The Amateur

Computerist

Fall 2015 Netizens Belong in Internet Governance Volume 26 No. 1

Table of Contents

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

Internet of Netizens, Not of Things.. . . . . . . . Page 3

Netizen Participation in IG. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 5

Citizens and Netizens in Decision-Making.. . . Page 8

Developing-Country Perspective.. . . . . . . . . . Page 9

Democracy OR Multi-stakeholderism. . . . . . Page 17

What Future Governance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 19

Letter to Congress: NTIA and ICANN. . . . . Page 21

UNESCO Obscures ICANN Controversy. . . Page 24

UN to Consider IGF Future (2010).. . . . . . . Page 26

WSIS+10: Problems Revealed. . . . . . . . . . . Page 28

Observations on 2

WSIS+10 Prep Mtg. . . .

Page 30

Internationalized Oversight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 33

Introduction

Three Models for Internet Governance

Multi-Lateral, Multi-Stakeholder, or

Netizen Model?

The question taken up in this issue of the Amateur

Computerist is: What is the nature of the governance

needed for the Internet to develop, to thrive and to

spread to more and more people around the world?

From October 19 to 22, 2015, the UN headquar-

ters in New York held the 2

Preparatory Session for

the WSIS+10 Review. WSIS stands for the Summit

sponsored by the United Nations that took place in two

phases, in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis in 2005. This

Summit was called the World Summit on the Informa-

tion Society (WSIS). The objective of these phases of

the Summit was two-fold. One was to give an impetus

and direction to spread the Internet around the world,

particularly to those developing countries and peoples

who did not yet have access to the Internet. The second

objective was to resolve a struggle that was ongoing at

the time over what would be the form of governance

for the global Internet.

The Tunis Summit mandated that in ten years, the

UN General Assembly do a ten year review of the

progress of the objectives set out at the Geneva and

Tunis WSIS meetings. The preparatory meetings

toward that review were ongoing in Fall 2015 in order

to create an agreement for a High Level Meeting

which was to be held by the UN General Assembly on

December 15 and 16, 2015.

Rather than review the achievements and short-

comings of the previous 10 years so as to evaluate the

progress toward implementing the vision and goals set

by the WSIS Summit, however, the WSIS+10 Review

has become embroiled in the continuing controversy

over what will be the form of governance of the global

Internet. On one side of the controversy is the desire to

have a shared form of governance in which all states

are able to participate on an equal footing On the other

side of the controversy are those states that are willing

to accept the U.S. government’s unilateral control over

the essential functions of the Internet infrastructure.

This controversy should be fought out in public in

a way that clarifies the underlying disagreements so a

common agreement can be negotiated. Those favoring

continued U.S. control over the Internet’s infrastruc-

ture present their model for Internet governance as the

“multi-stakeholder” model. Those on the other side of

the controversy advocate the importance of govern-

ments maintaining control over Internet related deci-

sions that will affect their citizens. A third view

differing in part with those who argue for governments

to maintain control over decisions affecting their

citizens, is that citizens and netizens be empowered to

participate in helping to determine what the decisions

by their governments will be. The three models for

Internet governance discussed in this issue of the

Amateur Computerist therefore are the multi-stake-

holder model, the multilateral model (governments

controlling the decisions) and the netizen model

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Page 1

(citizens and netizens participating to help to deter-

mine the decisions of their governments.)

The netizen model of Internet governance emerg-

ed earlier than the multi-stakeholder model. The

netizen model grew out of the research of Michael

Hauben who recognized that there was a new form of

citizenship, a global form of empowerment made

possible by the development of the Internet. He recog-

nized also that there were a number of online users

who cherished the Internet and tried to utilize the

empowerment it made possible for the public interest

of spreading the Net and making this new social

institution, this electronic commons into something

that would benefit society and the people who populate

it.

The outcome document of the WSIS Summit of

2003 and 2005 recognized this model for Internet

governance and put forward the vision of a people-

centered, inclusive and development-oriented informa-

tion society.

An early draft, known as the Non-Paper, toward a

10-year Review document had as the first statement in

its Preamble:

We affirm the vision of a people-centered,

inclusive and development-oriented informa-

tion society defined by the World Summit on

Information Society (WSIS) as well as the

objectives and norms established in the

Geneva Declaration of Principles, the Geneva

Plan of Action, the Tunis Commitment and

the Tunis Agenda for the Information Soci-

ety.

In their comments submitted on the Non-Paper,

several UN member nations commented on this

statement finding it an important statement of principle

for the continuing vision for the development of the

Information Society.

A proposed form of governance presented in the

Non-Paper in contrast to the people centered form of

governance, is what is called the “multi-stakeholder”

form of governance. This “multi-stakeholder” model,

its advocates say, is one which rejects the UN multilat-

eral system. In its place is put a system where a few

governments claim they rely only on “stakeholders” to

make the decisions about the Internet. Who these are

is most often not known, but most likely to be power-

ful corporations

There are many problems with such a model. In

general it excludes most governments and it excludes

the obligation of governments to fulfill their responsi-

bility to their citizens, i.e. to provide for the safety and

well-being of their citizens

Moreover, these few powerful nations embracing

the so called multi-stakeholder model choose which

“stakeholders” to include in their discussion, and

exclude most others.

One criticism of this “multi-stakeholder” model is

that it is but a new way to undermine the sovereignty

of nations, substituting some few “stakeholders” so as

to justify excluding the majority of governments, their

citizens and netizens from playing any role in the

decision making process regarding the global Internet.

The articles in this issue provide a critique of the

“multi-stakeholder” model and explain the “multilat-

eral” and the “netizen” models. The latter two have

gotten comparatively little coverage elsewhere.

For example, the articles by Parminder Jeet Singh,

“Global Internet Governance: A Developing Country

Perspective” and Michael Gurstein’s “Democracy OR

Multi–Stakeholderism: Competing Models of Gover-

nance” provide critiques of the multi-stakeholder

model and document the democratic deficit with that

model. Louis Pouzin’s article, “What Future Gover-

nance Now that We Know?” proposes needed action to

counter the structural conflict of interest built into the

ICANN institutional organizational form. Qihen Hu’s

article “Institutionalized Oversight of Internet Re-

source Management” argues for a shared multi-lateral

decision-making process for policy issues related to

the Internet’s infrastructure. And Karl Auerbach’s

“Open Letter to Congress Regarding NTIA and

ICANN” documents the inherent hostility to oversight

and accountability exhibited by ICANN.

“Netizen Participation in Internet Governance,” by

Izumi Aizu explains why netizens must be part of

Internet governance. The two articles, “We Need an

Internet of Citizens, of Netizens not an Internet of

Things,” and “On Citizen and Netizen Role in

Decision-Making Process to Build the Information

Society” are submissions by Ronda Hauben to the

WSIS+10 Review Process.

The article “UNESCO Program at UN Obscures

Controversy Over ICANN” describes a program held

at UN Headquarters in 2014 to present a UNESCO

report on freedom of expression. The UNESCO

sponsored program however was turned into an advo-

cacy event to promote ICANN with no critical per-

spective. No effort was made to provide an under-

standing of the public controversy over ICANN.

Another article titled “UN to Consider Future of

Page 2

Internet Governance Forum,” describes a meeting at

UN Headquarters in 2010 exploring the UN General

Assembly’s need to understand the issues related to

Internet governance so as to be able to make necessary

decisions at the 5 year anniversary of the Tunis phase

of the WSIS Summit. The two articles, “First Prepara-

tory Meeting of United Nations WSIS 10 Year Review

Reveals Problems,” and “Observations on the 2

Preparatory Meeting of the UN WSIS 10 Year Re-

view” describe serious problems demonstrated by the

two preparatory sessions held at UN Headquarters in

the run up to the High Level meeting planned for

December. These six articles are reprinted from Ronda

Hauben’s netizenblog (

http://blogs.taz.de/ netizenblog)

which covers the UN and netizen related issues.

There is a critical need for broad public discussion

and understanding of the controversies underlying the

choices that need to be made about the mandated ten

year review of the WSIS targets and vision. The

success of the process will have a bearing on how the

Internet and netizens will develop and spread over the

next 10 years. Public and citizen and netizen participa-

tion in these issues, will add vitality and support for

the continuation and implementation of the WSIS

vision of a people-centered, inclusive, and develop-

ment oriented Information Society.

[Editor’s Note: The following is a submission for the

UN General Assembly WSIS+10 Review.]

“We Need an Internet of

Citizens, of Netizens, not an

Internet of Things”

Submission for WSIS+10 Review*

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

The vision of the people-centered, inclusive and

development-oriented Information Society presented

at the World Summit on the Information Society

(WSIS) in 2003 and 2005 is a good vision and a vision

that needs to help to encourage implementation ac-

tions.

Critical for the fulfillment of this vision is the

need to understand the important role that netizens

must play in carrying out the goals.

I participated in the WSIS Tunis Summit (Novem-

ber 16-18, 2005). Also I chaired a panel and made a

presentation about Netizens at the side event for the

WSIS meeting “Past, Present and Future of Research

in the Information Society” (PPF) held in Tunis on

November 13-15, 2005. The side event was sponsored

in part by the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Sci-

ence).

My presentation at the side event described how

the Internet was developed and spread and how the

discovery of the emergence of the netizen happened. It

documented how the role of the netizen in the contin-

ued development and spread of the Internet was

identified and embraced by many online users around

the world. The vision for the development of the

Internet was created by JCR Licklider based on his

research in computers and human brain science.

Licklider adopted a notion of cooperative modeling as

a conceptual framework.

Similarly my talk presented the discovery in 1993

of the Netizen by Michael Hauben in his research

about the social impact of the Net. Netizens, Hauben

observed, “were active participants in helping to

spread the Internet and to foster its continued develop-

ment as an advance in communications that would be

available to all.” He clarified that Netizens were those

people online who actively contribute to the develop-

ment of the Net. He wrote, “These are the people who

as citizens of the Net I realized were Netizens.”

(Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet, p. ixx) He differentiates, however, be-

tween those whom he identifies as netizens and others

online. “Netizens are not just anyone who comes

online. Rather they are people who understand that it

takes effort and action on each and everyone’s part to

make the Net a regenerative and vibrant community

and resource.” (Netizens, p. x)

In a presentation made to an ITU Workshop Izumi

Aizu explained the importance of Hauben’s concept of

netizens toward “the global governing framework of

the Internet [for which] we are tasked by the WSIS

process.” Aizu explained why it was necessary to

“listen to those who are affected by the decisions it

makes,” and how “Netizens act as watchdogs, or

function to provide appropriate Checks and Balances,

to counter interests of others such as a provider of

services, business, and government.”(See next article

in this issue.)

I am proposing that there is a need for the UN

General Assembly (UNGA) to include in its WSIS+10

Page 3

Review statement a recognition of the importance of

input from and discussion by netizens as an essential

characteristic of the people-centered, inclusive, and

development-oriented Information Society.

The challenge is to recognize the need for a

bottom up process to implement the WSIS vision. Also

there is a need to accurately identify problems imped-

ing the development and spread of the Net and to find

a means to resolve the problems.

At the airport on my way home from WSIS in

Tunis I met a colleague from an African country. He

described the difficulties that government was having

in his country in its efforts to spread the Internet. He

described how there was a plan to wire the government

offices in his region and to then use the government

Internet connection to connect the local schools. What

he found, however, was that when the job was given to

private contractors to connect the government offices,

they would not spread the connection elsewhere. The

government plans to own and administer the connec-

tion had envisioned how this would make possible an

inexpensive means of connection for the region’s

schools. This did not happen.

This is an example of how there may be different

views of how Internet connectivity can be provided

and the private sector and public sector can have

different interests that can either impede or facilitate

the spread of the Net to the public.

Providing a means for the citizen and netizens to

learn of these different models for development and

having the Net help to make public discussion and

input possible can provide a means to identify the

challenges and determine how to resolve them.

In her presentation on July 2, 2015 to the Informal

Interactive Consultations, Divina Frau-Meigs proposed

that what is needed is an “Internet of Citizens, of

Netizens, not an Internet of Things.”

I want to support Divina Frau-Meigs’ statement

that what is needed is an “Internet of Citizens, of

Netizens, not an Internet of Things.” I want to offer

some clarification. The concept of Netizen in its

origins is not a description of all users, but of those

users who have taken on to contribute to the develop-

ment and the spread of the Internet and to making

possible the better world that more communication

among people can create.

The concept of Netizen comes from the research

and writing of Michael Hauben while he was a college

student in the early 1990s. Michael was interested not

only in how the Internet would develop and spread, but

also in the impact it would have on society. In 1993 he

sent out a set of questions across the computer net-

works asking users about their experiences online. He

was surprised to find that not only were many of those

who responded to his questions interested in what the

Net made possible for their own needs, but also they

were interested in spreading the Net and in exploring

how it would make a better world possible. A network

user with this social perspective, or this public interest

focus Michael called a Netizen. Thus the Netizen was

not all users, but users with a public purpose.

Another aspect is that the Net is international and

has been from its very beginnings. Netizenship is not

a geographically limited concept. To be a netizen is to

be not only a citizen of one country, but also a citizen

of the Net. Based on his research, Michael wrote the

article “The Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net has

on People’s Lives.” The article and the concept of the

Netizen spread around the world via the Internet and

the Netizens.

Michael and I included his influential article as

part of a Netizens Netbook which was first put online

in 1994. It was published in a print edition in 1997 in

English and in Japanese, titled Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.

The concept of Netizen was part of WSIS in Tunis

in 2005, yet it was sidelined or ignored at the UNGA

WSIS+10 Review Consultation until Divina Frau-

Meigs’ talk. In its place we are told there are “stake-

holders” – but “stakeholders” is a term used to identify

those seeking to benefit corporate or institutional

interests. Governments are charged with a public

purpose and hence are only mistakenly called “stake-

holders.” Similarly, Netizens are not “stakeholders,”

but instead those who contribute for a public purpose,

for the public interest.

One UN member nation delegate asked how to

deal with problems online. Traditionally Netizens

would take up to deal with problems that developed

online. It is important not to seek to disenfranchise

Netizens but to welcome Netizens and the concept of

Netizenship into the heart of the WSIS+10 Review by

the UNGA. For any future development of the vision

of a “people-centered, inclusive, and development-

oriented Information Society,” the Netizens must be

recognized and integrated into the WSIS process.

I propose that a web site be set up for the

WSIS+10 Review that makes possible online discus-

sion by Netizens of the issues related to the Review.

There was such a web site for the 2003 WSIS and

Page 4

some interesting issues were raised by Netizens. Also

it is important that the outcome document not try to

block views. If there are disagreements, the disagree-

ments should be reflected as part of the outcome

document.

*This submission is my own view as a netizen and not the views

of any organization. The original version is available at the UN

WSIS+10 Review website:

http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/

Internet/Documents/UNPAN94996.pdf.

It also appears on the netizenblog at:

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2015/08/03/an-internet-of-citizens-

of-netizens-not-an-internet-of-things/

[Editor’s Note: The following Working Paper is based

on a presentation made in February 2004.*]

Netizen Participation in

Internet Governance

by Izumi Aizu

Deputy Director,

Institute for HyperNetwork Society

izumi@hyper.or.jp

I have been involved with “Internet Governance,”

or areas of global Domain Name System management

since around 1996. I was the Secretary General of the

Asia and Pacific Internet Association (APIA), which

was a formal member of the Steering Committee of

International Forum on the White Paper (IFWP), a

global coordination effort to forge a consensus for the

setup of a new body to manage the DNS in 1998.

IFWP was a global response from the Internet stake-

holders to the call by the United States Government to

“privatize” and “internationalize” the DNS manage-

ment in an open and inclusive approach. We advocated

the equal participation in the process and the body,

eventually known as ICANN, from an Asia and Pacific

regional standpoint.

Here, I like to provide my proposal of putting the

“Netizens” into the global governing framework of the

Internet [with which] we are tasked by the WSIS

(World Summit on the Information Society) process.

We are facing a new kind of challenge for the

governance of the Internet. The Internet mades it

possible to send and receive information from any-

one’s desktop, laptop, or even from mobile phones on

the go, with minimal cost, very easily and instantly, to

anywhere in the world, ignoring the geographic and

institutional borders including that of the nation states.

This fact poses transnational challenges that are

difficult to solve by applying the traditional “nation”

based approaches. Frankly, most of the current Interna-

tional or intergovernmental organizations were de-

signed in the industrial age. Thus, they are not ready to

deal with these national or global issues efficiently and

effectively. They are slow to identify the issues, slow

to come-up with solutions, slow to agree with each

other, often constrained by national and bureaucratic

borders, and too rigid to respond to the rapid, ever-

changing technologies and their applications. For

example, when they come up with legal frameworks

against certain types of spam, the spammers would be

already well ahead of the game creating new methods

which are hard to trace and enforce. This is just a small

example of the broader challenges we all face.

