the i-witnesses

Internet leaders tread carefully at IGF round 2

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) opened in Rio yesterday on a sober note, with speakers cautious about their expectations.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s message to the assembled crowd emphasised the groundbreaking nature of the consultation mechanisms introduced at the Forum’s first meeting in Athens.

“The Internet Governance Forum is not a traditional United Nations meeting. It is a new model of international cooperation,” he said – reflecting the fact that here at the IGF participants from business, government and civil society meet as equals.

But he acknowledged that the Forum has no decision-making powers – instead it aims to inspire people to head in right direction:

“The forum can develop a common understanding of how we can maximise the opportunities the internet offers, how we can use it for the benefit of all nations and peoples, and how we can address risks and challenges.”

Meanwhile, Anriette Esterhuysen, executive director of the Association for Progressive Communications argued that the internet should be treated as a ‘public good’ (as opposed to a market product for profit-making) and that this approach must also inform its governance structure.

She noted that access to the internet – five billion people are currently left out – could be dramatically improved if there were more diversity (in terms of both local languages and content) and if the internet were freed from its closed and proprietary nature. “Why should blind people pay more for interfaces to read text because they're blind?” she asked.

But John Klensin, former vice-president of internet architecture at AT&T, defended the notion that technology requires a great deal of costly research and development. He also argued that it would take time for the internet to become diverse, and that many of the challenges for internet governance were rooted in historical problems.

“The decision to exclude [Kanji] characters wasn't based on an ignorant preference for English or Roman-based characters, but on the fact that the technology at that stage just had not matured enough for more international use.”

This begs the million-dollar question: how long will non-English speaking people have to wait to be part of the information society?

[Journalists unable to attend the Forum can get live webcasts from the IGF 2007 website]

Happy birthday ICANN?

It is nine years since ICANN – the ‘global’ agency that oversees the system of internet addresses – was set up. Since then it has been the subject of significant controversy, which came to a head last year when the European Union put pressure on the United States to decentralise ICANN’s powers.

So what’s happened since? Well, despite its global remit ICANN is still registered as a non-profit organisation in Los Angeles. But recent efforts by civil society organisations and other governments are gradually forcing ICANN to be more open and transparent. For example, there’s now an online survey for public users to say just what we think about it.

The trials and tribulations of ICANN illustrate the challenges of trying to develop a suitable governance framework to manage our global internet architecture. Political and geographic boundaries are increasingly blurred, and the influence of those making profits from the industry adds another layer of complexity.

That’s why civil society organisations must be granted official status in ICANN's decision-making processes. Only then will the internet have a chance of surviving as a genuine ‘public good’.

> download Panos London's briefing about ICANN

Who’s who on the internet: a matter for privacy?

Building your own website has never been easier. Type those words into Google, and you’ll discover numerous companies that offer cheap services to help design, manage and register your site. 

But for several years a quiet battle has been raging over a controversial aspect of website ownership: namely whether the name and contact details of the person who registers a new website should be made available to the public.

At the moment, anyone who registers a website domain name is held in ICANN’s searchable whois database. For example, click here to find out who ‘owns’ panos.org.

Caught in the middle are the internet domain registrars, which are required to provide this information as part of their contractual obligations to ICANN. As one of the whois FAQs explains:

“Why don't you stop showing my address/name/email address on your website?

We have little control over what information is shown in our whois output as it comes directly from your domain name registrar's whois servers. If you want your details removing or changing, you should contact your registrar.”

Not surprisingly, the existence of such a database raises all sorts of data protection and privacy issues – for example, abuse by spammers. But intellectual property firms, as well police and government agencies, maintain that it’s necessary for internet surveillance in order to curb ‘cyber-crimes’.

