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Summary At-Large Study Committee Outreach Meeting Attendees ALSC Members: Carl Bildt (Chair), Chuck Costello (Vice Chair), Pierre Dandjinou, Esther Dyson, Olivier Iteanu, Ching-Yi Liu, Thomas Niles, Oscar Robles, and Pindar Wong (Vice Chair). Denise Michel, Executive Director. (Biographies) Panelists: (Panel #1) Marilyn Cade; Ndeye Maimouna Diop; Hans Klein; Alan Levin; Don Simon; Alexander Svensson; Mao Wei; (Panel #2) Christian Ahlert; Raul Echeberria; Hans Petter Holen; David Johnson; Hye-Young Kang; Wolfgang Kleinwaechter; Toshimaru Ogura; Kuo-Wei Wu. (Biographies) Participants (that signed in): S.H. Kyong, KAIST, Korea; David Lerdell, Slore, Stockholm; Richard Jimmeson, ARIN; Ray Pizak, ARIN; Alex Pawlik, RIPE NCC; Scott Albert Johnson, Common Cause/NAIS; HY Kang, KRNIC; M.J. D'Onofrio, CCSU; Gordon Lennox, European Commission; Jans Kraaijerbrink, ICANN Board; Danny Younger, babbybows.com; Wu Yang Yum CNNIC; Anders Lignel, tt.se; Juliana Gruenwald, Interactive Week; B.K. Kim, ccTLD Secretariat; Peter le Blanc, ccTLD Chair; Hendrik Rood, Stratix.nl; Christian del Larriwaga, ISOC England; JS Park, KRNIC; Derek Conant, DNSO GA; Izumi Aizu, ANR/NAIS; Doby Sparks, COBEX; Nguyen Le Thuy, UNNIC; Michael Gelorowin, CCSU; JeaInternette Hofmann, NAIS; Partick Mayer, Artikels.de; Adam Peake, Glocom; Sabastien Bachollet, CIGREF/France; Jeong Hye Choi, Internet Assoc. of Korea; Veni Markovski, ISOC, Bulgaria; Richard Francis, IGCL, Oxford; Marianne Wolfsakusek, CENTR; Miriam Sapiro, Verisign; Chwu Eung Hioi, PeaceInternet; Larry Martinez, CGI Long Beach; Ramesh Nadarajah, My NIC; Wayne Davison, RLG, Inc.; Chiari Mario, ISOC.IT and Internet News Italy; John Earles, KPMG; Rick Lane, U.S. Chamber; Masanobu Katoh, ICANN Board; Kent Crispin, Songbird; Andy Muller-Maguhn, CCC (ICANN Board); John Crain, ICANN; Herbert Vitzthum, ICANN; Shashank Kansal, ITNTI; Daniel Forslund, Affinity Telecom; Ko.. Stephane, Internet Society GVA; Roger Cochetti, Verisign; Francoise Derollepot; Greg Block, Telnic; Discussion:
Hans Klein: Assistant Professor at School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), also Chair of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibilities and active in ICANN, especially regarding At-Large elections. Don Simon: Attorney in Washington, DC and works with Common Cause (NGO in USA) involved in good government initiatives, and is involved with NAIS, which has prepared an interim report addressing issues under consideration by the ALSC. Marilyn Cade; Director of Internet and Ecommerce Policy and Advocacy for AT&T. Has been involved in how the business community and business users and suppliers should make positive contributions to ensuring that the Internet does not become regulated, and has been involved in ICANN from the beginning. She will talk about importance of continuing dialogue across all constituencies. Alexander Svensson: Student of Political Science and Law at Hamburg University (Hamburg, Germany) and runs ICANN Channel news website and sister site ICANN Channel Europe. He has been involved with ICANN mailing lists since the At-Large election (linking together candidates) and also has been involved with the DNSO General Assembly and is a list moderator. Alan Levin: From South Africa, works with NAIS team, also
contracts with government on Egovernment strategies, and is involved
with AfriDNS in addressing ccTLD issues, and with AfriCann group and At
Large ICC. Mao Wei: Director of China NIC, and Associate Professor of China Academy of Science Ndeye Maimouna Diop: A telecommunications engineer from Senegal and an advisor for the government in the IT sector. She also is Vice President of the ISOC chapter in Senegal. Carl Bildt: Invited panelists to make brief remarks. Hans Klein: Introduced three principles (regarding At-Large Board representation and selection): 1) Board represents interests; 2) self-governance -- people affected should be represented; 3) different interests should be balanced. ICANN's decisions touch on numerous public policy decisions (rather than just technical decisions) and thus Board represents interests; those who are effected by decisions should be represented by that body. It is self-evident that Internet users around the world should have representation on the Board, since the decisions in copyright and other areas effect them. In terms of balance, the current design balances interests of two groups: Supporting Organizations (SO's) (the experts) and At-Large (the users). SO's represent only a subset; balance ought to be maintained; user interests should not be constrained and other interests should be considered less (perhaps have an all At-Large Board).