There is a clear need to establish a new gover-

nance model in which the Netizens from the Civil

Society should play a vital role in cooperation with the

government, international organizations, business

sector and technical community.

The diagram below shows the framework I

propose in which “self-governance” will take place. It

is mostly carried out by the coordination and collabo-

ration of all stakeholders: business entities who are

mostly providers of services in the marketplace, along

with technologists who develop the technical standards

and manage administrative and operational functions

of the network. Government can give a legal and

policy framework but it is better to keep interventions

minimal. Intergovernmental bodies and international

organizations have their roles, as well.

What is necessary here is the participation of the

Netizens.

First and foremost, the Internet is becoming an

Page 5

everyday tool, or commodity, for most of U.S. in the

world. In Japan [in 2004], more than 60% of popula-

tion or 70 million people are now using the Internet

one way or another, and 70% of subscribers are now

enjoying the high-speed broadband connection, which

gives you “always-on” feature. Korea has the highest

penetration of broadband, with more than 80% pene-

tration to the household and their actual usage is very

very high. China, now reached the number two place

in terms of number of Internet users, 80 million

people, after the United States. [By 2015, China had

more then 650 million users.] The development of I-

mode in Japan gave rise to mobile phones for using

services over the Internet, opening up the age of

ubiquitous or pervasive networking. The Internet

empowers an ordinary citizen with tremendous power

– sending thousands of e-mails to millions of people at

a cost of a few dollars, sending both positive messages

as well as destructive viruses.

With this potential, millions of users are facing or

creating societal challenges: in Japan, victims of online

dating services with mobile or ordinary Internet are on

the rise, targeting young women in schools with more

than 100 serious criminal cases a year. P2P file ex-

change is posing a threat to commercial copyright

holders, but it is also opening up new and creative

ways of sharing works among citizens. Compared with

these challenges, Domain Name and IP address man-

agement have far fewer serious problems now, but we

may face more challenges.

For any Internet governance model to work, it

should fit with the reality of local and a regional

situation. As I have been working for the Internet

community in the Asia Pacific region, I like to bring

your attention to the very diverse situation of Internet

development in our region, from highly-developed

places such as Japan or Korea to just in their infancy in

Afghanistan, East Timor and Iraq suffering from the

wars and conflicts, or tiny economy of Bhutan or many

other LDCs. Though Internet has been mostly devel-

oped by the Internet community in many Asian coun-

tries, similar to that of developed countries, I could say

that governments play a greater role in supporting the

Internet in infrastructure and capacity building activi-

ties in this region.

In the case of the Asia Pacific, there has been a

very strong tradition of voluntary coordination and

cooperation among the Internet communities. [You can

see] all the “AP” organizations working on different

areas of Internet management, from address and

Domain Name management to infrastructure develop-

ment or spam or security matters at:

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/docume

nts/apcity/unpan016886.pdf page 4.

We have an annual summit called APRICOT

which was first hosted in 1996 and acted as the coordi-

nation catalyst until now for many Internet activities in

the region. This voluntary coordination is appreciated

by governments but receiving no control nor much

financial support at all. It is working just fine.

We should try to follow the governance model

after the working architecture of the Internet which is

based on the layered structure. Functions of each layer

are different, so the governance models should also be

different, suited to the distinct characteristics of the

layer it belongs to. It is also necessary, however, to

bring coordination among different actors at different

layers together.

Emergence of the Netizen

The word “Netizen” was first coined by a 19-year-

old student, the late Michael Hauben of Colombia

University in New York in 1993. He was trying to

identify the new residents of the network community

and invented the term “Netizen,” short for “Net Citi-

zen.” These active users of the computer networks

were originally found in the technical community, but

they now have spread into the civil society at large.

Netizens are the main actors of the Information Soci-

ety, as Prof. Shumpei Kumon of GLOCOM offered the

theoretical analysis that in the Information Society, the

social games are played around the intellectual values,

not physical or property values like the industrial

society. We see very active groups of Netizens affect-

ing the society like the “slashdot” in U.S. or “2-chan-

nel,” its counterpart, in Japan. We know many political

activities are generated from online forums in Korea,

where Netizen already became a common Korean

term, affecting the outcome of a presidential campaign.

In China, people are now starting to use online forums

to criticize the government (sometimes). The rise of

Netizens using mobile phones is articulated by Howard

Rheingold in his book Smart Mobs, which showed the

potentially large positive and negative impacts of using

these cheap, open, mobile technologies.

Why should we let Netizens participate in this

global governance of the Internet? First, for any

democratic governance it is necessary to establish the

Consent of the Governed, a basic principle of gover-

nance. But we should go further. The Netizens are the

Page 6

main actors of the Internet development, as they are

the great inventor and innovator of such tools as

World-Wide Web (WWW) invented by the physics

researcher Tim Berners-Lee, Mosaic and Netscape

browsers developed by undergraduate students of

University of Illinois led by Marc Andreesen, Yahoo

was started as their hobby and later created as a real

business by David Filo and Jerry Yang, students at

Stanford University. ICQ, Amazon and e-Bay are all

developed mainly by users of the Internet, not

technology-driven engineers. Missing them from the

governance structure is like playing the football game

without any topnotch players. Third, decisions around

Internet governance will affect so many end-users

directly. One needs to listen to those who are affected

by the decisions it makes.

Netizens act as watchdogs, or function to provide

appropriate Checks and Balances, to counter interests

of others such as providers of services, business and

government. By involving them, they will also have

more sense of responsibilities.

Let us also examine positive merits of having

Netizens participate in the governance.

First, Netizens have direct knowledge and rich

experience of most issues caused by the use of the

Internet. If you are parents, quite often your children

know much better about using the Net than you do.

Likewise these active users are well aware of the

challenges they are facing since most often they are

part of actors who create these challenges themselves.

Second, Netizens are flexible, work more effi-

ciently than many incumbent institutions where

protocols and procedures take up too much time and

process hence acting as barriers against timely deci-

sions.

Third, Netizens are global citizens, not con-

strained by national boundaries. There are many

communities of interest, spread globally, irrespective

of geographic or other existing social boundaries. They

will function complementally to the existing border-

based management framework of international inter-

governmental regime, not as opposition to them or

undermining them.

Netizen participation will increase diversity. By

making regional balance compulsory, Netizens from

all the regions of the globe will participate in the

governance activities. Netizens will counter economic

imbalance, not dominated by large corporate interest,

but adding nonprofit, non governmental forces. They

will also provide cultural diversity with their multi-

lingual and multi-cultural environment. Netizen

participation will reduce the marginalization of the

minority, too. By encouraging the Netizens to partici-

pate in governance, affirmative efforts to listen to the

minority groups, persons with disabilities, women in

vulnerable situations, linguistic minorities, all will

have more opportunities for their voices to be heard.

Netizens share the view with the technical com-

munity that freedom at the edge of the network should

be the core value of the Internet. Traditional telecom

operators and mobile phone operators on the other

hand may not necessarily share this vision. They tend

to keep the central control and close the network which

is convenient for the operators as well as many “pas-

sive” consumers. We are concerned that it may stifle

the innovation and development of the Internet we

have enjoyed so much so far.

There are risks of excluding Netizens from the

global governance mechanism. We should consider

these potential risks, too. If we only rely on technolo-

gists, they may lack the human viewpoints and tend to

think things mechanically. If we rely too much on

corporations, aspects of human rights might be com-

promised in the name of profit-making. Privacy

protection and respecting freedom of speech may be

less protected. And if we rely too much on a govern-

ment or bureaucratic mechanism, then we may face

narrow “top-down” approach or closed decisions.

In conclusion, we need to put Netizens into the

self-governance mechanisms. This will help solve the

dichotomy of private-sector only approach vs. strong

government involvement. It will create an appropriate,

more balanced structure. There are active Netizens in

the developing parts of the world who will also en-

hance balanced participation.

In order to make effective participation of the

Netizens, their autonomous, distributed and collabora-

tive network of networks is necessary to exist. Efforts

at ICANN AtLarge is one such example, trying to be

bottom-up, coordinated globally, based on the sub-

sidiarity principle, that addresses that local issues be

solved locally first, seek for global solutions for only

globally challenging issues. We also need to establish

self-certification mechanism in place that works to

provide legitimacy to the Netizens themselves.

Notes:

1. This paper is based on a speech presented at the ITU Workshop

on Internet Governance, Geneva, February 27, 2004. This paper

Page 7

is still a work in progress and welcomes your comments, criti-

cisms and suggestions.

2. There is a WSIS Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus

which has more than 60 individuals from most of the regions of

the world and worked very hard to contribute to the Civil Society

WSIS Declaration in its Internet Governance section. I suggest

you to take the principles proposed there into serious consider-

ation for the coming debate.

* This Working Paper is online dated May 2004 at:

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/u

npan016886.pdf

[Editor’s Note: In early September 2015 an informal

document called the Non-Paper was posted as part of

the UNGA WSIS+10 Review Process at:

http://unpan3.un.org/wsis10/Portals/5/WSIS%2010

%20GA/WSIS%20nonpaper%20draft%20-%20final.

pdf. The following was submitted as a comment on the

Non-Paper.]

On Citizens and Netizens

Role in Decision-Making

Process to Build Information

Society*

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

The first item in the Preamble for the Non-Paper

states:

We affirm the vision of a people-cen-

tered, inclusive and development-oriented

information society defined by the World

Summit on Information Society (WSIS) as

well as the objectives and norms established

in the Geneva Declaration of Principles. The

Geneva Plan of Action, the Tunis Commit-

ment and the Tunis Agenda for the Informa-

tion Society.

This is an important statement of the vision for the

information society. The statement of how to imple-

ment this vision as presented in the Non-Paper draft,

however, is missing a critical element. This element

was contained only in a partial manner in the Tunis

Agenda for the Information Society, but at least it was

included in this partial form. The statement that

presented this partial means of implementing the

vision was contained in item 90(d).

This item stated:

d) implementing effective training and edu-

cation, particularly in ICT science and tech-

nology, that motivates and promotes partici-

pation and active involvement of girls and

women in the decision-making process of

building the Information Society.

The importance of this item is that it states that the

goal of ICT is to motivate and promote participation

and active involvement in the decision making process

of building the Information Society.

The item, however, limits this objective to “girls

and women.” While this is a critical objective for

women and girls, it is also important that it be an

objective applied to boys and men of all ages, i.e., to

all people.

The Non-Paper has an obligation to improve on

the conceptual framework that the Tunis Agenda for

the Information Society set, rather than to delete this

objective all together. It is important to include a

statement early on in the final output document that the

goal of ICT is to motivate and promote participation,

especially of users and netizens, and active involve-

ment in the decision making process of building the

Information Society.

In my submission for the WSIS+10 Review I

wrote that “Critical to the fulfillment of this vision is

the need to understand the role that netizens must play

in carrying out the goals.”

I referred to the side event “Past Present and

Future of Research in the Information Society” (PPF)

of the Tunis Summit. In a panel at the PPF on the

“Origin and the Early Development of the Internet and

of the Netizens: their Impact on Science and Society,”

I presented a talk explaining why the participatory

nature of the Internet is a critical aspect for its continu-

ing development. I pointed to the work of JCR Lick-

lider whose vision for the creation of the Internet as

well as whose early work setting the technical founda-

tion for it was a significant factor. Licklider not only

recognized the need for a vision which would guide

the continuing development of the Net but he also

recognized the need for participatory action on the part

of those online who would act as citizens of the

developing net.

Licklider proposed the need for people who cared

about the Net to be involved in its continuing develop-

ment. He suggested that this involvement could

include those who would: study, model, analyze,

Page 8

argue, write, criticize, and work out each issue and

each problem until they reach consensus or determine

that none can be reached.

In the early 1990’s a college student found that

there were a set of people online who were concerned

about the development of the Internet and who were

contributing to working out the problems of its contin-

uing development. He proposed the term “netizen”

building on the concept net.citizen which was being

referred to at the time.

Netizens, as the student wrote, are those who

embody the social conscious and public purpose

similar to that which Licklider had considered impor-

tant for the continued development of computer

technology and for the public policy to support that

development

The concept of netizen has spread around the

world to include two uses, one refers to everyone on

the net, and the second, as the college student intended,

reserves the use of the word to refer to those who

contribute to the development of the net. He wrote:

Netizens...are people who understand it takes

effort and action on each and everyone’s part

to make the Net a regenerative and vibrant

community and resource. Netizens are people

who decide to devote time and effort into

making the Net, this new part of our world, a

better place.

In her presentation to the WSIS+10 Review on

July 2, Divina Frau-Meigs noted that what is needed is

an “Internet of Citizens, of Netizens not an Internet of

Things.”

The concept of netizens, like that of citizens,

embodies the notion of a participatory process that

welcomes the active participation of those who have a

social focus, a public interest focus in the further

development of the Internet.

While there is among many a tendency to see

Internet development as mainly a technical develop-

ment, this misses the significant role that the people

who are online play in the continuing development of

the Net. The Net and Netizens are actually a symbiotic

development and it is such a perspective that helps to

carry on the continuing spread and evolution of the

Information Society goals.

Notes

1. http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html item

90(d).

http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/Internet/Documents/UNPAN

94996.pdf

3. http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/tunis-wsis-2005/RHauben-

Tunis-talk.pdf

* This comment is online at:

http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/Internet/Documents/UNPAN9

5298.pdf. All comments on the Non-Paper can be seen at:

http://unpan3.un.org/wsis10/Preparatory-Process-Roadmap/Wri

tten-Comments-on-Non-paper

Global Internet Governance:

a Developing-Country

Perspective*

by Parminder Jeet Singh**

parminder@itforchange.net

[TWR Note: In this 2014 review of global Internet

governance from a developing-country viewpoint, Par-

minder Jeet Singh contends that the U.S. and its

corporate allies are wary of any challenge to the

default Internet governance regime they are shaping

and establishing. However, unlike with global trade

and intellectual property frameworks which were

developed largely unilaterally and foisted by the North

upon the developing world, there is still time for the

South to develop a proactive strategy to shape the

emerging global regime on Internet governance. Such

an alternative should, in his view, be broadly based on

a new paradigm of the Internet as a global commons

and a public utility.]

The subject of Internet governance (IG) first got

imported into the consciousness of most developing

countries during the negotiations for the outcome texts

of the World Summit on the Information Society

(WSIS).

The main issue at that time was the unilateral

U.S. oversight over the root of the Internet, which

contains the names and numbers directory for the

global Internet addressing system. This was considered

unacceptable by almost all other countries. Expectedly,

interest in this subject was mostly of the foreign affairs

ministries of developing countries, and came from a

traditional geo-political standpoint.

On a different track, for some time since even

before WSIS, the information technology (IT) minis-

tries of developing countries had been engaging with

Page 9

the regional Internet registries and with ICANN

as the

Internet was being set up in these countries. The

Internet Society, or ISOC, also helped many countries

with its expertise in setting up networks. This work

was of a brass-tacks nature. This was also the time

when the telecom sector was being opened up the

world over for private companies, which triggered the

mobile telephony revolution. The Internet service

providers sought even greater independence from

regulation than what telephony was subject to. Most

developing countries saw in IT, including the Internet,

a new growth opportunity and went all out to support

their IT and Internet companies, viewing them fully as

a part of global value chains. In the circumstances, the

IT ministries or their equivalents largely took an

apolitical view of global IG.

It was rather common, until quite recently, to find

somewhat discordant views coming from foreign

ministries and IT ministries at global IG forums. Only

very few countries, like Brazil and China, had begun

early to shape a coherent foreign policy stance on

global IG. A turf war was witnessed in many develop-

ing countries between IT and foreign ministries. This

problem has only now started to be addressed, with

more and more countries beginning to understand the

nature of power and controls over the global Internet.

The U.S. and other developed countries had

initially envisioned WSIS as an instrument to take

forward their global ‘digital opportunities’ vision

which had been articulated at the turn of the century in

G8 meetings.

These countries had resisted the claims

of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organi-

zation (UNESCO) to be the main entity for hosting

WSIS, still mindful of the political tendencies of

UNESCO in the informational arena, which had earlier

precipitated the crisis around the New World Informa-

tion and Communication Order. They preferred the

International Telecommunication Union (ITU)’s

technocratic approach. All the current distancing from

ITU’s role in information society governance notwith-

standing (see below), they were the ones who had

pushed for ITU to take the lead in holding WSIS.

Midway through WSIS, when the U.S. and its

allies found that information society was becoming a

highly geo-politicized issue, their enthusiasm for

WSIS-type global forums subsided drastically. At the

end of WSIS, developed countries did not agree to set

up a new UN functional commission to look into the

WSIS follow-up, as had been done previously for

many similar global summits. And the rebound contin-

ues, as these countries have recently been blocking

even a 10-yearly WSIS review summit which is very

much the practice in most areas and is also mandated

in WSIS outcome documents.

