ICANN - consultas em Washington - matéria de imprensa

Reproduzo artigo sobre as consultas da ICANN realizadas no dia 1/10, aqui em Washington. O artigo centra-se no argumento de um empresário que alegou o risco de captura da ICANN por outros governos ou pela ONU (IGF). Fiz durante a reunião comentário em resposta ao argumento dele, indicando que esse risco não existe, uma vez que já há consenso internacional, desde a Cúpula Mundial, de que todos os assuntos relacionados à gestão da Internet devem ser tratados de modo "multistakeholder", e que o IGF favorece participação ampla nas discussões, por exemplo como ocorreu no Rio de Janeiro, onde, apesar da resistência inicial, o tema de recursos críticos foi tratado e teve excelente repercussão e visibilidade. Também falei que o verdadeiro desafio para a ICANN é encontrar o equilíbrio adequado entre os diversos setores, inclusive os Governos, para o que seria importante rever o atual relacionamento do GAC com o Board da ICANN, de modo a que a contribuição dos Governos seja mais efetiva. Meu comentário não foi retratado no artigo, mas consta nos registros gravados da reunião.

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ICANN Hears Concerns About Accountability, Control


Grant Gross, IDG News Service

Wednesday, October 01, 2008 10:30 AM PDT

ICANN needs to take steps to ensure it cannot be taken over by governments and other outside entities, and it needs to create more ways to be held accountable to Internet users, constituents of the nonprofit organization said Wednesday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Internet+Corporation+for+Assigned+Names+and+Numbers.html> , the organization overseeing the Web's top-level domain naming system, heard several concerns during a meeting focused on improving confidence in ICANN. But concerns about outside takeover of the organization and critiques of ICANN's transparency came up several times during the Washington, D.C., meeting.

An oversight agreement between the U.S. government and ICANN expires in a year, and ICANN officials say they do not plan to sign a new agreement. But in recent years, representatives of several other countries have called for an international organization to oversee the 10-year-old ICANN.

Many e-commerce companies don't want a new model of international control of ICANN, said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, a trade group representing several U.S. companies, including eBay, Yahoo and Oracle. Continued U.S. government oversight may keep other nations from exerting control, he said.

To ensure against an outside entity taking control, ICANN has proposed that it remain located in the U.S., with its relatively strong antitrust and competition laws, and the organization is trying to increase participation in its activities. ICANN officials have also proposed that a consensus or super-majority of participants agree on changes in policy, and they have suggested the organization should limit companies or individuals participation in multiple ICANN committees.

Those suggestions aren't enough, DelBianco said. "It's as if ICANN wants to sort of check that box with a series of bureaucratic measures that are primarily designed to prevent capture from internal parts of the ICANN community," he said. "The real threat of capture, I believe, is from external threats."

ICANN has a US$60 million budget and manages the backbone of the Internet, making it a desirable target for takeover, DelBianco added. "ICANN becomes a magnet for the United Nations and other governments who would covet that role," he added. "I think this demonstrates the adage that money and power don't buy you friends, but they get you a better class of enemies."

Yrjö Länsipuro, a member of the ICANN President's Strategy Committee <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/ICANN+President's+Strategy+Committee.html> , discounted DelBianco's fears. While Russia continues to urge international control of ICANN, other countries haven't recently pressed the issue, said Länsipuro, who works for Finland's Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

"Governments are watching each other," he said. "It's inconceivable that one government would be able to [take over ICANN] when all the others are watching."

But Marilyn Cade, another member of the President's Strategy Committee <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/President's+Strategy+Committee.html> , disagreed, saying outside takeover is an ongoing and pressing concern. Much of the debate over control of ICANN stems from a "lack of understanding" of the role of ICANN, said Cade, an independent consultant and former vice president for Internet governance at AT&T.

Some people seem to mistakenly believe ICANN controls access to information and content on the Web, and that leads to arguments over control, she added.

Other participants in Wednesday's meeting focused on oversight of ICANN by the Internet community. ICANN has proposed to create a new way for the Internet community to petition the ICANN board to revisit a decision and also create a mechanism for removing the entire board, among other things.

Those proposals are flawed and lack ways to measure ICANN accountability, said Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, a tech trade group. The proposal to ask the board to reconsider a decision appears "ineffective," while the removal of the entire board seems "extreme," he said.

The current mechanism for asking ICANN to reconsider a decision hasn't been used in two years, added Becky Burr, a partner with law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr <http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Wilmer+Cutler+Pickering+Hale+%26+Dorr+LLP.html> and former senior Internet policy advisor at the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

"Do I think that ... the ability to recall the entire board meaningfully enhances ICANN's accountability?" Burr said. "Not even close. It's a nuclear option of no plausible value" unless the board upsets the entire Internet community.

Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's chairman, agreed with Zuck that accountability metrics are needed. "Things that are measured get done," he said.

The European Commission and the JPA

Source: http://www.justsearching.co.uk/news/us-loosens-its-grip-on-the-running-of-the-internet.html

September 15, 2008

The EU has hailed a decision taken by the US government to grant full autonomy to the not-for-profit organisation, which manages internet domain names by 2009. The EU has always criticised the control over internet governance exercised by the US. Now things will change a bit thanks to the new developments.

Icann, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was set up in 1998. It is based in California. The Corporation would no longer be required to report to US authorities after every six months. It would do so annually to the whole internet community under arrangements that just took effect as a prescriptive agreement lapsed.

The newly signed three-year ‘joint project agreement’ can be subjected to a review at its halfway point. It states that the department of commerce ‘will be holding regular meetings with Icann senior management to assess progress,’ rather than the earlier process under which it reported to the US government.