Don Simon: NAIS study was conducted by international team and first looked at whether there was a need for a public voice in ICANN and what the rationale was, and then focused on last year's election, broken down by regional research efforts. As our "Interim Report" indicates, the election had different challenges in different regions, and there are many interesting lessons to be learned. The Report also lists the options ICANN has for the future. In the Interim Report, NAIS does not offer recommendations or conclusions - these will be included in Final Report. NAIS conclusion is that ICANN does need a public voice and participation to be a legitimate and stable organization. This is based on three arguments: 1) character of ICANN - it has characteristics of a quasi-governmental organization due to its trusteeship of international resource and performs functions it inherited from government; 2) much of what ICANN has done (E.g. ccTLD, UDRP, etc.) has not been technical coordination, and ICANN's work needs to be grounded in public interest; and 3) history/creation of ICANN - one of the values ICANN should embody is public representation - this appears in the public record of its creation. NAIS conclusion: public representation is necessary. The idea of "public" can be defined narrowly (domain name holders) or broadly (anyone who uses Internet) - NAIS believes it should be defined broadly because they are affected - and that they have a potential membership - which is different than actual membership. Regarding participation - ICANN's existing organizational structure could be viewed as existing avenues of public participation but they all have problems. At-Large membership is the primary vehicle for both representation and for additional forms of participation, including dialogue and exchange and interaction with the Board and in the ICANN process, including mechanisms for accountability (watching Directors). Marilyn Cade: Making comments from the view of the general business community (spends a lot of time organizing broad industry views). Initially in creating ICANN, businesses defined the Internet as a critical communications and information infrastructure - the underpinning to lots of other things. The Internet is young, and not yet big or deep enough. In considering what needs to happen, remember that all of this is fragile. Need to encourage more investment so the Internet will be truly global. Consider the analogy of re-engineering a plane in flight. Internet can be thought of as taking off and the plane we're in needs new seats, new passengers and new services - and we're making these changes as we're flying along. Internet started as a research project and grew up outside of the burdens and barriers of regulatory structures. As industry considered the creation of ICANN - we thought narrowly - of areas where the private sector could make decisions without government involvement. We wanted to look at narrow areas where private sector could reach consensus and work across national borders, so we were creating a structure with a narrow technical role. We must look at the impact of decisions, but also look outside of ICANN for dealing with other issues (such as privacy). Big issue for business community is making the Internet "go," and how to grow it rapidly. We are aware of the fragility of technological underpinnings of the Internet, and we need to move slowly enough for technical needs and fast enough to address the needs of users. Business is also a user of the Internet. Keep business at the table - it is important to get businesses who are suppliers involved. Business community remains convinced that ICANN needs to remain narrowly focused. In terms of how people participate - ICANN does a poor job of providing information. Most users of infrastructures want to delegate participation and want to be informed. ICANN relies too much on pull communications - it needs to provide user-friendly communication that allows people to absorb information and decide what to do with it. ICANN lacks a way to organize input whenever people decide they want to have input. Alexander Svensson: Will relate the election to education and outreach efforts, and will discuss this relationship from the European experience. Europe had the MITF (Membership Implementation Task Force), a high degree of (uneven) media coverage, and self-organized efforts - places to discuss ICANN and the elections (there was no place to do this within ICANN) - websites in numerous countries, email discussion list, and moderated discussions with candidates and links to European initiatives. People in European countries were able to be involved in a constant dialogue. Media coverage was criticized as misrepresenting what ICANN does. Looked at print media in Western Europe and highlighted that ICANN was not described as a narrow technical coordination body but was presented as a body with impact on a variety of areas - impact of technology policy over-spill in other areas was emphasized by media. However, there was not a call for an expansive role of ICANN. There was no desire for an Internet government and ICANN was accurately described most often as doing domain names (the area of most interest). Bottom line: media was a tool of outreach and education in Western Europe and ICANN is now relatively well know in a number of European countries due to third party outreach. Some distortion may have occurred. The election was the period of time in which people got to know ICANN, and people are not that purely informed that some people from ICANN think they are. Alan Levin: In survey of 100 people (in Africa) 96% thought more should be done to promote work of ICANN in Africa and involve the Internet community in Africa in ICANN. 