An increasing understanding in developing

countries of Internet governance as a highly political

subject was matched by a growing keenness among the

developed countries to withdraw this issue from the

UN’s scope and mandate. However, such understand-

ing among developing countries is still very incipient,

and there exists no coherent developing-world vision

of global IG. As mentioned, the line departments, IT

and telecom ministries are yet to frame the global

political implications of their domains in an appropri-

ately holistic manner.

Apart from the U.S.’ unilateral oversight of the

Internet’s root, the main issue from developing coun-

tries’ side at WSIS concerned the market-based inter-

connectivity regime, where naked market power

determined pricing. Since Internet content and services

mostly resided in developed countries, chiefly the

U.S., the Internet service providers in developing

countries were forced to pay for both up- and down-

connectivity to the backbone networks based in devel-

oped countries. Whereas developed countries subsi-

dized developing countries’ connectivity infrastructure

in the ITU-run global telephony system, global

Internet connectivity followed the exact opposite

model: developing countries subsidize the networks in

developed countries.

This paradigmatic shift from the erstwhile regu-

lated global communication system to a completely

unregulated communications and informational global

market, which best serves the interests of the U.S.-

based information and communications companies,

underlies much of global IG contestations today.

Outwardly, however, these contestations are framed as

a struggle for an unfragmented global Internet and the

need to protect freedom of expression everywhere,

whereby governments and regulations should be kept

away from the Internet.

Post WSIS

The final days of negotiations for outcome docu-

ments of the second phase of WSIS were rather tense.

Regarding the unilateral oversight of the U.S. over the

Internet’s root, almost all countries stood as one

against the U.S. As for general information society

governance, the divisions were more along the tradi-

tional North-South lines. The compromise outcome

Page 10

assured national sovereignty over country top-level

domains like .cn and .br.

Discussions for establishing

mechanisms for global Internet policies were to remain

ongoing over what was identified as the ‘enhanced

cooperation’ process. Meanwhile, it was agreed to set

up a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue forum for

Internet policy issues, the Internet Governance Forum

(IGF). The IGF was, inter alia, mandated to give

recommendations where needed. The U.S. and its

allies strongly resisted even the setting up of an IGF,

and it is the developing countries that pushed for such

a forum and got it.

As happens with many global policy events, the

political temperatures came down quickly as soon as

WSIS came to an end. Even in the European Union,

there was very little appreciation of the deep social and

economic implications of global IG. Directions from

the highest political quarters focused on staying

closely on the U.S. side of global geo-economic

divisions meant that, occasional weak protests apart,

the EU has been unwilling to upset the apple cart.

Brazil and China were the two developing coun-

tries most active in the immediate post-WSIS period.

China brought a proposal for an international code of

conduct in cyberspace to the early IGFs, and sought

wider engagement. Brazil even informally broached

the possibility of a ‘framework convention on the

Internet.’ It also offered concrete alternatives for a

truly global management of the Internet’s root.

Meanwhile, as the very significant geo-political

dimensions of the issue became apparent, a so-called

‘global Internet governance community’ began to take

shape. It was very aggressively dominated by non-state

actors, backed strongly by the U.S. and some of its

closest allies. ICANN, with its huge collection of

monopoly fees – that can be called taxes – from global

Internet users through domain name fees, was an

important funder and provider of other resources for

this group.

This group was soon able to largely capture the

IGF. This ‘community’ showed no interest in moving

forward on addressing rapidly accumulating serious

public policy issues regarding the Internet at a global

level. It mostly played an obstructionist role, propping

up the status quo of continued U.S./ICANN manage-

ment of the technological infrastructure and an unregu-

lated market-based evolution of global Internet ser-

vices. The promise of the IGF as a genuinely participa-

tory institution for global governance of the Internet,

the reason that developing countries had supported it

at WSIS, was stemmed early by powerful status quo-

ist forces.

With little possibility of any positive progress,

China seems to have reduced its involvement on the

global stage since around 2008, focusing on domestic

policies to manage its Internet. At the international

level, its interest shifted to developing regional alli-

ances, chiefly the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

These countries later came up with an ‘international

code of conduct for information security’ and pre-

sented it to the UN for voluntary adoption by other

countries. Around this time, Brazil too began to tone

down its aggressive posture where it had been putting

forward specific alternatives to the status quo global

IG regime. It however kept up a high degree of en-

gagement with post-WSIS forums of the IGF and the

UN Commission on Science and Technology for

Development (CSTD),

and for quite some time was

the lone developing country with a coherent strategy of

engagement on global IG.

After a lull of about 3-4 years, the threads from

WSIS began to be picked up by some floor-level

coordination among developing countries at the

CSTD’s annual consideration of progress on WSIS

outcomes. Developing countries got together to assert

that the WSIS mandate of enhanced cooperation,

which was to have been operationalized in 2006, had

shown no progress. They managed to get the UN

Secretary-General to hold open consultations on

‘enhanced cooperation.’

It was at these consultations, in December 2010,

that the IBSA countries (India, Brazil and South

Africa) got together for the first time to issue a joint

statement.

This statement sought a formal intergov-

ernmental platform under the UN that would take up

Internet-related public policy issues. The statement

said that this platform should complement ‘the Internet

Governance Forum, a multi-stakeholder forum for

discussing, sharing experiences and networking on

Internet governance.’ Importantly, this statement also

raised some key social and economic issues like net

neutrality and access to knowledge, in addition to the

traditional ones like freedom of expression, privacy

and security.

From this point onwards, IBSA cooperation on the

subject picked up steam. On the initiative of the

Brazilian government and some civil society actors

from Brazil and India, a meeting was held among

IBSA governments and IBSA civil society representa-

tives on ‘Global Internet Governance’ in Rio de

Page 11

Janeiro, Brazil, in 2011. At the end of this meeting, the

government representatives from the three IBSA

countries drafted a set of ‘Rio Recommendations.’

These recommendations specifically sought a new UN

body for global Internet governance. The 2011 IBSA

summit later took note of the Rio Recommendations

and exhorted the three countries to keep working

closely together on this key issue.

It had long been felt that although the developing

countries had been asking for a new UN forum to take

up Internet policy issues, there was no concrete pro-

posal on the table. Building on the momentum from

the Rio meeting and positive exhortations from the

IBSA summit, India took the initiative to plug this gap.

In late 2011, India made a proposal to the UN General

Assembly to set up a Committee for Internet-Related

Policies (CIRP) attached to the General Assembly.

The proposal presented a detailed plan on the mandate

and membership of the proposed Committee. It was

also to have stakeholder advisory committees, pat-

terned on similar committees for the OECD’s Internet

policy body.

WCIT and Snowden

Within six months of each other, two global

events made a most decisive impact on the perception

in developing countries about global Internet

governance.

First was ITU’s World Conference on Interna-

tional Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in

December 2012, which was to develop a new set of

International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs)

to replace the existing set negotiated 25 years earlier.

ITU has been the key target of liberal and neoliberal

groups, supported by the U.S. and its allies, for being

the organization that ‘plans to take over the Internet.’

The U.S. played on this sentiment, quite prominent in

the global North but also among developing-country

middle classes, and promoted WCIT as a battle for or

against ‘controlling the Internet.’

The core contention at WCIT was whether or not

the Internet should be recognized as a part of telecom-

munications and thus come under the ITRs and ITU’s

realm to regulate. Any such recognition, and its

consequences, would clearly have come in the way of

the fully unregulated market approach to the global

Internet, of which we spoke earlier. (It must be noted

that in almost all countries, including the U.S., telecom

regulators do already regulate the Internet as well.) In

the end, the ITR draft on the table had no mention of

the Internet. The Internet was taken to an attached

resolution which (1) clearly did not have the authority

of the ITRs, and (2) just followed a well-established

tradition at ITU in relation to its earlier resolutions

dealing with Internet-related issues.

There was very little excuse for the U.S. not to

sign the ITRs. In fact, its European allies were mostly

ready to sign on. It appears that the U.S., along with its

multi-national corporations, led by Google, and its

civil society, became a victim of their own excessive

propaganda. On the very flimsy ground that the ITRs

gave member countries a right not to be thrown off the

global Internet, they walked out of WCIT. The Europe-

ans reluctantly followed, more to keep to the tradi-

tional geo-political alignments than anything else. The

chimera of some kind of global consensus on the

Internet was exposed.

Most developing countries saw it as a betrayal by

the U.S. and its allies with regard to their long-pro-

fessed rhetoric of a global Internet for development

and a better world. Their self-interest was laid bare. It

became evident that the U.S. did not want democratic

global governance of the Internet, not because it could

thwart the innovative potential of the Internet but

because the U.S. and its companies wanted a free run

on and control over the Internet as a means for global

economic, social, political and cultural control and

exploitation. Such control would be threatened if any

global governance body like ITU included Internet-

related issues in its mandate.

As the world was still coming to terms with the

WCIT shock, Edward Snowden thoroughly exposed

the manner in which the U.S. employed the Internet for

gaining intrusive social and personal access and

controls across the world. In the global public’s mind,

the Internet had lost its innocence forever. The Internet

is such a potent social force, largely seen as having a

very positive potential, that winning the hearts and

minds of the public is of key importance in framing

effective political positions in this area. Understanding

this fact, strategies of U.S.-based actors for resisting

any move toward democratic global IG have most

effectively been targeted at the ‘global public sphere.’

And they were winning this game, till Snowden came

along and changed the situation so dramatically.

How the Internet is Governed Today

After intellectual property rights, and linked to it,

control over the Internet is the biggest factor in estab-

lishing and sustaining global economic hegemony in

Page 12

the emerging world order.

The Internet also enables

a considerable level of political, social and cultural

domination, and therefore its control and exploitation

is seen as key by the U.S. and its corporate allies. At

this stage, their strategy is to fully keep at bay any

possible global governance system that can interfere

with the default global IG regime that they are shaping

and establishing. It consists of the following four

interrelated elements:

(1) Pursuing an unregulated market approach at the

global level so that U.S. corporations can shape and

control the global digital architecture, establish huge

monopolies and extract rents globally.

(2) In cases where the U.S. finds it absolutely neces-

sary to do so, getting U.S. law to apply to the global

Internet through the simple expedient that almost all

the major Internet corporations are U.S.-based and

subject to U.S. jurisdiction. Consequently, the main

techno-legal paradigms of the emerging digital age are

today set by ‘negotiations’ between the Internet’s

monopoly companies and U.S. regulators like the

Federal Communications Commission and Federal

Trade Commission, and often directly with the execu-

tive or with the courts.

(3) Creating pro-developed-country global IG frame-

works at plurilateral forums like the OECD and G8

and pushing them globally on the basis of sheer

economic muscle.

Further, using plurilateral forums

like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic

Trade and Investment Partnership to establish the U.S.’

own vision as the default global regime.

(4) Relying on corporate-dominated/driven multi-

stakeholder forums to shore up the rest, especially in

the area of technical and logical infrastructure and

standards, and of keeping a favorable global IG dis-

course going. The fact that even after the WCIT fiasco

and Snowden revelations such a discourse continues to

have a considerable number of followers can be

considered a stupendous achievement.

The Games Status Quo-ists Play

As the U.S. shapes the default regime for the

global Internet, it may soon be too late to make any

substantial changes to it, so deeply intertwined our

economic and social structures will be with the

Internet. The U.S.-based actors understand this well,

and have put in place very well-planned and well-

resourced strategies to buy time. Apart from support-

ing its companies, working in selected plurilateral

forums and propping up U.S. corporates dominating

multi-stakeholder governance structures, a good part of

this strategy is focused directly on global public

opinion.

Nice-sounding terms like ‘Internet freedom’ and

‘multi-stakeholderism’ have, more or less successfully

till now, been backgrounded with the fear of ‘a UN

takeover of the Internet’ and splintering of the globally

seamless Internet into national Internets. Huge

amounts of funds have been ploughed into this space,

in the name of building capacities in the South. Sel-

dom before has such a sudden influx of huge funds by

donors been witnessed in any field. And this is being

done not only by the developed countries and their

donor agencies but also by corporations like Google.

Their combined impact is indeed daunting.

The strategy is extremely sophisticated, which

points to the dominant actors’ keen understanding of

the importance of this issue (and the corresponding

non-understanding among most developing countries,

both governments and civil society). Country-level

strategies have been employed to push back even the

slightest movement toward seeking democratization of

global IG. The best examples of this are with regard to

the two countries – India and Brazil – which have been

recognized as most ‘dangerous’ in being possibly able

to take a legitimate leadership role globally toward

shaping alternative visions for the global Internet.

When India, which had been rather subdued after

WSIS, suddenly put forward the CIRP proposal in the

UN in 2011, alarm bells rang for the status quo-ists.

Almost immediately afterward, a strong IG initiative

was launched in India by the representative of a U.S.

telecom company, employing the cover of an Indian

industry association. This initiative gathered a ragtag

coalition of corporate and civil society actors (also co-

opting a few unsuspecting academics) to inter alia

propose holding an India IGF under the management

of the concerned industry association.

Such an

assemblage was to develop ‘community views’ to

challenge what were seen as undemocratic global

stances of the Indian government (read: the CIRP

proposal).

For quite some time, this strategy was extraordi-

narily successful and was able to make huge inroads

into India’s Internet policy establishment. It managed

to make it appear that India was getting doubtful about

Page 13

its own CIRP proposal. It also had a strong role to play

in India not signing the WCIT ITRs in Dubai and

reserving its opinion on the matter, which came as a

big surprise to many. However, the Snowden revela-

tions – which showed that the particular U.S. company

whose Indian representative led the Indian IG initiative

had been helping the U.S. government in foreign

espionage

– dealt a considerable setback to the

initiative, which since then has seemed to be losing

steam.

Even more successful was the strategy of the

status quo-ists with regard to containing Brazil’s

outrage over the Snowden revelations on the bugging

of the Brazilian President’s telephone and snooping on

commercially valuable information belonging to the

state oil company, among many other things. Brazil-

ians were so livid that President Dilma Rousseff

cancelled a state visit to the U.S. and went to the UN

to seek a new initiative for democratizing global

Internet governance. Panic struck the relevant quarters

in the U.S. It is to their credit, however, that they came

up with an outstanding counter-strategy.

ICANN’s CEO went to meet Rousseff and made

all the right noises about how she had given voice to

the whole world’s concerns and about how things must

now move on. He exhorted the President to hold a

global meeting on Internet governance to chart the

roadmap ahead. As could be expected, the President

agreed and such a meeting was announced. But from

that announcement onwards, it was one sordid tale of

a creeping capture of the meeting – now called NET-

mundial – by the U.S. status quo-ists, taking advantage

of the diplomatic grace and politeness of the Brazilian

hosts.

In the end, instead of addressing any of the con-

cerns arising from the Snowden revelations, the

NETmundial meeting actually came up with a set of

principles and roadmap which provided new legiti-

macy to the corporate-dominated multi-stakeholder

form of global governance. At the meeting, for in-

stance, representatives of top multi-national corpora-

tions (MNCs) like Cisco and Disney could be seen

literally reading out texts to the drafting groups.

In order to sweeten his initial invitation, ICANN’s

CEO seems to have hinted to President Rousseff that

the U.S./ICANN was ready to make some bold

changes. It was then learnt that these changes involved

the readiness of the U.S. to give up its oversight over

ICANN. However, once the NETmundial meeting got

underway, any substantive discussion/consultation on

this issue was withdrawn from the NETmundial

process, or any such relatively representative global

meeting. It has been taken to the narrow technical

community around ICANN, whose views on this issue

are rather well known. It is now evident that the U.S.

will not transfer its oversight role to a globally repre-

sentative body but will simply abolish it. This will

leave a very important global governance agency,

ICANN, fully unsupervised, which is not at all what

the non-U.S. countries have been asking for. The U.S.

meanwhile knows that it still has enough legal, legisla-

tive and even executive levers of control over ICANN,

since the latter is incorporated in its jurisdiction.

Even after Snowden had so thoroughly rattled

public perceptions about the Internet, and there has

been an intense desire to ‘do something’ about it,

which is why the world initially rallied behind Brazil

in its initiative, the status quo-ists were able to com-

pletely hijack the NETmundial event. It should prima

facie be considered strange that a meeting called to

address a global horror unveiled by Snowden regard-

ing the practices of the U.S. government and its

corporations ended such that the meeting and its

outcomes were most celebrated by these very actors.

Through the practices at NETmundial and its outcome

document, they were able to lay out a roadmap which

points in exactly the opposite direction to where the

developing countries need to go. It is little surprise

then that the next stop is the World Economic Forum,

where a new ‘NETmundial Initiative’ is now being

cooked up (see appendix). Such processes and meet-

ings are sought to supplant traditional, UN-based

global governance fora.

Similar containment strategies are being employed

in many other countries, including in Africa, often

leveraging the presence of U.S.-based MNCs or donor

aid. The problem here is rather straightforward. The

U.S.-based status quo-ists understand how outstand-

ingly important IG is to global economic, social,

political and cultural domination. Developing coun-

tries mostly do not. They do keep getting a whiff or

two of the enormity of the matter, mostly from the

daily flow of news on Internet issues. However, they

do not have a clear substantive understanding of the

issues, much less an agenda that they could pursue in

this important area of global governance.

