,
> >that there is a fundamental difference between US and (some) other
> >developped countries, in the way and the spirit, the Constitution was
> >written. To make is short, the US constitution is perceived to protect
> >the citizen from the government, whereas the French constitution is
> >aiming to protect the government from the citizen. Your 1st amendement
> >illustrates that, while in France, we tend to recognize that the
> >governement decisions or the Parliament laws, are made by elected
> >people, with a recognized legitimacy (being in a political majority or
> >minority is a different problem).
>
> I think what needs to be added is that, whilst the US conception is based
> on "individual" democracy, Europe has a strong tradition of "social
> democracy", where the state is seen as the ultimate protector of the
rights
> of social groupings within society against the unfettered action of the
> "free market". Personally, when faced with a choice between such things as
> "free trade" NAFTA and the "social Europe" European Union I know which
> version I would prefer every time.
>
> I think one of the problems around the work of democratising ICANN has
been
> the attitude of many US based lobbying groups. Much better financed than
> groups from the rest of the world, they have dominated proceedings and
seem
> to believe they have a god given right to impose "American way" democracy
> on everyone else. How can such an imposition of a viewpoint on others be
> described as democracy at all? This has caused considerable resentment
> amongst ICANN participants from outside the US.
>
> Let's take a rather extreme example of the underlying philosophy involved
> here. As we all know, the Markle Foundation has played a considerable role
> in funding democratic developments within ICANN. This same foundation is
> also very proud of its sponsorship of the "War on Terrorism" website

> http://www.terrorismanswers.com ) dedicated to justifying bombing the hell
> out of anyone not seen as accepting the US view of democracy. Markle,
quite
> typically of probably most Americans, cannot see an inconsistency here.
The
> majority of the rest of the world does.
>
> ICANN does not exist in a vacuum, but in a world where very real
resentment
> exists against US world domination. I share completely your concerns over
> possible multilateral government control over ICANN, but what is feeding
> the pressure for this is undoubtedly international concerns over this US
> domination. Arguing in favour of US domination as a way of preserving
> democracy will intensify these fears. Such arguments only play into the
> hands of governments outside the US, some of them certainly extremely
> undemocratic. They can then present themselves as opposing a US domination
> that is resented by most of their populations. So it is in the world as a
> whole, and this is being reflected in pressures around ICANN.
>
> These pressures surfaced at a conference of the International
> Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Intellectual Property
> Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva in December (See article below). The origins
> of Lynn's proposals can be seen there.
>
> I would suggest that a campaign against multilateral government control
> over ICANN, if it has any chance of succeeding, should be based on
opposing
> it with a conception of democracy that strives to allow the voices of all
> Internet stakeholders to be heard, not just Americans claiming to speak on
> their behalf (lets face it, that is what happens at most ICANN meetings at
> present). Such an ideal form of international democracy may be a hell of a
> long way off, but, so far, the Internet has been the most powerful force
> towards enabling a vision of its possible realisation. That's the main
> reason why many of us want to defend the Internet against the attempts
> being made by governments to control it.
>
> Chris Bailey
> Internet Rights Europe
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> 11.12.01
>
> EU plans ICANN study
>
> In the coming year the EU Information Society Directorate-General plans a
> study concerning the work of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
> and Numbers (ICANN). The tender will be published in the EU Official
> Journal in February, said Richard Delmas from the Information Society
> Directorate-Generate during a conference of the International
> Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Intellectual Property
> Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva.
>
> Next year ICANN will have to make two crucial decisions: In March the
> organisation will decide on the final composition of its board, and it
will
> be likely to start a new round of elections for some of the directors.
> There is a controversial debate on whether only domain name holders should
> be entitled to vote and how many directors should be elected directly by
> the users. If ICANN decides - as is expected - that only a part of the
> originally planned nine directors (of 19 in total) should be
electronically
> elected, international governments would be likely to urge even more
> strongly that they should be heard as public representatives in the ICANN
> process.
>
> Furthermore the organisation will have to take a stand on the further
> selection process of new top-level domains. ICANN president Stuart Lynn
had
> said in an interview after the ICANN annual meeting that it is still
> completely open when this will take place.
>
> The EU study is supposed to examine these aspects as well. It is scheduled
> at a time when in several countries annoyance about the US focus of the
> organisation is growing, and it can be considered a signal to the US
> government and ICANN. At the conference in Geneva, particularly
> representatives from Asia asked if it is necessary to change the present
> responsibility for the order of the domain name system.
>
> "In my opinion, ICANN can solve this task best," told ICANN director
> Jonathan Cohen (heise online). It would be working continually on further
> improvements of its work. He said he doesn't know if the interest of the
> ITU in questions of the internationalisation of the DNS is an attempt to
> present itself as a possible alternative to ICANN.
>
> (translated from German. Original at
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/wst-11.12.01-000/ )
>
>
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