130 voters in Africa represent .002% users, which is the same percentage as North America. Of 55 countries, 47 countries registered At-Large members. 2-3 years ago only 50% of Africa was connected, but now they have fairly good connectivity in large cities (privileged few have limited access). Great need for more education and outreach. Two countries standout in Africa, but most not involved. Voting technologies an important issue - registration technology caused problems. Regarding the knowledge of the users/members - they do understand ICANN's role in policymaking, but users and businesses are not sure how it affects them in the developing world. What can ICANN do to address digital divide? Until we understand that, there will remain issues with respect to participation, outreach and education. Important issues that businesses must deal with, but may not be under the control of ICANN, should be considered in the context of At-Large membership - such as threat of proprietary standards. Consider the role of the At-Large membership and At-Large Directors play. Mao Wei: ICANN has been more and more involved in public interest and needs to place more emphasis on public representation. Many Internet users in China, over 33,000 registrants from China, however ICANN's application had serious problems and many Chinese users were denied the chance to become At-Large members and vote. Many Chinese users did not receive pin letters and were unable to vote. Through our study we found that many Chinese users suffered from language and process problems. In our estimation, no more than 10% of Chinese users who attempted to register and vote were able to participate in the At Large election. This reflects serious problems in the At-Large elections. Ndeye Maimouna Diop: Was encouraged by Pierre Dandjinou to encourage Senegalese involvement. In Africa we had a problem of access to the Internet, illiteracy, lack of knowledge about IT and a lack of information about ICANN because of language barriers, and a lack of understanding of ICANN. Considering a membership model in the African context, thinks "open to anyone" model is not an efficient way of bringing greater involvement. Concerned it won't help with the digital divide. Because of the limited number of Internet users in Africa, the Africa Board Members could have the responsibility for increasing knowledge and participation. Carl Bildt: Very helpful remarks, highly informative and interesting and they opened up a number of perspectives. One side of the panel primarily addressed points of principle -- what is the Internet, what is governance of it, what do we mean by public interest, is it just a technical body, etc… The other side of the panel tended to address more of what happened in elections, are they feasibility, practicality of elections, etc. All stressed ICANN is not purely technical and affects public policy, public trust, business interests (re-engineering plane in flight). If I was to go to a government body and argue why this utility of increasing global importance should not be run by government what would the argument be? Need to have an answer for a wider audience (that has ultimate responsibility for public trust) to retain credibility and trust for ICANN from their point of view - need to have a credible argument. Don Simon: Internet community will have to fight to keep these issues of Internet regulation away from governments because there will be a tendency to feel that governments are entitled to control policymaking. Re-emphasizes point that ICANN must establish its own legitimacy. The premise of ICANN is that these questions about the Internet should be decided on a global, non-governmental basis; government has not been the best forum for deciding these questions - that's why this experiment in Internet self-governance was launched. That is in jeopardy - the experiment's success will depend on the results of this process - how ICANN will take account of the public interest. If we fail to address this issue in a satisfactory way then governments will try to assert their authority. Hans Klein: Beginning to have doubts about the whole privatization experiment. The history of ICANN so far does make one wonder about the experiment. One of the ironies of privatization is that it has led to a hyper-politicization. ICANN has been a Hobbsian situation with a war of all against all, with process swept aside. Big claim of privatization is that it would increase the efficiency of the process and maintain legitimacy. Yet, At-Large was not implemented immediately, and then partially, and then re-considered. It's not clear that ICANN has or will have legitimacy. ICANN also has not been very efficient. New domain names have taken too long. The government alternative is not as unattractive as it once was. With big questions about ICANN's legitimacy arising, I think that there is a possibility that we can conclude that the experiment didn't work and maybe we should go back to traditional methods - this is a real option to keep in mind. Marilyn Cade: Challenged this view that the experiment is not working and the issue of speed in government. Consider development of the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction which has been under draft for 7 years and will be delayed even further. It deals with who has jurisdiction in global decisions and how it should affect e-commerce - whether it should extend to B2C and B2B, whether alternative dispute resolutions should be allowed, whether the contract/agreement with service providers should be recognized in other countries, etc. Consider the Council of Europe's Cyber Crime Treaty - secretly in draft by