A Roadmap For Developing Countries

The default global trade and intellectual property

frameworks were developed unilaterally by the North

Page 14

and then got inscribed into the respective global

governance institutions, the World Trade Organization

(WTO) and World Intellectual Property Organization

(WIPO). Developing countries have always had to play

catch-up. The paradigm for global governance of the

Internet, however, is only now being formed. There is

still time for the developing countries to work on a

proactive strategy to shape it, rather than just accept

what is dished out by developed countries. Below is a

very brief layout of the areas in which developing

countries should begin working together.

The first requirement is to develop deep substan-

tive and strategic competence with regard to the

subject of the global Internet and IG. The larger and

more active developing countries must take the lead in

this respect. The IBSA summit in 2011 had called for

establishing an ‘IG and development’ observatory. The

BRICS grouping (which comprises Brazil, Russia,

India, China and South Africa) has think-tank initia-

tives in many areas and should also take up similar

work in the IG space. The South Centre in Geneva has

already begun some work in this area, and its capaci-

ties should be strengthened.

One significant complication is that IG encom-

passes too large a swathe of issues. Many of them do

not admit of similar treatment. Some of them, for

instance, can attract much more commonality of

perspectives and interests than others. It is important

therefore to distinguish at least two streams of issues

and take them up separately, although they often do

intersect. These are the fields of (1) freedom of expres-

sion, privacy and security, on one side, and (2) various

economic, social and cultural issues, on the other.

Developed countries have managed to keep the global

IG ball firmly in the first court. In contrast, economic,

social and cultural issues have not even been identified

clearly enough till now. This is a job for developing

countries to do. BRICS could take the lead and set up

a think-tank initiative on ‘economic, social and cul-

tural issues related to the Internet.’

Developing countries should have a well-devel-

oped collective strategy for global fora, soundly

supported by such knowledge resources as discussed

above. After months of stalemate, the UN General

Assembly has recently announced that a high-level

meeting to review the implementation of the WSIS

outcomes will be held in December 2015, with a

preparatory process commencing from June 2015. This

will be the single most crucial stage on which the

developing countries must come together and present

clear and strong proposals. Internal preparations for it

must start now. The ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in

October-November 2014 will be a good place to begin

strategizing together, although ITU looks at a rela-

tively narrow segment of global IG issues.

It is however extremely unlikely that the U.S. and

its allies will yield any ground at global governance

fora. Developing countries should simultaneously

focus on South-South cooperation. The single most

practical and effective approach today could be to

announce some kind of an Internet Cooperation

Platform or Forum at the BRICS, IBSA or G77 level,

possibly all of them. It is only when such a forum is

launched, and practical work on cooperation on

Internet policy issues begins, that the U.S. and its allies

could be moved to offer global responses and solu-

tions. The latter know that a global free trade regime

for their Internet MNCs is of basic importance to their

global ambitions. If developing countries, especially

the larger ones, begin working together on Internet

issues, it could curtail the unrestricted global reach and

playing field available today to these companies. Such

a move by larger developing countries will be the

single most important game-changer in the area of

global Internet governance today. Just setting up a

BRICS and/or IBSA Internet Cooperation Platform

will, at a single stroke, transform the global IG land-

scape and what follows thereafter.

It is worth noting that the tide is turning against an

unregulated Internet even outside the developing

countries. A recent French Senate report recognizes an

urgent need to take far-reaching steps to stem the U.S.

domination on the Internet.

Even within the U.S.,

civil society advocates have begun to realize that an

unregulated Internet does not serve the public interest

and that appropriate regulation of the Internet is

needed.

The stage is therefore set for developing a new

paradigm for the governance of the Internet, based on

(1) its commons nature, and (2) the need for at least

some of its core functionalities to be made available as

public utilities, even if supplied by regulated private

entities. Appropriate models of policies and regulation

are required that can ensure people civil, political,

economic, social and cultural rights vis-a-vis the

Internet. It is for developing countries to present such

a new paradigm. They should stop playing catch-up

and aim high this time around. There may still be time,

although perhaps not too much, to reclaim the Internet

for its egalitarian values.

Page 15

Notes

1. WSIS was held in two phases, with two summits, one in

Geneva in 2003 and the other in Tunis in 2005.

2. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,

which is responsible for the addressing system of the Internet.

3. See the Okinawa Charter on Global Information Society (2000)

at:

http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/summit/2000/ docu-

ments/charter.html.

4. This assertion is largely symbolic and normative, as shown, for

instance, by a recent U.S. court case where some groups have

sought seizure of country top-level domain names of Iran and

Syria, and the court seems to be responding favorably.

5. The CSTD, a subsidiary body of the UN Economic and Social

Council (ECOSOC), was mandated to conduct the WSIS follow-

up.

http://www.itforchange.net/sites/default/files/ITfC/IBSA-state

ment_Enhanced_Cooperation_Consultation.pdf

7. http://itforchange.net/Techgovernance/IndiaCIRP

8. http://webnet.oecd.org/OECDGROUPS/Bodies/ShowBody

View.aspx?BodyID=1837&BodyPID=7425&Lang=en&Book=-

False

9. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-false-consensus-is-bro

ken/article4222688.ece

10. Control over capital and finance no doubt remains key, but

these are the most significant new elements of the hegemonic

global order that is being sought.

11. See, for instance,

http://usoecd.usmission.gov/june2011_internet2.html

12. The Indian government however refused to allow the industry

association to use the India IGF brand, and they held their

meetings under different names.

13. A former Permanent Representative of India to the UN in New

York, Hardeep Puri, has written about the extent of penetration by

the representative of this company into India’s Internet policy

establishment.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140803/edit.htm#1

14. http://www.domainmondo.com/2014/07/icann-and-internet-

governance-french.html

15. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/deep-dive-defense-

neutral-net

Appendix

From NETmundial to the World Economic Forum

Walking the tightrope of seeking as wide a global legitimacy

as possible while still keeping things under full control, the

protectors of the status quo Internet governance order now seem

to be seeking the cover of the World Economic Forum (WEF). A

NETmundial Initiative

has been announced to be launched at

WEF headquarters in Geneva on 28 August 2014, ‘to carry

forward the cooperative spirit of Sao Paulo [where the NET-

mundial meeting was held] and work together to apply the NET-

mundial Principles...’. As can be expected, the list of invited

participants is heavily dominated by Northern corporations. A

select group of government leaders and a few civil society organ-

izations are also invited.

In this context, it will be useful to look at the kind of views

on global Internet governance that have been expressed in WEF

reports over the last few years. This is what an analysis

of the

WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative (GRI) has to say about the

initiative:

‘One of GRI’s major recommendations is that experiences

with “multi-stakeholder consultations” on global matters should

evolve into “multi-stakeholder governance” arrangements. This

transformation means that non-state actors would no longer just

provide input to decision-makers (e.g. governments or multi-

national corporations) but would actually be responsible for

making global policy decisions...

‘Their recommendations for multi-stakeholder governance

include the introduction of parallel meetings with the governing

bodies of the WHO, UNESCO, and FAO where non-state actors

will hold independent sessions as a complement to the official

government meetings. GRI also recommends a second new form

of multi-stakeholder governance for conflict zones in developing

countries. They propose that the non-state actors, particularly the

business community, join with the UN system to jointly adminis-

ter these conflict zones.

‘There are some sharp differences between “multi-stake-

holder consultations” and “multi-stakeholder governance”, some

of which are often blurred by the loose use of the term “multi-

stakeholder”’ (emphases added).

Multi-stakeholderism apparently is a new, post-democratic

form of governance which gives big business a major, institution-

alized, political role and authority. Multi-stakeholderism in this

form is the preferred neoliberal model of governance, whose

application begins at the global level and with Internet governance

but is certainly meant to be taken to national levels as well as to

all sectors of governance. The plan is dead serious, with clear

calls for setting up multi-stakeholder organizations that will do

policy-making and governance. To quote the WEF’s Global

Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet from GRI’s final

report:

‘This means designing multi-stakeholder structures for the

institutions that deal with global problems with an online dimen-

sion. Thus the establishment of a multi-stakeholder institution to

address such issues as Internet privacy, copyright, crime and

dispute resolution is necessary. The government voice would be

one among many, without always being the final arbiter. And as

ever more problems come to acquire an online dimension, the

multi-stakeholder institution would become the default in inter-

national cooperation’ (emphases added).

The continuing and inevitable digitalization of our social

systems appears to be the chosen path for their de-democratization

through multi-stakeholderisation (read: the rule of big business,

with some crumbs thrown to other parties). – Parminder Jeet

Singh

Appendix Notes

1. See Internet Governance Transparency Initiative website;

https://k52lcjc5fws3jbqf.onion.cab/

2. https://www.umb.edu/gri/appraisal_of_wefs_perspective/s_

first_objective_enhanced_legitimacy/multistakeholderism

3. ‘Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Coopera-

tion in a More Interdependent World,’ pp. 317-21.

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GRI_EverybodysBusines

s_Report_2010.pdf

Page 16

* Reprinted from Third World Resurgence (a publication of Third

World Network), No. 287/288, July/August 2014, pp. 15-21 with

the permission of the publisher. This can be seen online at:

http://www.twn.my/title2/resurgence/2014/287-288/cover02.htm

** Parminder Jeet Singh is Executive Director of IT for Change

(

www.ITforChange.net), which works in the area of intersection

of digital technologies and social change. In relation to global

Internet governance, IT for Change has been most prominent in

framing and advocating positions that favor developing countries

and marginalized sections.

Democracy OR Multi-

Stakeholderism:

Competing Models

of Governance*

by Michael Gurstein

gurstein@gmail.com

Democracy at its simplest and most basic is

governance by and for the people. Of course, there are

a variety of conventions and values that are often

invoked in the context of “democratic governance” and

particularly for “democratic governments,” but democ-

racy as governance by and for the governed would

seem to be sufficient as a definition and particularly in

the absence of formal structures, rules, behaviors or

governmental structures.

I’ve elsewhere

discussed how various instances

of Multi-Stakeholderism (MSism) have operated in the

absence of or even in opposition to conventional

understandings of democracy. However, continuing

discussion and evolution in the way in which gover-

nance concerning the global Internet is being concep-

tualized is suggesting an approach to this governance

which involves “democratic multi-stakeholderism”

(DMSism). This, it is being suggested, may be one

method of squaring the circle where the historical

circumstances of Internet development – largely but

not exclusively through multi-stakeholder processes

primarily driven and controlled by those with a techni-

cal interest and responsibility for Internet development

are perceived as being necessary for the continued

well-being of the Internet as it enters into an increas-

ingly complex and politicized environment. This, it is

argued is particularly the case as matters of “Internet

Governance” shift focus from largely technical issues

to issues involving broad areas of public policy as

impacted by actions by and on the Internet.

The difficulty with creating or even conceptualiz-

ing a “democratic multi-stakeholderism” is that at its

core MSism is not “democratic.” Thus the governance

notion implicit in MSism is one where governance is

by and for those with a “stake” in the governance

decision thus shifting the basis of governance from one

based on people and (at least indirectly) citizenship or

participation in the broad community of the governed

to one based on “stakes,” i.e., an “interest” in the

domain to which the governance apparatus is being

applied. The historical notion of “stake” in a context

such as this one generally refers to a financial or

ownership interest in the area under discussion. But in

the evolving Internet Governance sphere (and others)

this has been extended to include a “technical stake”

(as in a professional interest) or even a “normative

stake” as in ensuring an outcome which is consistent

with one’s values or norms.

What is not included in any of the conventional

approaches to MSism however, is broad notions of

democratic participation (or accountability), i.e., where

the governance is structured so as to include for

example, those without a “direct” stake in the out-

comes but who nevertheless might as a consequence of

their simple humanity are understood to be impacted

by the decisions being taken. Discussions around these

matters are often dealt with within the MS (multi-

stakeholder) community by talking about the need (or

not) to include (technology/Internet) “users” as “stake-

holders.” I’ve looked at that discussion elsewhere

and

argued that when it comes to the current status of the

Internet we are all, i.e., all of humanity, now in one

way or another being impacted either directly or

indirectly by the Internet and in that sense we are all

“stakeholders” in how the Internet is framed and

enabled in its future evolution (i.e., “governed”).

By extending “stakeholder” status to “users” and

then recognizing that we are all in some way “Internet

users” the problem of DMSism, some argue maybe

solved. The problem however, remains in that a MS

approach as currently being proposed involves a

degree of equality of participation/influence by each of

the stakeholder groups (in the Internet Governance

jargon – “equal footing“) which would in this instance

mean that for example, decisions made where the

private sector or government or the technical commu-

nity etc. was highly influential would not by definition

be governance decisions made by the governed except

Page 17

in the trivial sense that since those stakeholder groups

also consist of people then all decisions would, of

course, all be made by “people” whatever their (tem-

porary) stakeholder status.

To me it is quite clear that “democratic gover-

nance” and “multi-stakeholder governance” are inter-

nally in contradiction with each other. At their core,

democracy as in the “rule of the people” is one form of

government and multi-stakeholderism as in “the rule of

‘stakeholders’” is another and competing form. I don’t

think that they can be reconciled.

Some are arguing that elements of Participatory

Democracy (PD) may provide the appropriate direction

and this certainly may be the case. However, current

experience with PD suggests that there is considerable

need for maturation in these processes and particularly

in developing means for effective and efficient deci-

sion making and for scaling from localized small scale

to larger processes.

What I do see as being possible and which is

where I think our collective thinking should go is

toward redefining how democratic governance can/

should operate in the Internet era and particularly (or

at least initially) in the “governance” of the global

Internet. The Internet “has changed everything” in-

cluding how we can and should govern ourselves and

the various aspects of our daily and collective lives.

This has been done both by changing how we live

those lives and by changing how we are able to act and

project ourselves in our lived and collective worlds

both physically and virtually. But to effectively re-

spond we need to evolve our institutions and mecha-

nisms of governance. We do this not by discarding our

current norms and practices such as democracy which

has done so much to enable, empower, and enrich the

lives of all who have access to this. Rather we do this

by allowing and facilitating an evolution in those

institutions and mechanisms to take advantage of the

new opportunities that technology provides and to

respond to the new risks and challenges which technol-

ogy has equally presented to U.S.

The list of those opportunities and challenges is a

long and growing one and our first task is to develop

the means for assimilating and responding to these. A

first step in this long road is to begin the process of

identification of the issues which need to be addressed

in these revised mechanisms for democratic gover-

nance in the Internet era:

1. The need for a means to incorporate technical

expertise and those who consider themselves neutral

technical stewards of various aspects of the Internet

into mechanisms for Internet governance and to

broaden the base of this stewardship to include those

from a wide diversity of backgrounds and interests

2. Finding ways of responding in our strategies and

mechanisms of governance to the speed of technology

change and the unpredictability of the impacts of these

changes including through economic and social

redistribution, disruption of production systems and

employment, huge transfers and accumulations of

wealth (and power), among others

3. Recognizing the apparent disengagement of large

numbers of the population from current conventional

governance and representative processes

4. Reacting to and finding ways of incorporating the

apparent desire for direct (disintermediated) engage-

ment of large numbers of the population in current

informal technology mediated processes associated

with the management of various activities associated

with daily living particularly in developed societies

5. Taking as a necessary challenge finding ways of

resolving the escalating divides in the technology

sphere including between those who have and are able

to use online systems for purposes of engagement and

those who are not or less able because of issues of

location, income, gender, technical and other forms of

literacy among others

6. Finding mechanisms to respond to the globalization

of the nature of the decision making/consultation

which needs to be undertaken given the globalized

nature of the issues/technology

7. Developing the fortitude to not be intimidated by the

extreme significance of the matters under discussion

given the vast economic, political, strategic and

security interests among others now impacted by the

Internet and digital platforms overall, thus increasing

the likelihood even inevitability of attempts at undem-

ocratic subversion of democratic processes in support

of one or another corporate or national interest

8. Recognizing and celebrating the opportunity for

using digital means to extend opportunities for effec-

tive participation, for enhancing the quality of decision

making through information provision and support for

dialogue

We need to develop appropriate responses and

mechanisms as a matter of considerable urgency but

persisting in attempts to substitute MSism for demo-

cratic practice is a diversion from what needs to be

accomplished and a potentially dangerous substitution

Page 18

of values of privatization and interest-based decision

making for governance that is founded in a concern for

the public good.

Notes

https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/multistakeholderism-vs-

democracy-my-adventures-in-stakeholderland/

2. https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/q-who-are-internet-

users-a-everyone/

*This article appeared on the Gurstein’s Community Informatics

blog on October 19, 2014 at:

https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/democracy-or-multi-

stakeholderism-competing-models-of-governance/

[Editor’s Note: The following article was posted on the

Just Net Coalition website in February 2014.This

article urges resistance to hyper power dominance of

Internet governance.]