After three months of intense debate over the issue, an ICANN working group has failed to arrive at any concrete decision. As Milton Mueller – professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies – says on the Internet Governance Project’s blog:

“Despite flirting with the kind of compromises and reforms that might actually reconcile privacy rights with identification needs, in the final weeks of the process trust and agreement among the parties broke down completely”

Inevitably, unlimited public access to such data is open to abuse by both crooks and the authorities. A consensual process between data protectionists and governments would help to ensure that a balance is struck. But ultimately I feel it is the provision of information by domain registrars that needs to be controlled locally – on a case-by-case basis – rather than by ICANN’s global decrees.

Rest in peace Registerfly.com

Last Friday, ICANN issued a notice to Registerfly.com – an internet domain name registrar which holds two million domain names and has over 900,000 customers – indicating that its ICANN accreditation will cease on 31 March 2007.

The announcement follows a rift between business partners Kevin Medina and John Naruszewics in January. In the ensuing chaos, thousands of domain names have broken down; the service has been so poor that angry customers have set up their own forum www.registerflies.com.

When the complaints started to flood in, ICANN’s ombudsman advised customers to go direct to Registerfly. But many were left wondering where ICANN’s responsibility lay – after all, it had originally approved Registerfly as a registrar and allowed its logo to be used on Registerfly’s website.

ICANN has finally decided to intervene and terminated Registerfly’s accreditation. This is yet another case in the confused realm of internet governance, where the question of who controls what is still blurred – sadly at the cost of internet users.

United States grabs the dot com domain

Last week the US government announced that its Department of Commerce - and not ICANN - would be the ultimate ‘decider’ of issues relating to the maintenance of the dot com domain:

“Under the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding with ICANN, any changes made to the current .com Registry Agreement must be approved by the [US] Department of Commerce”

Its fact sheet goes on to explain that Verisign – the agency that deals with dot com registration, pricing and regulation – must obtain written permission from the US Department of Commerce before any amendments can be made to pricing or renewals. Verisign previously liaised directly with ICANN on such matters.

The move will be seen as a major blow to the spirit of last month’s multi-party discussions at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens. What’s more, the United States isn’t showing any signs of budging on this issue in the foreseeable future – its power has been extended indefinitely.

The significance of this shouldn’t be underestimated – the Internet Governance Project notes that dot com is the most valuable internet top level domain, accounting for about 40 per cent of the global market.

IGF ends on a cautiously optimistic note

The first Internet Governance Forum has officially ended, and I think it’s fair to say that there’s a general atmosphere of optimism. Just after the final session, I spoke to Bertrand de La Chappelle, France’s special envoy for the information society, who said:

“The fact some participants were expecting concrete decisions from this Forum validates that multi-party discussion works. To me personally, that is a success.”

Many admitted to me that they had been very anxious about the new multi-stakeholder process. But, despite its time-consuming nature, even the business community appears to be relatively happy – possibly because it’s not legally binding!

And of course, there’s always the underlying financial imperative. As Masanobu Katoh, corporate vice-president of Fujitsu and ICANN former director put it:

“Companies in this century can no longer generate products without talking to users. That would be arrogant and a recipe for disaster. Content, new network standards, and the open access movement require conversations with the user community. The Forum gives that opportunity”.

The multi-stakeholder process has been fascinating to observe. A US lawyer I spoke to said:

“I lecture about intellectual property rights every week. People ask no questions. They take my expertise for granted. Here at this Forum, nothing is taken for granted. The process of analysing policies is amazing”.

I couldn’t agree more. People at the Forum boldly questioned governments, businesses and international agencies. Then again, we must remember that no actual decisions were taken - it was just an opportunity to get to know each other.

Perhaps what the Forum has underlined most clearly is that the user is as important as technologists and policymakers in deciding the future of the internet. An example from our recent history shows why participation in the IGF must not be limited to those who control the economy and technology…

When the infamous Dunkel Draft on trade was announced in 1991 there was hardly any debate in the mainstream media in developing countries. I was in India then, and I recall that the few opinion columns that did appear were highly technical and indigestible. As a result, many of the decisions made were not in favour of the poor, leading to a decade of ‘crisis management’ culminating in the Doha trade round.