law enforcement with no involvement of the private sector, NGOs, industry or even commercial representatives within governments (E.g. the Dept. of Commerce). The draft called for 3 months of data retention of all transmissions - all of your emails - stored in databases so law enforcement could data mine. Now a counter-proposal under consideration is to keep data for 7 years. Needless to say we'll be fighting that battle for a long time. Government doesn't necessarily move more quickly or in a manner users or even agencies within the government like. Don't confuse the need to improve ICANN's processes and how and who participates with the rest of the question on whether government should be in charge or whether a diverse group of private sector interests should be in charge of these narrowly-crafted technical areas. There's a continuum - one end where private sector should make the decisions and the far side where clearly government needs to be involved - make sure ICANN stays on the former side and takes consultation where necessary with governments in those areas that merge towards the middle. Mao Wei: ICANN must keep global representation it committed to in the White Paper. At-Large Directors should be maintained continuously. The At-Large Directors should be directly elected by At-Large members. ICANN should guarantee fairness and transparency of election process. At-Large membership should remain free of charge so as not to discriminate against people in developing countries. ICANN should solve financial problem for At-Large membership by seeking support from the whole Internet community. ICANN has a flat structure to represent 400 million Internet users. This structure is inefficient and ineffective. Suggests a hierarchical system - ICANN should authorize At-Large membership applications from local organizations to undertake this work. ICANN should take responsibility for creating principles and local entities could implement and administer processes which would increase user opportunity for involvement - this would avoid language barriers and other problems. Alan Levin: There's a country in Africa with a fairly substantial "Internet" but its not connected with the "Internet" and they're not involved in ICANN. Many countries in Africa don't understand the importance of the Internet - a new global entity. ICANN is not the WTO or UN and the more complicated the issue is the larger the chance of failure. Break the problem down into understandable segments so people can understand it. Government's do want to be involved so lets involve them and educate them. Esther Dyson: Real reason not to let governments do this is that a lot of them are corrupt - not transparent. ICANN is a chance to build something that is better - that is transparent and representative. Asked Ms. Diop to elaborate - if you don't think we should open At-Large to all, tell us why and how to do that - this would be very useful. Ndeye Maimouna Diop: If you look at Africa, most people are not connected and are illiterate, which means they won't have a voice. But in 5 years, many will have access and the opportunity to say something about the Internet. I don't have a solution, just a question. Izumi Izu: NAIS researcher. Question of government vs. self-governance issue lacking until Alan addressed it. On the Internet no one knows you are a dog. The IP address, protocols, domain names don't have national boundaries. Existing organizations (governments, trade associations, etc.) are not addressing important Internet issues. Government and inter-government framework in principle and practice are not adequate. They can't manage domain name spaces that are geographically diverse. In addition, Internet is evolving so rapidly we can't predict what will happen next. So it's different from an area such as airlines where future is known. Pindar Wong: If ICANN is an experiment - how do we know when it's a success or how do we know when it has failed. Danny Younger: In response to question about how to construct a Board that strikes the right balance between competing interests within a policy-making environment, he noted that there are other Boards that deal with name space issues - specifically the Boards for the ccTLD's. Has panel looked at the ccTLD boards - this may represent a way forward. Greg Block: (also submitted in writing) Stated the importance
of the non-technical components of ICANN. With the rise of the new
gTLDs, we're seeing a new kind of domain, one centered around marketing
and the creation of strong branding, the metaphysical equivalent of
putting a Nike swoosh at the end of every domain name. Some of these
new gTLDs go so far as to become the digital equivalent of Nike Town,
where the use of the gTLD, its associated directory/portal, and the
myriad of associated services represent a carefully packaged and
controlled experience; and while the dangers to the privacy and
individual rights may or may not be clear, the importance of electing
individuals to the Board capable of clearly elucidating those issues is
obvious. ICANN must somehow represent and allow participation of
individuals, but we must all work hard to ensure that the end result of
an election process is not simply another venue for corporate interests
(or a platform for a personal war). Ask yourselves whether or not
objectivity of elected members truly exists within the current body, and
how any objectivity can be maintained in the face of the need for
corporate support. The fundamental question is: Does AOL
represent 14 million Internet users worldwide? On the issue of competing
standards: As a representative of an "as not yet selected gTLD
application, we are desperately aware of the shortcomings of DNS.