What Future Governance

Now That We Know?*

by Louis Pouzin**

pouzin@eurolinc.eu

Internet Governance (IG) has been the topic of

endless discussions since WSIS onset in 2001. A

majority of States insist in having equal weight in

decisions bearing not just on technical matters, but on

public policies, economic and societal impacts as well,

at national and international level. However, the U.S.

government has not in any way lowered its determina-

tion to pursue its spying and mass surveillance opera-

tions, and keep unilateral control over the Internet

through a private Californian company (ICANN)

created in 1998 for this specific purpose.

Rhetoric and wishful scenarios may go on for any

number of years, without a predictable outcome. While

ideas and viewpoints may gradually become more

flexible and negotiable, over time the dominant party

keeps expanding its power to the point of being so

entrenched as to make negotiation irrelevant. Discus-

sion without capacity for counteractions is a losing

game. Are citizens of all countries to remain sitting

ducks waiting to be digitized and monetized? An

ultimate goal of the cyber-colonization.

What actions are possible?

Unless it works for U.S. government’s interest,

any action requiring U.S. government’s agreement will

be blocked. This is routine realpolitik. Hence, possible

actions are those which can be implemented without

U.S. government’s agreement, e.g.:

• apply national/regional laws on personal data pri-

vacy,

• apply national/regional fiscal laws to tax evaders,

• impose penalties on abusive market dominance,

• exclude illegitimate monopolies from major con-

tracts,

• balance investment/revenues between operators,

content providers, ISPs and media,

• protect natural plants from illegitimate patents,

• create national/regional domain registries independ-

ent from ICANN,

• open competition between multiple DNS roots,

• use open source software,

• promote user friendly end-to-end e-mail encryption,

• keep object identifiers registries and standards under

trade control (ISO),

• boost research/development on future Internet

(RINA).

• . . more?

Some readers may think of a laundry list. In the

context of standing up to a hyper power a first level of

defense is to make spying and predatory operations

more costly. A second level is to chip away enough

parcels of independence to acquire some bargaining

potential. On a longer term the objective is to make

countries more resistant and better prepared to aggres-

sive intrusions.

A good number of suggested actions need no more

detail, as they are self-explanatory. Let’s develop those

which may not be.

• protect natural plants from illegitimate patents.

Example: an insect resistant indigenous pepper

variety grows in some less-developed country (LDC).

A multinational chemical group adds some useless

ingredient to the seeds, and takes a patent. Thereafter

it sues local farmers for growing alleged patented

pepper without a license.

• create national/regional domain registries inde-

pendent from ICANN.

Top Level Domains (TLD) like .com, .net, .org,

Page 19

are familiar even to non Internet users. Country code

TLD (ccTLD) like .cn, .de, .fr, .it, .us are also well

known, others like .bz, .gl, .tp, .vi are much less

known.

New TLDs being presently introduced like .bike,

.construction, .guru, .photography, .singles, are largely

unknown.

The U.S. government imposed ICANN (created in

1998) as a monopoly in charge of all (cc)TLD registra-

tions. This unilateral decision has no legitimate inter-

national basis. A good reason for such an anti-competi-

tive status was to endow ICANN with a permanent

cash cow fed with domain rental fees paid by Internet

users.

As usual with monopolies, and in this case backed

by the U.S. government, ICANN’s top priority is

making more money for its lavish life style and for

buying friends. Being in the position of TLD regulator

and financial beneficiary is a blatant case of conflictual

interests.

There is a dire need for cleaning up the ICANN

house and placing it in competition with other actors

taking care of users interests.

Actually since 1996, before ICANN was created,

independent registries have sprung up, and operated

during a number of years, or still exist, e.g., Name-

Space, CesidianRoot-Europe, OpenNic, Slashdot,

Name.coin, etc. An undetermined population of private

registries operate out of conventional institutions and

remain mostly invisible. Whether due to ignorance,

misinformation, or ICANN monopoly, independent

registries are presently limited to niche markets. As no

international legal instrument protects the ICANN

monopoly the market could swing to other directions

should states or large institutions change policy, or

lack thereof.

• open competition between multiple DNS roots,

In the domain name field the term “root” desig-

nates a file containing a collection of TLD parameters.

This file is duplicated within “name servers” queried

by browsers or other applications for getting an IP

address associated with a TLD. In a nutshell this is the

replica of looking up a subscriber’s number in a phone

directory.

Root is a technical concept, a container of TLD

parameters. Registry is an organization managing

domain users and their identifiers. A registry may use

its own root (OpenNic), or the root of another organi-

zation (PIR, Public Internet Registry for .org uses the

ICANN’s root).

An ICANN dogma is the need for a unique global

(i.e., U.S. government controlled) root. As mentioned

earlier independent registries and multiple roots have

been in operation for longer than ICANN’s life, but

they don’t fit well in a monopolist empire. Curiously

Google and OpenDNS, which are not registries, use

their own roots, which are copies of ICANN’s root.

A further analysis of a multiple roots environment

is worth a longer development in another article.

• promote user friendly end-to-end e-mail encryp-

tion.

After Edward Snowden’s publications it is no

longer possible to handle security with benign neglect.

Many, but not all, organizations will try harder to

integrate security in their procedures. This will be

reinforced by the commercial pressure of the security

industry. Encryption is the basic ingredient of secure

communications; it is used routinely in closed environ-

ments, but practically nowhere in open environments.

E-mail is by and large the dominant service for private

and professional exchanges. As long as encryption is

clumsy or takes more time it will not catch up in public

use. In addition there should be a limited set of stan-

dardized protocols implemented in all mailers. At this

point campaigns inciting users to adopt security could

have a chance to succeed.

• keep object identifiers registries and standards

under trade control (ISO).

It is already projected that the order of magnitude

of objects in the Internet will be three to five times

larger than the number of humans. Tools will be

necessary for registration, retrieval, and exchange of

identifiers. Applying DNS tools for handling this type

of data seems inadequate and unrealistic. An example

of such a practical system is GS1 for bar codes and

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). It is successful

because it is carefully tailored to the needs of a spe-

cific trade: worldwide distribution of mass produced

consumer goods typically available in supermarkets.

Automobile, chemicals, hospitals, wine, would have

different needs. If the identifier management market

falls in the hands of a world monopoly, it will impose

its own proprietary standards irrespective of specific

trade needs, and distort manufacturing or distribution

Page 20

processes for its own profit.

Care should be taken to foster consensus within

trades for identifier management standards anchored in

a reputable international organization such as ISO.

• boost research/development on future Internet

(RINA).

As it stands today Internet is an over patched

experimental system based on 40-year old concepts.

The writing on the wall is “obsolescence.” Research on

future Internet has been reintroduced in the past ten

years, mainly as separate projects without focusing on

a specific operational target. Somehow a team at

Boston University came up with a breakthrough in

network design: “Patterns in Network Architecture” by

John Day. The system name is RINA, recursive

Internetwork architecture. European teams got con-

tracts from the EU Commission research program to

expand the initial platform in developing applications.

This is an opportunity for a new generation of design-

ers to close the security gaps of the legacy Internet.

• trust is gone.

This is a matter of fact, even though trust is

subjective. “If you want peace, prepare for war” is an

old mantra. We don’t really know how the U.S. people

will adjust to mass surveillance, which for decades was

supposed to exist only in countries like China, Russia,

East Germany, and many others. The logistics has

reached a point from which there may be no return. A

totalitarian regime more Orwellian than ever might

take over. We have to convince our governments and

fellow citizens to steer away from that model, and

technology. We don’t want to live in this kind of

society, do we?

February 2014

* This article can be accessed online at:

http://www.justnetcoalition.org/sites/default/files/Louis%20Pou

zin%20article%20%20-%20next_governance_v1.0.pdf

** Louis Pouzin is one of the original and most important Internet

pioneers. He invented the datagram packet switching technology,

from which the TCP/IP Internet protocol was derived. He

continues to spend his life championing the open, public Internet.

[Editor’s Note: In April 2014, the following open letter

by Karl Auerbach was written to the U.S. Congress to

explain ICANN’s role and to argue that what is needed

is proper oversight over ICANN, not releasing it from

oversight.]

Letter to Congress Regarding

NTIA and ICANN*

Representative April 21, 2014

Washington, DC 20515

I am writing you with regard to NTIA – The

National Telecommunications and Information Ad-

ministration – and ICANN – The Internet Corporation

for Assigned Names and Numbers.

I am the only person who has ever been – and

probably ever will be – elected by the public of North

America to a seat on ICANN’s Board of Directors.

I am also an Internet technologist – I’ve written

Internet standards that have been adopted by the IETF.

I’ve been a principle in several Internet start-ups. I’ve

received the Norbert Wiener Award for Social and

Professional Responsibility and I have been named a

Fellow of Law and Technology at California Institute

of Technology (CalTech) and Loyola Marymount

University. I am also a member of the California Bar

and its Intellectual Property section. You can learn

more about me on my website:

http://cavebear.com/

There has been much press about NTIA’s 2014

announcement that it will relinquish its oversight role

over ICANN.

That announcement has engendered

considerable discussion, including a hearing earlier

this month by the House Judiciary Committee.

Unfortunately much of the testimony is inapt,

serving largely as a distraction to avert our eyes from

the real issues. Beneath the layers of distraction one

finds that the issues are the same things that

Machiavelli wrote about so many centuries ago:

power, money, and authority.

In nearly every submission one will read words

about “assuring the technical stability of the Internet.”

“Technical stability” seems like a subject unlikely

to engender much conflict. Yet ICANN is a cauldron

boiling with heated debate.

ICANN received roughly $400,000,000 in revenue

in the year 2013. That is a surprisingly large amount of

money for “technical stability.” Is there something else

that might induce people to pay large amounts of

Page 21

money to ICANN?

The answer is that ICANN does vanishingly little

with regard to the technical stability of the Internet

and, instead, uses its de-facto monopoly position to do

a land office business selling rights to Internet terri-

tory.

ICANN does not “assure the technical stability of

the Internet.” Rather, ICANN dispenses commercial

rights and privileges.

In exchange for its largess ICANN obtains mo-

nopoly rents, significantly restricts legitimate and

innovative business practices, and imposes expansive

trademark protection well beyond what is required by

any law of any nation.

ICANN is a private regulatory body that promotes

its particular view of social engineering, Internet

business practices, trademark protection, and preserva-

tion of incumbent interests.

The issue currently coming before Congress is

whether to allow NTIA to step away from its oversight

role over ICANN.

Most of the pages written on this subject have cast

the issue as a choice between a “free” Internet and an

Internet controlled by international organizations or

foreign countries.

That is a mis-characterization.

Rather this is a fight for control, for authority, for

money.

One should not underestimate that last point –

money. ICANN has ensconced incumbent providers –

such as Verisign – and endowed them with almost

guaranteed perpetual revenue streams that amount to

the better part of a billion dollars each year, year-in

and year-out, (from which ICANN extracts a tithe.)

And as the TV commercials say, the value of ICANN

to those who seek to expand the protection of trade-

marks, is priceless.

And the fight is really not just over ICANN. It is

a fight over the model to be used for other, future

ventures into Internet governance.

Over the years NTIA has exerted precious little

oversight over ICANN. NTIA has not required ICANN

to deeply engage with the issues for which ICANN

was created, protection of the technical stability of the

Internet’s domain name system. Nor has NTIA exerted

much pressure to nudge ICANN toward becoming

what ICANN professes to be – a body that exists for

the benefit of the community of Internet users, a body

that is accountable to the community of Internet users,

and a body in which decisions are made with transpar-

ency.

NTIA’s role in ICANN has largely been to shield

ICANN from questions, most particularly questions

that would normally arise about a private body that

restrains trade and innovation.

One must ask whether that behavior constitutes

oversight at all. Or has an absence of oversight by

NTIA allowed ICANN to become a permissive play-

ground for financially interested entities to promote

private agendas?

If so, is that the kind of “oversight” that is worth

retaining? I think you would agree with me that the

answer is a definite “no.”

Yet there is no doubt that ICANN needs oversight

– real oversight. ICANN is a body that is in great need

of supervision.

Rather than framing the question coming before

Congress as one of releasing ICANN from NTIA

oversight it would be more appropriate to frame the

question thus:

To whom will ICANN be accountable, and how?

In theory ICANN, because it is a corporation,

would be accountable to its Board of Directors. Unfor-

tunately, in ICANN practice that is a fantasy. For

example, when I was on ICANN’s Board of Directors

I attempted to exercise a power that California law

clearly gives to corporate directors. As a sitting direc-

tor I asked to inspect ICANN’s financial ledgers.

ICANN fought me tooth and nail. I eventually ob-

tained a court order that forced ICANN to open its

books. Subsequently ICANN erased the system

through which the public could nominate and elect a

small minority of directors. In the place of elections

ICANN substituted a captive, dependent, “company

union” that places multiple layers of insulation be-

tween ICANN and the public. In the years since that

event ICANN has restructured itself to even further

emasculate its Board of Directors and insulate itself

from accountability to anyone.

The broader issue behind NTIA-ICANN is that of

governance of the Internet. Good governance is

accountable governance. But it may well be that we are

moving toward Internet governance in which account-

ability is rare and weak.

Much of the current “debate” about ICANN is

couched in terms of relaxing the oversight of the U.S.

over ICANN (and a thing called IANA – more about

IANA later in this letter.) There is a fear – a fear that

to my mind is overextended and hyperbolic – about

takeover of the Internet by other nations or an interna-

Page 22

tional body (such as the UN or the ITU).

ICANN is indeed bent on becoming an interna-

tional body, free from responsibility to any nation or

treaty organization.

ICANN is not looking for a change in putative

masters; ICANN is looking for independence.

For several years ICANN has been exploring

strategies to remove itself from oversight from the

U.S. – and from everyone else. Among the things

ICANN has examined is how ICANN might obtain a

special statute from a protective country (typically

Switzerland) and leap away from ICANN’s status as a

California public benefit/non-profit corporation and

U.S. 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.

ICANN represents a new kind of thing under the

sun. The Internet is eroding the authority from tradi-

tional nation-states. The granules of that authority are

not disappearing; rather they are aggregating into the

new kind of sovereignty that ICANN represents.

Unfortunately, that aggregation of authority is not

accompanied by any system of accountability except

that which ICANN (or rather those who wag ICANN)

chooses, voluntarily, to impose upon itself.

The real question before U.S. is not a choice about

NTIA and ICANN. Nor is it a choice about foreign

control of the Internet. Rather it is a choice about how

to do two things:

• Diminish the perception by those outside the

U.S. that ICANN is a tool of U.S. hegemony over

the Internet.

• Coerce ICANN so that it becomes, in fact rather

than in word, accountable to the community of

Internet users. Or, to put it another way: Coerce

ICANN so that it manages the technical stability

of the Internet for the benefit of the community of

Internet users rather than for a few insider com-

mercial interests.

Releasing ICANN from NTIA oversight would

have an effect on the first of these goals. But freedom

from NTIA would have no positive effect on the

second and, in fact, may cause ICANN to go even

further retrograde.

I said that I would come back to a thing called

IANA – the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

Magic tricks often involve a distraction so that the

audience locks elsewhere while the magician does his

work. IANA is one of ICANN’s favorite means to

distract attention.

The Internet is composed many technical agree-

ments – typically called “protocols.” In these agree-

ments are various numbers and names – similar in

concept to the ISBN numbers assigned to books or

license plate numbers attached to cars. For the most

part the assignment of these numbers is done the same

way that “take a number” machines work in bakeries

– each number is a simple increment of the previously

dispensed number.

IANA is the body that assigns, records, and

publishes these “protocol parameters.” It is an impor-

tant job. And it is a job that needs to be done accu-

rately and efficiently.

But IANA is essentially a clerical job that usually

involves no significant amount of discretion. (And in

those rare cases where technical discretion is needed

the various technical standards organizations, such as

the Internet Engineering Task Force – the IETF –

provide specific guidance and designate experts to be

consulted.)

There is no particular reason why ICANN and

IANA are bundled into the same organization. IANA

could be handled by any competent clerical provider –

such as an established accounting firm. Rather than

being a parent organization to IANA, ICANN could

just as well be a client for IANA services.

Because ICANN is essentially a body that regu-

lates economic and business matters – and is thus

subject to storms of debate from financially interested

groups – it would be better for IANA to be held

separate from ICANN and allowed to do its clerical

job in peace and avoid being dragged into matters in

which it has no interest and no role.

These are complex matters. There is a tendency

for many people to accept claims that these are arcane

technical disputes that should be left to “the techies.”

That tendency should be strongly resisted. These are

matters that can be, and need to be, faced by those

outside of the technical community.

Members of Congress can understand these issues

and are capable of making good choices.

I suspect that ICANN is not on your list of hot

issues. It is probably not on the hot list of many

members of Congress. And that is why ICANN and

NTIA have been able to glide under the radar for

nearly fifteen years.

My request to you is this:

• In the long term please take some time to be-

come more engaged with the issues of governance

of the Internet in general and ICANN in particu-

lar.