The commissioner of EU information society and media, Viviane Reding, said:

Cyber-repression, whether required by governments or supported by commercial firms, is incompatible with Europe’s fundamental rights and its open, pluralist model of society.

The Future of the Internet: A Political View

The Future of the Internet: A Political View

• Jun 24, 2008 1:13 PM PST
• Comments: 0
• Views: 378

By Geoff Huston

On June 17th and 18th the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) hosted a Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy, attended by Ministers for communications from the 30 OECD member nations and some 15 other nations, all to talk about the future of the Internet Economy.

This was not the only dedicated Internet gathering on the 2008 calendar for governmental delegations, which includes the normal load of two meetings of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) a year as well as three ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) meetings. The track record of the lasting value of such meetings does not appear to be overly impressive, and it appears to be difficult to make the claim that the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the subsequent set of IGF meetings have actually achieved anything at all. In fairness to the IGF, however, achievement of particular outcomes was never a part of the IGF agenda, and in providing a venue for this multi-stakeholder discussion the it is often claimed that the IGF has kept the worst excesses of the political wolves at bay. Without these forums for inter-governmental dialogue and forums for engagement between governments and other organized sectors of common interest it is often asserted that all could've turned out so much worse in terms of politically inspired governmental meddling with the Internet. But lets face it, gathering a collection of ministerial delegations to laboriously recite prepared speeches to each other sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry. And observing meetings where the major outcome appears to be limited to the scheduling of the next meeting can become somewhat tedious after a while. It should not be surprising that the level of expectation of tangible outcomes for such governmental meetings is invariably abysmally low.

So what's the value of adding yet another meeting to governments' schedule? What makes this OECD-hosted meeting so unique in the context of the Internet's current political landscape and its political future? Why would a meeting about the dismal science of economics hold any interest at all? (...)

(leia o restante do texto no site de origem, neste link)

Brazilian StatementGAC-Board joint session – New Delhi (12 Feb' 2008)

"Mr. Chairman,
As we are in an open session, please allow me at first to publiclyacknowledge the work of our Indian colleagues, in particular from theMinistry of Communications and Information Technology, in hosting this31st ICANN meeting. This event and the on-going preparations for theIII Internet Governance Forum, to be held also here, later this year,show the strong belief and interest of the Indian nation in supportingthe process of internationalization of the Internet.
"Internationalization" is the word that best defines the momentum. Notonly from the technical perspective of introducing non-ASCIIcharacters at the top level of the Domain Name System, but also fromthe political perspective of preparing grounds for a transition of theICANN management structure to a truly international environment. Theseissues seem to bear no apparent relationship, but in the end thequestion that needs to be answered is, in short, "how will theaddition of the next billion Internet users affect present governancestructures? And how should such structures be reshaped to respond tothe building of inclusive, reliable and democratic governanceprocesses on a truly multistakeholder setting?"
The Government of Brazil is fully committed to theinternationalization process of ICANN and its independence from anysingle Government. To that end, the non-renewal of the JPA in 2009 isa requirement. Its termination should be seen, however, as an initialstep of a long-term process aiming at providing worldwide userscontinuous assurances of integrity, stability and reliability of theInternet. Moreover, any new governance structure should be designed tofacilitate the expansion and diffusion of the web as a means tosupport development and digital inclusion, by empowering people andcommunities, taking into account cultural diversity andmultilingualism.
We consider that the principles and decisions adopted at the WorldSummit of Information Society must serve as the inspiration to anenlightened leadership by the Board in the conduct of this process.
In the transition phase, we should aim at striking a carefullybalanced participation of all stakeholders in ICANN decision-makingprocesses. Governments, the civil society, the private sector,intergovernmental and international organizations should pledge tounderstand each other's roles and responsibilities, according to theterms agreed at WSIS. If the new scenario is perceived as allowing aclear predominance of one stakeholder over the others, the legitimacyand credibility of the whole transition will be compromised. As far asGovernments are concerned, for instance, the international managementof the Internet should allow Governments to coordinate themselves todefine public policy issues, which is their sovereign right. For thispurpose, there is an urgent need to strengthen the GAC, in terms ofits role, representation and methods of work. My Delegation considersthis, Mr. Chairman, a key element to be included in the road map forthe transition period, and better sooner than later.
Thank you."

Statement on the Mid-Term Review of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) Between NTIA and ICANN

NTIA press release on JPA mid-term review
Released April 2, 2008
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), on behalf of the Department of Commerce, recently conducted a mid-term review of the Department’s Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The JPA is a continuation of a series of agreements between the Department and ICANN to facilitate the transition of the technical coordination of the management functions related to the Internet domain name and addressing system (DNS) to the private sector.
Although views during the midterm review represent diverse perspectives, there was general consensus on the need to preserve the security and stability of the DNS and the recognition that ICANN is the appropriate technical coordinator of the Internet DNS. ICANN has made significant progress in several key areas, but most participants agree that important work remains to increase institutional confidence through implementing effective processes that will enable: long term stability; accountability; responsiveness; continued private sector leadership, stakeholder participation; increased contract compliance; and enhanced competition. It is important to note that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions contract was not part of the JPA mid-term review.
Over the next eighteen months, NTIA will continue to monitor ICANN’s performance in meeting the ten responsibilities articulated in the annex to the JPA. Furthermore, NTIA remains fully committed to the 2005 U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System.
NTIA would like to gratefully acknowledge the ICANN community’s efforts to provide well-reasoned and substantive contributions to the mid-term review of the JPA. NTIA considers all of the contributions and perspectives shared as invaluable elements of this review and looks forward to further discussions on the topic.