Many people, including some folks in the IAB, believe that a system
which behaves more broadly as a modern directory is inevitable. Like
any other market, this market may indeed find other solutions. It
does not, in my opinion, lessen the importance of ICANN in managing DNS,
either in its current or future forms. It is vital that ICANN be more
involved in the actual technology, as well as in research and
development, even if only in an outreach capacity, of Internet directory
technology developments to steer how that may impact its role and
provide early guidance. Peter LeBlanc: Regarding Africa - has been involved in organizing the Africa ccTLD organization. 15 people committed to undertake activities to launch this effort. Common thread throughout Africa is that national telecommunications policies are thwarting progress - entrenched monopolies are not good. Don't minimize Africa situation and say they're not ready. Need to do more outreach and there is a lot of willingness to work and be involved. Keep focusing on Africa. Rick Lane: U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The goal of business is always to build consumer confidence. ICANN has similar goal -- build consumer confidence for the Internet. Regarding role and structure of At-Large membership - is concerned about ill-informed electorate - easily misled. U.S. Chamber represents 3 million businesses worldwide with millions of employees - we could influence millions to vote and influence the Board. That's not what we want - we want people who understand ICANN and its goals to be involved. Believes in democracy, but need to guard against entities - governments, companies, associations, etc. that could unduly influence ICANN. Venny Markosky: Chair Bulgarian Internet Society and was Chair of MITF group for Eastern Europe. Europe elected Andy because most of the people who voted were German. We had serious problems in Central and Eastern Europe because many people don't believe in elections. It's important, however, to have a representative of the European continent. Do we need a solution for the election process? Be part of the problem, the solution, or the landscape. Richard Francis: Chair of ISOC Legal and Regulatory International Special Interest Group and was active in Western Europe MITF. Congratulated German press for encouraging German involvement and awareness. Urged assistance in getting other press involved in the next election (Financial Times, etc.) because the debate has to be led by someone in English - perhaps you can control the debate on issues that matter. Patrick Mayer: Lawyer in Germany. Appealed to the ALSC to find a differentiated and reasonable solution for the discussions about representation and legitimacy of the ICANN Board and thinks it is crucial to get more user involvement because ICANN won't be able to solve its problems without involvement of more users. For example thinks big user base could have working documents translated into many languages. Govts are more and more interested in what ICANN does and how it does it. Problem emerging if only is industry is represented on the Board - ICANN will look like one of the existing cartels. Already an impression that the Verisign agreement gave too much to a monopolist. This is an opportunity for ICANN to gain independence from sole business interests and gain legitimacy with governments. ITU Convention has been changed - changes were decided upon in 1992! That is how a government organization would work. ICANN is a very good experiment at the moment - is skeptical about many decisions but work should continue. Doesn't see much transparency and output of the ALSC work up to now - hopes that will change. Carl Bildt: No, you don't see much. We are in a listening mode - encouraging input and studies and trying to stimulate the debate. Don't think we should issue any decisions because that might close off the debate; we want to open up the debate as wide as possible and be able to issue recommendations - preliminary ones - and then issue final recommendations. You are the ones to debate and we are the ones to listen at this point. Esther Dyson: We're not supposed to be expressing our opinions - we're supposed to be listening and trying to understand better the challenges. When ICANN started and I became Chair, I was told that I was to have no vision (which was supposed to come up from the bottom) and that I was to only reflect consensus. And the ICANN Board has proceeded in this way - the Board is supposed to reflect consensus, not state its opinion. So if it does anything bold or visionary it gets its hands slapped (like Stuart Lynn's paper). The ALSC is different (which is why I am much happier on it). We are able to have a vision and it is supposed to be formed by listening to all this and then the second part of our work has to be a vision of how to implement it. At-Large membership should participate in the selection of a Board and in the decisions that Board makes - it is much harder to figure out how to implement that. Our final report will have a fair amount of detail. It has to include more than the structure of ICANN, it has to include some vision of how things will happen, of what should happen. The ALSC, unlike the Board, can be coherent and discreet and represent a vision that we want people to sign-up for and then try to form a consensus that the Board can then vote on. Don't argue with us because we haven't said anything, because we're listening. The first ICANN experiment was the result of negotiation. We now have a few years of experience to draw on and we would value your help in doing it right. Henreich Rood: Netherlands consultant and also PhD candidate. Involved in a boot-strapping process and trying to take all issues into account at once is too difficult. Main issue is who makes decisions. May be better to split the technical and domain name issues. At-Large has been ruined by being too open, and other organizations that were facilitating user involvement have been captured by corporate interests. At-Large membership will be a trail and error process. Derek Conant: DNS GA (General Assembly). It seems ICANN is where it is today based on consensus that was verifiable. Everyone in the future will be represented by organizations, which will apply to ICANN for the ability to vote for representatives. This prevents the mechanism of individuals