• In the short term recognize that the immediate

Page 23

question of NTIA and ICANN is not about U.S.

versus foreign influence but rather about whether

ICANN will be subject to effective oversight or be

accountable to anyone. ICANN has not demon-

strated that it is willing to make itself accountable.

One way or the other ICANN ought to be subject

to oversight – and that oversight ought to be more

real and substantive than it has been.

If you would like to ask questions or have a

follow-up discussion I am easily reached by e-mail or

telephone.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Karl Auerbach

Santa Cruz, CA

karl@cavebear.com

Note

1. In August 2015, the NTIA postponed the release of ICANN

until at least September 2016.

* http://cavebear.com/docs/ntia-icann-2014-others.pdf

UNESCO Program at UN

Obscures Controversy Over

ICANN*

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

UNESCO held a program at UN Headquarters in

New York on July 9, 2014 which it said was to intro-

duce its new publication “UNESCO Report on World

Trends on Freedom of Expression and Media Develop-

ment.” This program was to take “a new look at recent

evolutions in media freedom, independence, pluralism,

and journalist safety.”

While the first part of the program explored this

objective, the second part introduced a very different

element into the program agenda.

To open the program, Irina Bukova, Director

General of UNESCO presented a summary of some of

the recent trends in the struggle for freedom of expres-

sion and against censorship and for freedom of the

press. For example, she noted that a journalist is killed

every seven days and 90 per cent of those responsible

for the murders are never punished. In his brief re-

marks, Mårten Grunditz, the Ambassador to the UN

from Sweden, praised the creation of the report and

encouraged its circulation.

The keynote was presented by Lee Bollinger, the

President of Columbia University. His talk focused on

the struggle for freedom of expression. He criticized a

1919 U.S. Supreme Court case about freedom of

expression. The Court issued a decision penalizing

speech that advocated opposition to the draft. Bol-

linger explained that at its core, freedom of expression

is important for being part of a global world. Advances

in technology have resulted in the desire of people to

participate. He argued that there are global questions

that cannot be solved by any one country. So it is

important that people now have the ability to talk

collectively and globally.

The second part of the program was a panel which

was moderated by Joel Simon, the Executive Director

of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The three

panel members included Karin Karlekar of Freedom

House, Raza Rumi, a Pakistani journalist who has

fought against media censorship in Pakistan, and Veni

Markovski who explained that he was assigned by the

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Num-

bers (ICANN) to represent the ICANN organization at

the UN.

Notable by its absence in both the opening presen-

tations and in the panel was any discussion about the

revelations Edward Snowden had made public about

the U.S. Government surveillance of the Internet

communication of U.S. citizens, foreign leaders and

citizens around the world. Irina Bokova said that

UNESCO’s mandate is “to promote the flow of ideas

by word and image” between all peoples, across the

world. But how can that happen when there is U.S.

government surveillance of all Internet communication

in the U.S. and much elsewhere. Such surveillance acts

as an impediment to the flow of ideas and as a limita-

tion on freedom of expression. The monitoring of

speech or Internet communication can only serve to

encourage self censorship, or other forms of restric-

tions on one’s communication.

As part of the panel, Raza Rumi spoke about his

experience fighting censorship in Pakistan. Karin

Karlekar spoke of her efforts at Freedom House to

monitor censorship.

In his presentation, Veni Markovski, served as an

advocate for ICANN. In 1998 a bitter controversy was

Page 24

set off by the secret process of the creation of ICANN

by the U.S. government, and a continuing controversy

marks ICANN’s activities and the U.S. government’s

dominating role in these activities. The UN sponsored

World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) held in

Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis in 2005, was one battle-

ground where many nations attempted to find a way to

transform ICANN into a more broadly representative

organization, but the U.S. would not relinquish its

monopoly control via ICANN of some of the essential

parameters of the Internet.

In his presentation at the UNESCO panel, the

ICANN representative claimed that ICANN represents

multi-stakeholderism where all are equal to participate

in its decisions about governing the Internet. There are

many who disagree with such claims about ICANN.

Instead there is a widespread view that ICANN repre-

sents only a very narrow strata of those who use the

Internet, while it leaves out of the decision making

process the great majority of users and netizens. The

“one percent” are part of its governance processes, the

“ninety nine percent” are left out.

One such view is that of Louis Pouzin, an Internet

pioneer who is recognized for his contributions to the

design and conception for the Internet. Pouzin contin-

ues to be active in grassroots efforts to protect and

develop Internet technology. Describing the creation

and problem represented by ICANN, Pouzin writes:

The U.S. Government imposed ICANN

(created in 1998) as a monopoly in charge of

all (cc)TLD registrations (i.e. Domain Name

registrations).

This created a situation where ICANN had control

over the price charged for domain names and for the

registration process, essentially endowing ICANN

with, as Pouzin explains, “a permanent cash cow fed

with domain rental fees paid by Internet users.” To

then put ICANN in the position of the regulator of the

process of domain name registration and the financial

beneficiary of the process is, according to Pouzin, “a

blatant case of conflictual interests.”

As Pouzin points out, there are conflicts of interest

inherent in the creation and functioning of ICANN.

The U.S. government acknowledged that with the

creation of ICANN it failed to solve the problems

including “accountability (financial and representa-

tional), conflicts of interest, transparent decision

making country (ccTLDs).”

While the UNESCO program at the UN on July 9

served to obscure this important controversy, it dem-

onstrated that there is a need for the exposure of

conflicts of interest on important issues such as who

will control the governance of the Internet and its

critical functions. One of the questions to the panel

was how important issues related to freedom of ex-

pression and protection of journalists could be in-

cluded in the millennium development goal discussion.

A response from another member of the audience was

that the 10 year review of the goals set out during the

World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) would

be held at the UNGA in December of 2015 and the

process leading up to this review would be a time to

support such a discussion. The problem that was not

mentioned, however, was that the review process had

already been subjected to political pressure.

Clearly there are big stakes in the controversy

going on behind the scenes over ICANN and over who

will control the future of the Internet. The program

held by UNESCO on July 9 at the UN demonstrates

how these stakes can obscure the actual nature of the

controversy instead of providing the clarity that only

can come from open public discussion and debate.

Notes

1. Louis Pouzin, “What Future Governance Now that We

Know?,” February 2014;

http ://justnetcoaliti on. or g/s i t es / d e fa u l t /files / Louis

%20Pouzin%20article%20%20-%20next_governance_v1.0.pdf

See also this issue page 19.

2. See for example, the letter from J. Beckwith Burr, of the NTIA,

20 Oct. 1998. This letter is part of the collected articles published

as “Privatizing the Internet? A Call to Arms,” which appeared in

Counterpoise Vol 2 No 4 Oct. 1998 published by the American

Library Association, p. 25. The articles are online at:

http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/dns-icann-controversy.txt

3. The WSIS outcome document in 2005 mandated that a Ten

Year Review by the UN General Assembly of progress made

meeting the goals set in 2005 take place, that is in 2015. The

obligation that the GA set for itself was that by the end of March

2014, a public intergovernmental process would be implemented

to determine how this Review would be carried out. Yet the

March 2014 deadline to determine the modalities for the 2015

WSIS Ten Year Review by the GA passed with no result. Instead,

a secret, pressure-laden process delayed an agreement on the plans

for the mandated GA review until the end of July 2014. The

process for the Review is to take place from June 2015, with the

GA meeting mandated by the WSIS outcome document postponed

until December 2015.

* A version of this article appears on the netizenblog at:

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2014/07/31/unesco-obscures-icann-

controversy/. It is dated July 31, 2014.

Page 25

[Editor’s Note: The 2005 WSIS in Tunis mandated two

UN General Assembly reviews of progress of imple-

mentation of its outcome goals. The Five Year Review

in 2010 was to be of the Internet Governance Forum

(IGF) and the Ten Year Review in 2015 of WSIS

outcomes. The following article reports on the 2010

IGF Review, asking should the IGF be continued.]

UN to Consider Future of

Internet Governance Forum*

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

“If any subject is dull and uninteresting, it is IG or

Internet Governance.” But actually, it is an issue,

“gaining in importance. It is an issue that from the

beginning has been very controversial,” explained Sha

Zukang, the United Nations Under-Secretary General

in charge of the Department of Economic and Social

Affairs, as he opened a briefing on March 30, 2010 for

UN member nations and others who were interested in

the issue of whether or not the Internet Governance

Forum (IGF) should be continued.

In order to understand the issue of Internet Gover-

nance, and the context in which the IGF was created,

it is important to know some of the history of the

Internet. The development of the Internet was interna-

tional from its very beginning, but much of the funding

and leadership for that development came from the

U.S. government.

U.S. computer scientists, engineers

and graduate students had substantial roles in that

development, and the U.S. government maintained

overall management of it.

For the first two decades of the development of

the Internet, from 1973 to 1995, the U.S. government

maintained this development as a public and academic

development. By 1995, however, the U.S. government

privatized its portion of the Internet’s infrastructure. It

never gave up, however, its overall management and

control, of the critical functions of the Internet.

At the World Summit on the Information Society

(WSIS) meeting held by the UN in November 2005 in

Tunis, an important issue raised was the desire of

nations for a more international form of control or

governance over these the critical resources – the

domain name system, the IP addressing system, and

the port numbers of the Internet.

The U.S., however,

was not willing to give up its control. The briefing on

March 30, 2010 at UN headquarters in New York, was

held in the context of this background.

The issue underlying the question of Internet

governance, Mr. Sha explained, is the issue of who

will control the critical resources of the Internet.

“Those who use it should have a say,” he maintained.

In one of his prior positions as the Ambassador for

China at the UN, Mr. Sha said he had been someone

with very strong views on the issue, and one of the

earliest to raise the issue at the UN.

In his capacity, as part of the UN Secretariat, he

explained, he had the obligation to raise issues for the

UN member nations so they can decide for themselves.

Some of the context provided later in the meeting

by the delegate from Norway described what led to the

decision to create the IGF. Many member nations of

the UN had gone to the 2005 Tunis WSIS meeting

determined to have a more broadly based means of

control over the critical resources of the Internet, but

they had to concede at this meeting in Tunis that they

could not overcome the opposition by the U.S. Their

goal of changing the unilateral and exclusive control

over the domain name system to a more international

form of control was not achievable at that time. Instead

of having any actual control over these resources, the

outcome of the Tunis WSIS meeting was to create the

IGF as a “platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue.”

The IGF was to meet once each year for five years to

facilitate this dialogue. The IGF is an annual forum

held for discussion purposes only

In 2010, Mr. Sha listed the four previous and one

upcoming IGF annual meetings since the 2005 WSIS

meeting. Though the forum was only a place for

talking, with no power to make or implement deci-

sions, it functioned, he said, to support discussion

among those who could afford to attend the meetings.

Among the problems though, was the serious

absence of participants from developing countries,

who were not able to afford the travel costs to attend.

The result was that most of the participants, Mr. Sha

noted, were from the developed world.

Another problem was that the real issue of Internet

Governance, who would manage the critical resources

of the Internet, was not within the scope of what the

IGF was allowed to consider.

After five years of experience with the IGF, Mr.

Sha explained, the UN was to do a review. As part of

this review, the Secretary General was to present his

recommendations about whether the IGF should be

Page 26

continued and on what basis.

When the floor was opened for discussion, the

delegate from Yemen, Abdullah Alsaidi, representing

the “Group of 77 and China,” was the first to speak.

He offered five recommendations.

These included:

1. That the decision about the continuation of the IGF

should be made by the General Assembly in its next

session (the 65

Session).

2. That the IGF review should take place every two or

three years after that, instead of waiting for another

five or more years.

3. That in the future the IGF should focus on how to

deal with significant policy issues, such as helping to

change the “unilateral control of critical Internet

resources.”

4. That the IGF should focus on measures “enhancing

access to the Internet.”

5. That there be an implementation of the WSIS Tunis

Outcome Agreement “to maximize the participation of

developing countries in decisions regarding Internet

Governance” so that these reflect the interests of these

countries, especially with regard to development and

capacity building.

The Yemen Ambassador proposed that the IGF

continue to operate under the auspices of the United

Nations, but in a reformed form.

The issue raised by a few of the other nations that

spoke, including the U.S., France and the United

Kingdom, was whether the decision to be made on the

continuation of the IGF should be delegated to a

smaller forum, the Commission on Science and Tech-

nology for Development (CSTD).

This UN Commit-

tee meets twice a year in Geneva and is composed of

43 member nations.

Mr. Sha said he had checked with the legal depart-

ment at the UN. The issue could be discussed in the

CSTD, but the decision had to be made by the whole

of the General Assembly, which includes all the 192

member nations of the United Nations.

Another question raised was whether a draft

version of the Recommendations of the Secretary

General about the continuation of the IGF could be

provided to the CSTD for their May meeting. Mr. Sha

said it could be, but that it could only be available in

English by that time, not in the other five official

languages of the UN. If there was no objection from

other nations, he would be willing to make the English

language draft available for the CSTD meeting. The

nations that spoke encouraged him to make a draft

copy available for the CSTD meeting.

The briefing ended with the understanding that the

decision on the continuation of the IGF would be made

by the 192 member states of the UN during the 65

session of the UN General Assembly which was to

begin in mid September 2010.

The briefing reflected the concern that had also

been raised at the UN during a General Assembly

Second Committee meeting a few months earlier. The

summary record of the 23

meeting of the GA Second

Committee at the end of October 2010, reports that

Brazil described how it participated in and welcomed

the IGF. “It was time to reflect on its future…. The

building of a multi-lateral, transparent, and democratic

regime for Internet governance with the participation

of all, should be given a priority on the United Nations

Agenda.” Though the progress made by the IGF was

remarkable, the Brazilian delegate said, the current

arrangement of how the domain name system and

other critical resources of the Internet were managed

“did not change the unilateral and exclusive nature of

controls over the root directory of the domain name

system…. Broadly speaking,” Brazil concluded that,

“issues of voice and participation of Governments and

multi-lateral organizations in matters relating to the

Internet governance regime remain unresolved.”

Notes

1. Briefing by the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and

Society Affairs on “Matters related to the continuation of the

Internet Governance Forum” (organized by the Department of

Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)), from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. in

Conference Room 2 (NLB), Journal of the United Nations,

Tuesday, March 30, 2010, No. 2010/60, p. 6.

2. Ronda Hauben, “Returning Internet Governance to the People,”

Ohmynews International, November 24, 2004.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=

198177&rel_no=1

3. Ronda Hauben, “WSIS Proves a Summit of Unsolved Solu-

tions,” OhmyNews International, November 28, 2005.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=

260786&rel_no=1

See also Ronda Hauben, “Who Will Control the Internet Infra-

structure?” OhmyNews International, October 3, 2005.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=

251118&rel_no=1

4. “We ask the UN Secretary-General to examine the desirability

of the continuation of the Forum, in formal consultation with

Forum participants, within five years of its creation, and to make

recommendations to the UN Membership in this regard.” (ITU,

“WSIS Outcome Documents,” December 2005, p. 84)

5. Formed in June 1964, there are currently 133 states that are part

of the G77. The G77 is described at the G77 web site

(

http://www.g77.org/doc/) as “the largest intergovernmental

Page 27

organization of developing states in the United Nations, which

provides the means for the countries of the South to articulate and

promote their collective economic interests and enhance their joint

negotiating capacity on all major international economic issues

within the United Nations system, and promote South-South

cooperation for development.”

6. The Commission on Science and Technology for Development

has been functioning as a focal point for follow up activities from

the WSIS Summits:

http://unctad.org/SearchCenter/Pages/Results.aspx?k=wsis

7. Summary Record of the 23

Meeting held at the New York

Headquarters of the Second Committee on Wednesday, 28

October, 2009, at 10 a.m. Agenda Item 50 “Information and

Communication Technologies for Development,” General

Assembly, Sixty-fourth session, A/C.2/64/SR/23, p. 8.

*A version of this article appeared on the netizenblog at:

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/04/09/un_to_consider_futu

re_of_internet_governance_forum/

First Preparatory Meeting of

United Nations WSIS 10 Year

Review Reveals Problems*

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

Ten years ago, in November 2005, I attended a

significant event sponsored by the United Nations in

Tunis, Tunisia. This was a follow-up to an earlier

event held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2003. Both these

events were called the World Summit on the Informa-

tion Society (WSIS). A main catalysis for the Summit

was the desire of people around the world, and espe-

cially in the developing countries, to have access to the

Internet and to the promise of a better future that the

Internet symbolized in the 1990s.

It is ten years after the Tunis 2005 WSIS event.

One of the obligations agreed to at the Tunis Summit

was to have the United Nations General Assembly

(UNGA) do a ten year review to evaluate the progress

made in carrying out the vision and in meeting the

goals set forth by the Tunis Agenda, and also to

identify the challenges remaining.

What is the UNGA doing to meet the obligation

bestowed on it by the Tunis Agenda?