In contrast this Forum presents an opportunity for awareness, understanding and negotiation, reducing the likelihood that such mistakes will happen in the internet governance world.

What’s more, the last four days have marked a revolution in the UN system. Civil society has at last been recognised as having an equal status, and given an opportunity to intervene when governments speak. It’s conceivable that the UN may be forced to apply a similar approach to other global policy discussions.

It’s not entirely clear how the process will be taken forward from now until next year's IGF in Rio. But there were voluntary proposals to form ‘dynamic coalitions’ on issues including internet governance, open standards and gender, and the fact that discussions are to continue is in itself important.

This may all sound a bit over-enthusiastic, but that’s the mood here in Athens. In reality everyone knows it’s just the beginning and that there’s a long way to go in these uncharted waters.

The view from the top

Earlier today I managed to grab a quick chat with Nitin Desai – special advisor on internet governance to the UN secretary general. I asked him what single outcome he’s expecting from the Internet Governance Forum.

He said he would be more than happy if the Forum raises confidence in the multi-stakeholder process. Like Nitin, most people here are not expecting ground-breaking decisions, but they are trying hard to make sure the multi-party discussion works. I guess that this kind of realistic optimism is a good start.

[Image: ITU/S.Berman]

Clashes over censorship

Yesterday’s session on openness resulted in some energetic discussions. Corporate representatives were inevitably quizzed on their ethical principles, particularly their tendency to adjust business plans to accommodate authoritative governments – perhaps most notably the self-censored version of Google for China.

Amnesty International – which is running a campaign opposing efforts to control and censor the internet – also accused the Cisco representative of colluding with the Chinese government by selling surveillence software technologies to its police force.

In their defence, the corporations argued that they had to respect local laws and regulations when they conduct business, and blamed the governments for being closed. And the internet evangelist Vint Cerf – who is now working for Google Inc – argued that the company had at least partially won its battle with China.

Although the moderator, Nik Gowing, tried to take things in hand, much of the session was devoted to China-bashing. Although these criticisms are valid, I fear that this ‘naming and shaming’ approach is potentially detrimental to the mutli-stakeholder process. Rather, shouldn’t we be trying to develop a consensus on how to deal with internet censorship?

[Image: Panos Pictures]

A (quiet) word on gender

Natasha Primo – executive director of South Africa-based WomensNet – was the only person to talk about gender issues at the plenary session this morning. She said she hoped the Internet Governance Forum would spell out plans that had a significant impact on women.

Later in the afternoon, Victoria Balleza asked panelists to share their views on the gender dimensions of internet governance. In the ensuing silence you could have heard a pin drop. The question remained unanswered and the moderator, Kenneth Cukier, didn’t seem particularly bothered about pursuing the matter…

Why Athens is the one to watch

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which kicked off today, is a very different affair from last week’s World Congress on Communication for Development. People here in Athens are trying to answer just one question: how should we govern (or, as some put it, ‘control’) the internet?

Admittedly the various participants – from governments, business, civil society, and internet agencies – have their own agendas. But the Forum is the first of its kind to enable all these sectors to sit together and find a way to agree broad guidelines on issues related to access, diversity, openness and security.

Here are three compelling reasons why journalists should watch what happens at the IGF:

Reason 1: You just need to listen to what Vinton Cerf - one of the fathers of the internet’s architecture - had to say this morning: “The internet is the largest distributed collection of historical and current information ever in existence”. I think that alone is a good reason for mainstream media – traditionally society’s information provider – to pay attention to governance of the internet.

Reason 2: This Forum may not be legally binding, but it does offer a space where corporate players, pro-poor advocates, and governments receive equal respect and weight. Until now, global policy-making bodies have shunned civil society. So this is an interesting laboratory that could have implications for decision-making on other policy issues, including trade and environment.

Reason 3: The ‘multistakeholder process’ has been set in motion, and it’s much better seeing it in action than typing it! All the parties involved at least agree that the future of the internet can only be improved through cooperation, not by protection.