submitting their comments or surveys being taken. Doesn't think Board should survey individuals, rather it should rely on organizations. Surveys can be manipulated - most people who respond to surveys don't understand the issues. People who have demonstrated their interest and been involved should provide input. Mao Wei: He insists in participating in this process because he is the representative of the Chinese Internet community. Chinese people want to play a role in global Internet community. Whether ICANN acknowledges it or not, ICANN is a policy-making organization and makes policy that has a great affect on the Internet community - therefore we need to increase participation. At-Large membership is a good idea. Our conclusion is we need an At-Large membership. How can we increase extensive participation? We suggest a hierarchy structure rather than flat structure in last year's election - that is ICANN sets the general election rules and authorized the local organization to organize the election process. Alan Levin: Do not believe that technology training is going to solve the African situation. In Africa we have 55 ccTLDs of which well over 15 are not functioning or are dysfunctional. None of the latter are participating in AfriNIC. Technical ability and coordination are not the only factors - many stakeholders are involved. There is a great need for change management, lobbying and practical discussions around how to manage ccTLDs in order to get the system working. Alexander Svennson: How do we manage ICANN success - ICANN has used the stability of the Internet and the precursor to that is the stability of ICANN. Warns those who think At-Large is de-stabilizing - removing At-Large and not having the user community represented will de-stabilize ICANN further. User interests are a different perspective that needs to be represented on the "bottom" and on the Board to ensure the bottom-up process works. Regarding Chamber of Commerce remarks -- consumer confidence also translates to ICANN confidence. There has not been a lot of trust in the ICANN structure - which needs to be built up as a pre-condition of ICANN's stability and ultimately the Internet's stability. Marilyn Cade: Would urges you to keep in mind that the Internet and ICANN are very young. Let's make sure that the processes we develop continue to be evaluated and evolve. Be cognizant of the importance that our process allows for participation of those who are aware and interested and that in the future we have a welcoming environment that encourages full participation of the Internet community. It's important that ICANN keep its mission narrow, but that doesn't mean there isn't an impact on policy. We need involvement of diverse stakeholders. Realize that people who build the infrastructure are different than business users. When you worry about capture by "business" keep in mind that a company that is building the backbone or acting as a resgistrar or registry may be put into an infrastructure capacity, they are different than businesses in your country that are building the products and services built on top of the Internet, and you need their participation as well. Can't underestimate the importance of informed participation. You can open up ICANN to every person in the world but (she referenced how slow governments moved) make sure we have a structure that allows us to move forward with some speed to solve the problems we need to solve to make the Internet go. Don Simmon: Indications of ICANN success or failure - the latter is government involvement. To avoid this ICANN needs to establish its own legitimacy as a regulatory authority. Regarding outreach in Germany - strikingly successful for public education. We talk about the global nature of the Internet and ICANN but we saw in the elections national-based actions. In terms of splitting domain name issues from IP issues - the former were more policy and the latter more technical. What the ALSC needs to look at, though, is given ICANN's current function how to make it representative. There is a set of broader questions about comprehensive restructuring that ALSC should look at. Hans Klein: The fact that ICANN makes policy isn't disputed and needs to be kept in mind. Note Rood's point that companies have bought participation blocks in "user organizations" and that fees will enable companies to buy blocks of votes. ICANN has succeeded if it establishes its legitimacy; if it doesn't it will have failed. A simple criteria is whether all 9 At-Large Directors have been filled through elections - that would be an indicator of legitimacy. Another indicator is if debate stops being about "insiders" and "outsiders" - when everyone has their elected representatives. Carl Bildt: Asked Panel #2 to introduce themselves. Raul Echeberria: From Uruguay, former At-Large candidate, NAIS researcher, former Names Council member in the DNSO, and LatNIC Board Member. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter: University Professor, University of Aarhus in Denmark, and was an MITF Member, and runs the "ICANN-Studienkreis" which discusses ICANN issues. Hans Petter Holen: From Norway. Has been involved with RIPE and is Chair of the Address Council (ASO). Kuo-Wei Wu: From Taiwan. Has worked in the supercomputer field, began working for Taiwan Academic Internetworking and National Information Infrastructure in Taiwan in 1994 and now works at Yam.com. Here as former candidate in last year's At-Large election. Based on Izumi Izu's account he achieved the votes necessary to be on the final ballot, but ICANN's count had him 3 votes short. Toshimaru Ogura: From Japan, involved with JCANet, Civil Society Internet Forum and Networkers Against Surveillance Task Force. David Johnson: From USA, with the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, has been involved in these issues as Board Member of Electronic Frontier Foundation, CDT, representing Verisign and .coop in negotiations with ICANN. Christian Ahlert: Was a member of MITF, and is a doctoral candidate and is working on the NAIS project. Hye-Young Kang: From Korea, with Korea Network Information Center, involved in ccTLD and At-Large Member Forum in Korea. Carl Bildt: Asked panelists for brief comments. Raul Echeberria: Reviewed research activities in Latin America (in affiliation with the NAIS project). Main concerns detected about At-Large