On July 1 the UNGA held the first preparatory

meeting to begin the review process which is to

culminate in a high level meeting of the UNGA on

December 15 and 16, 2015.

The July 1 meeting was to be a meeting of UN

member nations toward making input for a statement

to be agreed to for the December event. The July 1

preparatory meeting was to take place in Conference

Room 2 of the UN Headquarters in New York City and

was to be a meeting where all nations who are mem-

bers of the UN could present their views.

July 1, 2015 arrived and the meeting opened at 10

a.m. as planned. What was striking, however, was that

there were many empty seats in the conference room.

While some few nations had sent representatives, the

sparse attendance of UN member nations raised the

question as to why this was the response of so many

member nations at the UN.

As announced, the July 1 preparatory meeting was

to have a morning session and an afternoon session.

The morning session appeared to proceed as planned,

but at the end of the morning session, the co-facilitator

announced that the afternoon session was cancelled.

Among the statements made by the nations that

sent representatives to the July 1 meeting, there were

some few that pointed to serious problems making it

difficult or even impossible to fulfill on the goals of

the Tunis Agenda. These statements provide clues as

to why the participation in this meeting by member

states was so sparse.

One such clue was contained in the statement by

the South African Ambassador to the UN. His state-

ment was presented on behalf of the G77 + China

group which includes as members 133 developing

countries. The South African Representative described

how developing countries are marginalized when they

try to carry out their roles and responsibilities on

international public policy issues pertaining to the

Internet. Such a situation, he explained, is contrary to

the specific mandate of the Tunis Agenda which

provides for the cooperation for all governments to

function on an equal footing in public policy matters

related to the Internet. The South African Ambassador,

however, reported that “tangible progress on this

specific mandate…has been blocked.”

Furthermore,

he noted, “It is unfortunate” that this mandate for what

has been called Enhanced Cooperation, “has been

implemented selectively to suit the narrow interests of

a few influential players in the multi-stakeholder

community.”

This would seem to be a strongly worded com-

plaint that one would expect would deserve attention

especially from the co-facilitators chairing the session,

Page 28

but also from other member states who were part of the

July 1 preparatory meeting.

Since the South African Ambassador was offering

this critique on behalf of the G77 + China group which

is composed of 133 member states of the UN, such a

critique would appear to merit serious attention.

But that was not the case at this July 1 meeting.

Instead the co-facilitators just passed over this critique

with no questions to the South African Ambassador

neither during the meeting, nor in the summary state-

ment at the end.

Similarly, a serious criticism by the representative

of the Brazilian Mission was ignored by the co-facili-

tators.

The Brazilian Representative explained that the

Commission on Science, and Technology for Develop-

ment (CSTD) had been requested to undertake the

review and provide a resulting document that UN

members could build on.

The CSTD did produce a ten-year report but this

report was the product of the Secretariat’s views,

instead of being based on the views of the member

states that had tried to take part in the process.

There was no further explanation or inquiry into

the basis of these serious complaints about the WSIS

10 Year Review process. The statements of other

member nations were presented.

In all nineteen UN member nations or regional

representatives presented statements at the July 1

preparatory meeting. They were South Africa on

behalf of the G77 and China, the EU on behalf of the

EU related countries, Australia, China, the United

States, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Japan, Israel, the

Russian Federation, the United Arab Emirates, Swit-

zerland, Sweden, Latvia, Mexico, Egypt, Canada, and

Brazil.

Given the low turnout from among the 193 UN

member nations, Mr. Mažeiks, the Latvian co-facilita-

tor announced that he had no further member nations

requesting to speak, so he was cancelling the planned

afternoon session. Why the low turnout, however, was

a problem that failed to be raised.

In her summary statement at the end of the July 1

meeting, Ambassador Nusseibeh, the co-facilitator

from the United Arab Emirates, omitted any reference

to the critical comments presented and only focused on

the more general statements. She said that since there

was so little time to prepare for the statement that will

be agreed to for the December meeting, the statement

will have to be short because there will not be the time

to iron out differences.

And the Summary of the July 1 meeting contrib-

uted by the UN Secretariat similarly omitted any

consideration of the serious criticisms presented at the

July 1 preparatory meeting.

Notes

1. See “Intervention on Behalf of the Group of 77 and China by

the Representative of South Africa at the First Preparatory

Meeting for the General Assembly Overall Review of the

Implementation of the Outcomes of the World Summit on the

Information Society (WSIS)”

http://worksp ace.unpan.org/sites/Internet/Documents/

UNPAN94904.pdf

2. The webcast for the First Preparatory Meeting for the WSIS+10

Review held on July 1, 2015 can be seen at:

http://webtv.un.org/search/informal-meetings-of-the-plenary-

aspart-of-the-intergovernmental-preparatory-process-for-the-

overallreview-of-the-implementation-of-the-outcomes-of-the-

worldsummit-on-the-information-society-general-assem-

bly/4333148552001?term=2015-07-02

Following is a transcript of part of the video of the July 1

meeting where the Brazilian Representative explained the problem

with the CSTD Report. This excerpt is from 2:21:51 – 2:23:26 of

the video.

The Brazilian Representative explained: “I would like to

refer to the recent 18

session of the Commission on Science and

Technology for Development ( CSTD) held in Geneva from the

to the 8

of May 2015. And essentially we were expecting that

from it would ensue a very substantive significant input into the

WSIS+10 Review exercise, a Report that CSTD was meant to

prepare and to submit as this central input.

But on the other hand, we were a bit frustrated with the

outcome because we understand the Report does not match the

ambition for the review.

It is a Report basically elaborated by the Secretariat. Inputs

from member states themselves, members of the Commission

actually will be very much abridged and become summarized

individually by members themselves and available on the Internet.

So that’s not the ideal we were expecting for the exercise.

We will have to redouble our efforts to have new and

additional opportunities for more substantive and significant

inputs into this preparation. So it was a frustrating outcome from

the perspective of Brazil, and I think we will have to redouble our

efforts.”

* A version of this article appeared on the netizenblog on Aug. 1,

2015 at:

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2015/08/01/un-wsis-10-

year-review-reveals-problems/

Page 29

Observations on the 2

Preparatory Meeting of the

UN WSIS 10 Year Review*

by Ronda Hauben

ronda.netizen@gmail.com

I -Two Opposing Positions Dominate Dis-

cussion

The Second Preparatory meeting of the WSIS

Ten Year Review process was held on October 20-22,

2015 at the UN headquarters in New York.

The co-

facilitators, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, UAE Ambassador to

the UN, and Janis Mažeiks, Ambassador to the UN

from Latvia, told those attending the meetings that the

statements submitted over the course of the preparation

will be the basis for the outcome document to be

agreed to at the High Level meeting scheduled for

December 15 and 16 at the New York UN headquar-

ters. But a controversy over the model for Internet

governance continued to dominate the WSIS Ten Year

Review meetings.

The controversy appears in various forms and

under various guises. Essentially it can be summarized

as the contention between a number of developing

nations and other nations with a group of developed

nations who hold a different position over how deci-

sions about Internet related public policy should be

made.

II – Developing Nations want Participation

on Equal Footing

The developing nations and others who support

their viewpoint agree that there is a problem with the

decision making process for the global Internet. They

explain that they want to be able to participate on an

equal footing with all other states in decisions about

global Internet development. This is sometimes

referred to as “enhanced cooperation,” though the term

has been a confusing one to apply in practice.

The G77 + China statement to the WSIS Review

meeting on July 1, 2015 outlines this problem.

The statement explains:

It is unfortunate that the mandate of the Tunis

Agenda has been implemented selectively to

suit the narrow interests of a few influential

players in the multi stakeholder community.

It is critical that this review process commit

steps to fulfill the yet unfulfilled mandate of

Para 69 of the Tunis Agenda on Enhanced

Cooperation.

The Tunis Agenda called for governments to,

on an equal footing with each other, carry out

their roles and responsibilities on interna-

tional public policy issues pertaining to the

Internet.

However, ten years later, tangible progress on

this specific mandate of Enhanced Coopera-

tion which would allow developing nations

with important ideas to contribute to Internet

policy, has been blocked. It is imperative that

this important issue be resolved, so that all

nations have an equal say in the public policy

affecting the Internet.

III – Some Developed Nations want Multi-

Stakeholder Model for Decision-Making

On the other side of the controversy are certain

Western governments and their supporters who are

advocating what they call a multi-stakeholder form as

the governance model for decisions made about the

Internet. Who are stakeholders is subject to varying

interpretations. But essentially it means the nations

advocating this form do not want any multilateral

decision making over Internet issues or policy.

IV – Pattern During Meetings

As the meeting got underway on October 20, the

pattern that would prevail through the final meeting in

the Second Preparatory Phase became clear. The

developing nations are represented by the South

African Ambassador as spokesperson for the G77 +

China. He would make a statement relevant to the

topic raised by the co-facilitators for that session. A

small set of Western nations would respond with their

critique of what was presented and their opposing

perspective. Though the focus of the Second Prepara-

tory Phase was allegedly how to spread the Internet to

the developing nations, there was little concern ex-

pressed by the bloc of nations promoting the multi-

stakeholder form as a governing principle to hear what

the developing nations saw as needed for their further

development or what problems they hoped to solve.

Nor was there concern by the co-facilitators or the bloc

of Western nations that as in the First Preparatory

Phase of meetings, participation by developing nations

in the ongoing preparations was low, considering that

there are 193 member nations who are members of the

Page 30

UNGA and 133 of them are part of the G77 + China

group.

Among the nations representing the Western bloc

and their supporters were the U.S., the EU, the U.K.,

and supporters of their position including Australia,

the Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Latvia,

Poland and others.

Among the nations presenting and supporting the

G77 + China presentation of “participation on an equal

footing” were South Africa, who presented the position

of the G77 + China on the issues under discussion,

Liberia, Ecuador, Cuba, Mexico, Algeria, Iran, Saudi

Arabia, Russia, China and others.

Some nations, notably Brazil, and India were

present through much of the Second Preparatory

Process, but their views appeared to support one side

in some issues and another side in other issues. A few

others came at least to some of the discussions but

only participated in a limited way.

A difficulty for those watching the discussion on

the webtv transmission was that there was no English

translation of the Spanish, Arabic, or French state-

ments so it was not possible for English speaking

remote listeners to follow the discussion when speak-

ers were not English speaking. It’s not clear how

widespread this problem was with the WebTV version

of the broadcast into other languages, as there ap-

peared to be translation into Russian functioning for

the transmissions.

The two co-facilitators welcomed the different

speakers. But they did little to identify points that

needed clarification or to recognize differences in a

way that could help clarify the issues or explore the

underlying confusions and controversies.

For example, terms like “stakeholder” were used

with diverse interpretations by those promoting it as

the ideal form of Internet governance, yet these diverse

interpretations were not acknowledged so there could

be a common agreement about what was being dis-

cussed. For some the term “stakeholder” referred to

governments, civil society activists, and corporations.

Others included members of academic institutions or

technical organizations in the stakeholder category.

Some included government, others saw governments

as a separate category.

V – Who is Excluded by the Multi-Stake-

holder Model?

That citizens, netizens, and the public in general

are excluded from any right to participate under the

multi-stakeholder model was never considered in the

discussions. The issue briefly raised by some develop-

ing nations noted that many governments have consti-

tutional obligations to provide for the well being and

the security of their nation’s citizens, but this issue was

dismissed by others.

Those promoting the multi-stakeholder gover-

nance model pointed to the yearly meeting of the

Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which rotates its

meetings to different locations around the world, as an

example of multi-stakeholderism. The G77 + China

and others pointed out that there is too little representa-

tion of developing nations or participation by those

from developing nations at the forum for it to be a

demonstration of their ability to participate in decision

making via that venue. Moreover, the IGF is a place

for presentations and discussions, not a decision

making body, so using it as a functioning example of

a participatory decision making institution is not

appropriate or accurate. Similarly, the IGF is not open

to all to participate but only to those fitting certain

narrow categories. Also, it is actually only available to

those who can afford the cost of travel to often distant

locations. If the IGF met in New York or Geneva, then

at least those nations with delegations at the UN would

have more of an ability to send someone to participate.

VI – The Role of the Co-Facilitators in the

Controversy?

Despite the controversy over the nature of the IGF

and its relevance to the obligation of the UN General

Assembly to do a ten year review of the WSIS+10

achievements and shortcomings, the co-facilitators

announced that they will travel to attend the next IGF

Meeting to take place in Joao Pessoa, Brazil from

November 10 to November 13, 2015. The co-facilita-

tors intend to hold consultations with IGF “stake-

holders” in Brazil.

Instead of the co-facilitators taking an impartial

position in the controversy over whether there is a

need for more participation for developing nations in

decisions regarding the public policy over the global

Internet versus the Western bloc position that the

stakeholders of the IGF should be a major part of the

decision making process of the global Internet, the co-

facilitators have given the appearance of favoring the

Western bloc position by the plan to go to the IGF for

“consultations.” The co-facilitators have judged such

Page 31

a trip and plan worth the time it will take despite the

fact that they frequently remind the UNGA member

nations that there is a very limited time frame for the

GA member nations to participate in the Review.

Meanwhile there have been some reports on twitter

that the co-facilitators have been carrying on a limited

number of information sessions among other UNGA

member nations that have not yet been part of the

WSIS+10 Review process at the UN. This demon-

strates there is a need felt among member nations at

the UN to understand better the issues involved in the

WSIS Ten Year Review.

The resolution regarding the meetings that were to

take place at the UN as part of the WSIS Ten Year

Review set out that “relevant stakeholders” would be

included in the discussions at the UN. Who may

qualify as a “stakeholder” is a severely limited cate-

gory restricted to NGO, the private sector, and certain

technical or academic participants who are already or

were registered with certain UN conferences or related

organizations.

From these limited categories somehow

a handful of people are chosen to speak or to be part of

a panel and the participation is token at best. Those

nations advocating the multi-stakeholder model have

made no effort to discuss the issues with the general

body of stakeholders registered for the meetings held

at UN Headquarters to solicit their views. Multi-

stakeholderism, instead appears to function as a means

for those advocating it to have an excuse to exclude the

majority of member nations of the UN, the citizens and

netizens of those nations, and even the vast majority of

those who are considered as stakeholders from the

discussions and decision making processes.

VII – Is there an Inclusive Model for

Internet Governance and Decision Mak-

ing?

The enhanced cooperation model referred to by

the G77 + China is one which calls for all nations to be

included in the decisions that relate to Internet devel-

opment and its future. There are models for how that

was carried out by processes developed by the research

and technical community which included members

from an ever evolving number of participants from

around the world. Building a model for Internet

governance based on the lessons learned from how the

Internet was developed and lessons learned since

would be a means to determine how to meet the

demand for broad based participation in the decisions

that will affect many nations and people. But such

lessons will not be learned by focusing on a flawed

model which excludes most of the nations and peoples

of the world from the ability to participate in the

decisions that will make possible the realization of the

WSIS vision of a people-centered, inclusive, and

development-oriented Information Society.

Notes

1. Ronda Hauben, “First Preparatory Meeting of United Nations

WSIS 10 Year Review Reveals Problems,” August 1, 2015,

netizenblog

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2015/08/01/un-wsis-

10-year-review-reveals-problems/

2. G77 Statement July 1 2015 “INTERVENTION ON BEHALF

OF THE GROUP OF 77 AND CHINA BY THE REPRESENTA-

TIVE OF SOUTH AFRICA AT THE FIRST PREPARATORY

MEETING FOR THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OVERALL

REVIEW OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE OUTCOMES

OF THE WORLD SUMMIT ON THE INFORMATION SOCI-

ETY (WSIS) (New York, 1 July 2015)”

http://www.g77.org/statement/getstatement.php?id=150701

3. There were only a small number of developing nations partici-

pating for substantial parts of the meetings of the Preparatory

Phase for the WSIS+10 Review, though other nations came for a

short while to join the discussion at varying times.

4. Some tweets of Co-facilitator presentations to UN members:

LatviaUN_NY ?@LatviaUN_NY 14h14 hours ago #WSIS10 Co-

facilitators@LatviaUN_NY and @UAEMissionToUN brief

CELAC members on the review process and the road ahead

Singapore Mission UN ?@SingaporeUN Co-facilitators of

#WSIS10 Perm Reps of @UAEMissionToUN and

@LatviaUN_NY brief the Forum of #smallstates #FOSS

5. Following is the list of who can be accredited to the High Level

UN WSIS Ten Year Review December Meetings as relevant

stakeholders.

“Relevant stakeholders, include civil society, private sector and

academia, from the following categories:

* Non-governmental organizations in consultative status with the

Economic and Social Council

* Organizations accredited to the World Summit on the Informa-

tion Society held in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005)

* Organizations accredited to the WSIS Forum held from 2011 to

2015

* Organizations with observer status with the United Nations

Conference on Trade and Development

* Attendees of the UNESCO WSIS+10 – ICT4D Conference or

the UNESCO WSIS – Connecting the Dots Conference

* Organizations accredited to the Financing for Development

(FFD) process

* Organizations accredited to the United Nations Sustainable

Development Summit 2015

* Organizations already accredited to the WSIS+10 process (July

and October meetings)

Government bodies and intergovernmental organizations register

through standard UN protocol arrangements.”