was representation and accountability. The proposal for new structures with regional councils was proposed to address some of these concerns. In his area language and cultural differences play a factor. It is not clear if every language and cultural group should be represented in a regional structure. Although there are concerns (especially when national boundaries are crossed) people think this is an approach worth considering. At-Large Directors should be elected by regional councils to minimize capture and avoid nationalistic campaigns and behaviors. A strong concern expressed is that the At-Large Directors need to be more accountable than they are now. Currently, the relations between the Directors and members is difficult through mailing lists. Directors don't have time to participate and there also are language and legal constraints. A higher level of relationship is needed and this can be accomplished through a more structured membership. Latin American people surveyed feel greater participation is needed, but the level varies. Some believe At-Large members should discuss and vote on issues that are referred to the Board. Others think they should do this only when instructed by the Board. There is consensus that the At-Large membership should be better informed - then you will have a higher level of participation. Need a higher level of participation and regional structures will address problems of representation and accountability. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter: The first panel gave the diagnosis and now we need the therapy. We now need to translate this into practical implementation. If users or members should have continuing voice then we need a consistent structure so ICANN is balanced. My proposal suggests a "User SO" (Supporting Organization). There are three steps in building such an SO: design, create, and fill the structure. Cannot manage an organization with 500 million plus members. You need to break it down into manageable units, which means you need to create sub-structures. This can be done geographically or by sectors. A number of users are using the Internet for different purposes - business, education, etc. It may be possible to create constituencies of different types of users. If you base this on geography, however, you run the risk of being trapped in nationalism. Proposes a combination of geographical and structural approach that can act like the other SO's . Doubts whether top-down would work (if ICANN Board proposes a structure). Users need to advance a proposal for a structure. Users need to recognize similar interests and look for consensus. Proposes a mixed approach - ICANN Board should create an infrastructure that enables users to organize - make self-organization easier. ALSC should think about developing an enabling strategy so users can self organize. Hans Petter Holen: Approaching this issue as an engineer, thought that bottom-up was most important, and staff should be accountable to membership. Then thought about components - Internet protocols, addresses, and domains. Looking at ICANN - we have an organization handling the three main areas, so I question the need/place for an At-Large membership. It's important to focus on activities. Rather than builling another parallel structure, we should strengthen the existing organizations. It is possible for everyone to participate in the existing SO's. There are mechanisms for open participation. The question is should this be formalized. A difficult path to follow is an open SO concerned about the same things as the other SO's, and if thy need to be coordinated at the bottom level. ALSC should look at RIPE NCC as potential example. Customers are members of RIPE NCC organization and elect Board members, and policymaking discussions and decisions are done in a separate organization (RIPE), an informal policy-development body that is open. We have had some success in bringing telecommunications people into discussions. Kuo-Wei Wu: Speaking of personal experience in the election - 3 people were candidates from Taiwan, one was a professor nominated by a German company. He described his vision and ability to contribute to ICANN job. He was urged to come to agreement with other 2 candidates from Taiwan so the country could have 1 candidate. No one ever asked him why he was a candidate. In most democratic elections, you know who your citizens are. But in this election, he did not know who his citizens were. ICANN needs to emphasize its 3 core objectives (addresses, IP, domains) and avoid mission creep. What is the relationship between individual constituency and At-Large membership. Most of the DNSO is comprised of interest groups. If we want public voices (some of which we have in DNSO), DNSO will need to change and maybe another SO's too. If ICANN's structure changes, does the At-Large still need to elect 9 At-Large Directors? Need to face all possibilities. Toshimaru Ogura: Addressing three points about Japan election (refer to his new report on www.atlargestudy.com) and how to avoid a top-down nationalistic election. What happened in Japan was a reflection of the attitude and behavior in Japan. The Ministry of Postal and Telecommunications (MPT) issued "Japan Initiative for IT Revolution" which stated that Japan should affect the international management of IP address and domain names for Japan's national interest, and the government and private sector should work with At-Large membership registration and Japan Internet Forum's (JIF) Board Member election process. Other Japan government reports also insisted on a Japanese representative on ICANN's Board. It was clear they disregarded the intent of ICANN's election, and that JIF was set-up at the direction of MPT to get a Japan (not Asia) Board Member. Private sector was involved in the JIF at the direction of the MPT. The private sector and the government are not separate in Japan; only excluding government is not enough. Several ISP's in Japan developed a campaign for ICANN elections. A special webpage was created to promote Japanese votes. Several companies directed their employees to register. For example, according to an internal document from Hitachi Corp., it was assigned to produce 1500 registrations, and management assigned 3 registrations for each office and section, and required a registration report to meet quota. JCNet issued a