See:

Page 32

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hQDiPJsfpr0e0CvLzXJvzW

NBftrTN2T-_-SViMU50LQ/viewform

6. See for example: Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben,

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet,

posted online in 1994 and published in print edition 1996.

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

Ronda Hauben, “International and Scientific Origins of the

Internet and the Emergence of the Netizens,” Talk presented at

PPF in Tunis, November 2005

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/2005/tunis-ppf/RHauben-

talk.txt

* A version of this article appeared on the netizenblog at:

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2015/11/01/2nd-prep-mtg-wsis-10-

year-review/

[Editor’s Note: The following article argues that “No

single Government should have a pre-eminent role in

relation to international Internet governance” It was

published in the book, Reforming Internet Gover-

nance: Perspectives from the Working Group on

Internet Governance (WGIG)* by the United Nations

ICT Task Force, 2005, pages 185-192.]

Internationalized Oversight of

Internet Resource

Management

by Qiheng Hu

13020075697@163.com

The World Summit on the Information Society

(WSIS) Geneva Phase meetings in 2003 focused world

attention on the global Internet governance issue, and

especially related public policy issues. With the broad

participation of governments, United Nations bodies,

international organizations, the private sector and civil

society, all stakeholders reached an initial consensus

on the principles, objectives of Internet governance. In

addition, they deepened their understanding of the

roles played by all actors in the Internet governance

process. Based on the strong recommendation of the

United Nations Member States, Secretary-General

Kofi Anan established the Working Group on Internet

Governance (WGIG) to undertake further studies on

Internet governance issues. The contribution of WSIS

with regard to Internet governance is extensive and

historic, for at least two reasons.

First, it appears that through the WSIS process and

WGIG study, the technological, structural and cultural

features of Internet governance have been widely

recognized and accepted among the major stakeholders

in the Internet society. Second, considerable consensus

has been achieved on a series of specific major issues.

These include the indispensable role of the current

“bottom-up” public-private partnership; the impor-

tance of respecting the architectural principles of the

Internet, the quality and value goodness of the existing

governance structures and related institutions, and the

need to improve Internet governance on the basis of

the existing governance structure and mechanisms

rather than to build some mechanism to replace the

existing one. At the same time, there is now recogni-

tion of the existing weak points and problems hidden

in current global Internet governance mechanisms, and

of the need for improvements on a comparatively

compact set of issues. Furthermore, differences in view

points on these issues and the ways to improve them

seem to be clearer than ever.

The common understanding of these matters that

is reflected in the WGIG Report provides a basis for

further discussion and consensus on many complex

issues of Internet governance. Looking back to the

debates during Geneva WSIS, one could think that the

progress made to date is quite encouraging for the

long-term, from the Tunisia Summit in November

2005 and beyond.

Internet governance is a complex, widespread,

distributed and ongoing process. The existing structure

is the product of thirty years of evolution that has

accompanied the great practice of the Internet with the

participation of multiple stakeholders worldwide. It

has facilitated the growth of the global Internet.

Improvements are not simple and must be taken with

care so as not to disturb all that is good. It is not a

simple task to improve it. As if we are facing a com-

plex puzzle game, to improve the mosaic one has to

find out first what is really missing.

The Internet has become a pivotal global public

infrastructure, penetrating into all aspects of human

life, with intricate links to public policies and public

interests in each country. Accordingly, Internet re-

sources have become global strategic resources that are

tightly knit with state sovereignty and public security.

Efforts to provide possible solutions to public policy

issues in relation to the Internet applications also need

to be built on effective Internet resource management.

Therefore, the management of Internet resources is not

simply a matter of technological coordination, but also

Page 33

carries with it important public policy issues. For this

reason the basic structure should be authoritative,

effective and clearly mandated. The management of

Internet resources and related mechanisms, practices

and procedures should be clearly set up with a view to

addressing issues that are either in existence at present

or likely to occur in the future. That is why the issue of

Internet resource management has been a high priority

and a major focus for the WGIG to study.

Requirements for Further Evolution

The Internet in its evolution has undergone

“bottom-up” technological innovations, business inno-

vations and standards definitions involving broad

participation, with the U.S. Government playing a

profound and promoting role in the whole process

especially in the initial stage, creating an open and

transparent participatory system designed to take into

account the needs and interests of both the private

sector and civil society. Most of the prevailing

Internet-related standards and rules are derivatives of

such a “bottom-up” “consensus-building” mechanism.

Behind the explosive growth of the Internet, such a

mechanism has served as an instrumental driving force

as it stresses the roles of civil societies and the private

sector. It also emphasizes the effectiveness of rules and

an equal sharing of cyber information by all. This is

the most valuable “Internet Culture” that provides an

encouraging and stimulating environment for the

fostering of innovation in technology and business and

further serves as the essential source of the dramatic

development of the worldwide Internet.

Nevertheless, with the growth of the Internet and

its transition into a key element of the global informa-

tion infrastructure, certain shortcomings lurking in its

operational and management mechanisms are gradu-

ally appearing:

Different countries/regions and different groups

have varying rates of economic development, language

backgrounds and cultures, resulting in de facto in-

equalities in terms of timely understanding of policies

and regulations related to the Internet. They also have

varying capacities to participate in and oversee the

rule-making and related processes in the existing

model of Internet mechanism. Therefore, the involve-

ment of developing countries in making international

public policies related to the Internet falls short of the

scale at which these societies use and rely on the

Internet. Over the years this situation resulted in some

prevalent Internet rules and regulations which do not

and cannot fully reflect broader public interests of the

worldwide community and especially the interests of

groups that have limited or no Internet access, or

groups that lag far behind developed countries in their

Internet construction capabilities.

Internet resources have become global public

resources critical to the safety and interests of all

countries. Therefore, given the global nature of

Internet resources and for the sake of reflecting the

principle of equal participation, it is no longer appro-

priate for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names

and Numbers (ICANN) to follow an approach in which

it is empowered by a single government for specific

operations and decision-making, especially for certain

critical resource management issues.

Due to the lack of empowerment from govern-

ments other than the U.S., weaknesses like low effi-

ciencies and poor decision-making capabilities are

apparent in the handling of many public policy issues

that require strengthened cross-border coordination.

One case in point is Internationalized Domain Names

(IDN), which is still a pending issue after several years

of discussion and is without any effective decision in

sight in spite of years of efforts and attempts to have

international policy coordination on this front. Mean-

while, because other countries are unable to partake in

decision-making for the formidable Internet this

naturally gives rise to misgivings in some of those

countries, which in turn, to some extent, restrict the

applications of the Internet (e.g., applications of high

security requirements) in those countries. All this has,

to a certain extent, constrained the development of the

Internet.

In the ICANN decision-making process there is

extremely low government participation. This feature

has its advantages and disadvantages. On the negative

side, for some issues concerning public interests,

ICANN cannot help being biased to unduly favor the

private sectors. For example, the process of adding

new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) was not

transparent enough, and the decision-making for it was

not scientifically justified. This meant that, although it

benefitted the private sector it was not possible for the

general public to express its needs through the voice of

their governments and, therefore, not possible for the

general public to benefit from it in a real sense.

According to the ICANN mandate, ICANN is

neither a policy-maker nor an international coordina-

tor. It is restricted to remaining a small private corpo-

rate body with responsibility for technical coordination

Page 34

functions to keep the Internet operating steadily.

However, since there is no international mechanism or

body accredited by all countries designed to take

charge of authorizations and global public policy-

making in this field, ICANN by default has had to step

beyond its mandate to be saddled with such responsi-

bilities. These responsibilities include providing inter-

national coordination, management and a decision-

making mechanism for important Internet matters

which affect public policies. Such a contradiction

between ICANN’s positioning and its mandates does

not foster the expansion of Internet across the globe.

The wide application of the Internet has caused or

exacerbated new cross-border tensions. Some of these

include individual privacy rights versus social open-

ness; information security versus information freedom;

information sharing versus Intellectual Property Rights

(IPR) protection; as well as the head-on collision

between cultures; cross-border hacker attacks, com-

puter viruses, harmful web information, cyber crimes

etc. These tensions impact peace and social security,

and increase the global digital divide and intensify

conflicts and contradictions brought about by the

unbalanced world development. All these indicate that

the Internet at present is more acutely in need of

strengthened international coordination and coopera-

tion than ever, which is the one and only way which

can lead toward practical and effective solutions to

these complex public policy issues.

A private body like ICANN that is only empow-

ered by a single government cannot possess the

breadth or sense of legitimacy necessary to carry out

all of the functions listed above. Therefore, the contin-

ued absence of a legitimately empowered internation-

alized mechanism capable of effective decision-

making is likely to severely impede the sense of safety,

and stability associated with the Internet and impact

further development of the Internet.

WSIS: An Opportunity for a Timely Im-

provement

WSIS has provided an important opportunity for

rectifying the weaknesses hidden in the current Global

Internet governance mechanism. The 2003 Geneva

Summit’s Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action

demonstrate a shared belief by the international

community that the Internet has become a mighty tool

for safeguarding world peace, reducing poverty and

relieving backwardness as well as promoting common

prosperity and progress in the world.

The United Nations and all governments are

required, obligated and entitled to be involved in the

management of the Internet at the decision-making

level in such fields as the making of international

public policies, resource management and international

coordination and collaboration, and they should join

hands with all stakeholders to guarantee a further

prosperous and securely sustainable, universal Internet.

WGIG was responsible for taking hold of the opportu-

nities offered by WSIS, recognizing existing problems

hidden in the Internet governance mechanisms, and

presenting effective recommendations for their reason-

able improvement.

The development of the Internet should incorpo-

rate the routine participation of multiple stakeholders.

Currently, all stakeholders including governments,

intergovernmental organizations, international organi-

zations, the private sectors and civil societies are

broadly represented in the public policy field. This

participation by all actors should be guaranteed in the

future through any improved global Internet gover-

nance mechanism.

Considering the breadth and depth of the

Internet’s reach as well as its pivotal role in the infor-

mation society, public policies for global Internet

governance should not only take account of the inter-

ests of the Internet community, but also the needs of

communities that are still outside the Internet or have

only limited access. Naturally, the most legitimate

representatives of the public interests at present are

each government and by the United Nations, acting as

the most authoritative and widely-representative

intergovernmental organization recognized by all

nations. It can provide a proper platform to settle

issues of public policies concerning global Internet

governance.

Multi-lateralism is the Key

As to the management of Internet resources in

particular, this is an issue of great significance to the

development and security of the Internet. Due to

historical reasons, there has been no globally authorita-

tive body in charge of decision-making related to

Internet resource management where the globally

authoritative body had broad participation by all

countries. Instead, the U.S. Department of Commerce

just approves changes to the root zone file. Over many

years it has never proposed changes on its own, and so

far it has never refused a recommendation from the

Page 35

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for a

change. In this case, why is this issue considered so

important? Why not just leave it to the U.S. Govern-

ment for the future, period?

The core issue concerning Internet resource

management that really needs oversight from outside

the whole system of management – namely the central-

ized review and final approval of requests for addi-

tions, deletions or modifications to the root zone file

record by an authoritative body – is a “thousands tons

hanging on a thread” kind of issue. Approved changes

are first applied to the “Distribution Master Server,”

and then automatically propagated throughout the root

server system and mirror servers distributed world-

wide. According to U.S. law, the single government

that is holding this function is empowered to change

the root zone file record. That is why many govern-

ments, as the most responsible body vis-à-vis their

citizens, are worried and focused on this tiny piece in

the complicated system of Internet governance. While

there are many governments having substantial con-

cern about the safety and security for their citizens, the

potential threat to the universality of the Internet

speaks for itself.

For a universally accessible, stable and robust

Internet, we cannot avoid focusing on this small piece

of centralized empowerment. If the government of the

very country that originally created, nurtured and

shared the Internet with its neighbors in the global

village, with an excellent historical record for manage-

ment of the Internet during the past 30 years, still

cannot make all countries feel comfortable about the

unilateral management of the root zone file changes, it

is obvious that this issue cannot be passed over without

extensive thought. To deal with the core function in

global Internet governance by relying solely on “trust”

or a “guess” that “the single Government would not do

any harm to the universal Internet” seems far from

satisfactory. All sovereign states in the world would

believe that their citizens’ interests are appropriately

protected only when there is basis in international law.

It thus is quite clear that “multi-lateralism” is very

missing piece in the puzzle.

The Need for an Intergovernmental Over-

sight Institution

In its Report, “The WGIG recognized that any

organizational form for the governance function/over-

sight function should adhere to the following princi-

ples:

No single Government should have a pre-eminent role

in relation to international Internet governance.

The organizational form for the governance function

will be multi-lateral, transparent and democratic, with the

full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil

society and international organizations.

The organizational form for the governance function

will involve all stakeholders and relevant intergovernmental

and international organizations within their respective

roles.”

These principles are in line with the spirit of WSIS

and provide a basis for achieving worldwide consensus

on this issue. One of the four models suggested in the

Report calls for the establishment of a Global Internet

Council (GIC). In this approach, the role and position

of the U.S. Department of Commerce would be re-

placed by an intergovernmental mechanism under the

framework of the United Nations. That is to say, the

governments of all sovereign states together with the

U.S. Government would bear the responsibility of the

management of Internet resources and public policy

setting, with extensive involvement of the private

sector and civil society. Thus, it is suggested to expand

the body that empowers ICANN, from the U.S. De-

partment of Commerce only, to an integrated body

including all governments. This reform would not do

any harm to the normal operation and functioning of

the Internet. For example, the specific task of allocat-

ing and managing Internet resources, such as IP

address allocation and domain name assignment,

would still be executed by the institutional system with

ICANN as the umbrella, but it does not mean that

ICANN would not “root-and branch” reforms gradu-

ally. The above-mentioned intergovernmental mecha-

nism under the framework of the United Nations

should clearly define the responsibilities and obliga-

tions with ICANN through a Memorandum of Under-

standing or a contract.

Transparency is the Key

This is reasonable solution. Only under such a

framework could all sovereign states feel that they are

not being treated unevenly in comparison with the

single country that holds the oversight function. Under

such a scheme, all governments hold the function of

authorization to ICANN, which would be always

accountable to the international society. Nevertheless,

there is some concern that this new institution would

gradually grow into a new bureaucracy and would

Page 36

interfere in many issues that do not need political

interference at all. For example, how would one

suggest that there is assurance that a multi-governmen-

tal oversight activity does not turn into a top-down

policy making apparatus? If a group of government

representatives takes up the function carried out today

by the U.S. Department of Commerce, would they

continue to treat the Internet and root zone policy as a

“bottom-up” process? How would it be possible to

avoid the politicization of the decisions of the new

multi-governmental institution? When governments

get involved, external factors often enter into positions

and decisions taken, and, government control of the

process may slow the innovation and evolution that has

characterized the Internet to date, etc.

A number of tools could be employed to ensure

that an international oversight institute does not “over

perform” its duty. First, there should be international

regulation defining what is in and what is beyond the

scope of this GIC. In this regulation, all characteristic

features that have guided the successful practice of

global Internet growth should be stated and agreed

upon by the international society, e.g. the Internet and

root zone policy can only be a bottom-up process, the

oversight institute has no right to make decision on

issues which have not been discussed in the bottom-up

process and have no consensus, etc. The globally

agreed regulation would make the process adequately

transparent and open, putting it under the supervision

of the international society.

Second, the existing institutions would resist any

excessive political interference, if any should arise,

from the GIC. Third, in case of anything really serious

happening, it is always possible to put the matter on

the table of United Nations to be discussed openly in

the international society forum. As for the technical

innovation and evolution processes that have charac-

terized the Internet to date, it seems beyond the scope

of this oversight function. Furthermore, such a frame-

work would encourage all root server operators of

ccTLDs to establish formal obligatory relations with

ICANN, thus to make the root server system more

robust and reliable, which would be greatly beneficial

to the global security of the Internet.

Conclusion

In my personal view, this would be the workable

solution that does not require big changes in current

Internet governance mechanisms. The model proposed

here would protect and improve the continuing exis-

tence of the universally accessible, robust and reliable

Internet in our life time.

* Online at:

http://www.wgig.org/docs/book/WGIG_book.pdf

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions.

Articles can be submitted via e-mail:

mailto:jrh@ais.org

Permission is given to reprint articles from this issue in a

non profit publication provided credit is given, with name

of author and source of article cited.

The opinions expressed in articles are those of their

authors and not necessarily the opinions of the Amateur

Computerist newsletter. We welcome submissions from

a spectrum of viewpoints.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

ACN Webpage:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

All issues from1988 to present of the Amateur Computerist

are on-line at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/NewIndex.pdf

Page 37