position paper opposing nationalistic campaigns, and candidates supported by government/corporations to represent their country. JCNet demanded MPT end its top-down nationalistic campaign. A primary reason their campaign was successful was because of the scarcity of information - individuals did not have enough information and people assumed that MPT and others did. The language barrier caused most Japanese to rely on JPNic/JIF/MPT which did not accurately convey all the information. ICANN bylaws state that Directors serve as individuals acting in the best interest of ICANN (and no other constituencies or organizations). Japan's efforts violated the bylaws. ICANN should have taken measures to prevent top-down nationalistic election campaigns - practices such as: providing enough information for non-English speaking people, including ICANN documents and material from other organizations/people; and providing education on ICANN's mission - policy development based on democracy and transparent procedures - not just technical management (should educate users to allow for diverse involvement). Proposal to restrict At-Large elections to prevent top-down approach is wrong - with proper measures ICANN can have broad, democratic elections and involvement. ICANN's information system keeps most users ignorant. Don't restrict elections without effort to inform and educate the global Internet community. David Johnson: Disagrees with first panel's "diagnosis" and has different "therapy" and "cure". Disagrees with Hans Klein that ICANN is a "regulatory body." ICANN's goal is not efficiency or legitimacy, rather it is diversity, decentralization and dialogue. Huge difference between viewing ICANN as a regulatory body seeking legitimacy vs. consensus policy generating body seeking voice of stakeholders not now represented. If you start with a premise that our goal is to encourage dialogue and the informed discussion of consensus policies, that leads to a therapy that turns on the nature of the organization's work product. Struck by Board discussion of policy implications of new technologies -- that is social impact. This is an area of expertise that requires development of understanding from civil society sector which points towards therapy of creating platform for this kind of discussion - not optimizing on the fairness of a one-time election process, but focusing on a global dialogue across the public interest sector, civil society sector and technical sector. Perhaps task forces organized by subject matter to enhance discussion should be considered. How do we know we have a cure? Not by counting Board seats, but by analyzing if we developed a career path for public sector view for ICANN in which successful contributors win by becoming substantive contributors to new form of expertise, which is study and understanding and education using ICANN's external voice on the consequences of new technologies. Christian Ahlert: Will keep remarks brief to encourage audience discussion. Three points: 1) election was influenced by national realities and there was national capture to some extent, but now we need to develop a solution for the future. How do we deal with national preferential voting? 2) Re-visit the idea of an At-Large Council that was dismissed at the Cairo meeting. This approach solves deliberation between members, providing structure for constituency and process for discussion and deliberation. 3) Council could work against problem of national capture because Council would have national diversity. Consider going back to Madison (early U.S. President) and consider a structure with checks and balances. An on-line voting system and electoral system must address the problems identified. ICANN wanted a cheap but efficient system for voting and sent out pin letters. What would have happened if 1 million registrants needed pin letters? Would have been problem for ICANN's budget. Need to define concepts - representation vs. participation. Current 5 AL Directors are thought to represent regions, but that is debatable. There is no real At-Large participation right now and existing SO's are not a solution. SO's participation did not change after the election. The community did self-organize and created mailing lists, but they weren't officially recognized. An official discussion space is needed. Need to address funding question - maybe stakeholders who profit from the Internet are obligated to support an At-Large membership. ALSC needs to not only give theoretical advice, but needs to address real questions and propose workable solutions. How can an online voting system work and be cost efficient? NAIS is addressing solutions in next step (report). Hye-Young Kang: Representation of ICANN - At-Large membership is an important way individual members can join ICANN decision-making process. Questions whether Board can represent world's Internet users. Lot of potential Internet users don't know what ICANN or At-Large is and how they can participate and why they should. Thinks At-Large membership should drive election themselves. In Korea after At-Large membership drive, there were 2 At-Large forums/workshops that will continue, since there are a lot of users who are now aware of and interested in ICANN. Now is the time to inform more people about ICANN; ICANN should conduct outreach to raise awareness. Cultural diversity needs to be considered in designing elections. ICANN should be globally representative, but questions people's level of knowledge. Difference between developed and developing countries - ICANN needs to especially encourage developing countries' users. ICANN needs to focus outreach and education in developing countries to maintain legitimacy and global representation. Carl Bildt opened the discussion to the floor for comments/questions. Hans Klein: Need to have balance of interests and have 9 At-Large Board Directors. Civil society movement made progress towards creating intermediary efforts to encourage discussion and participation. Susan Crawford: Doesn't share Hans' despair about ICANN's state and doesn't believe governments are a sensible alternative. ICANN was formed to ward off governments. Has a structural suggestion for the ALSC. Two places were public voice is heard within ICANN and they have very different functions: General Assemblies (GA's)within each SO which are there to do the hard work of developing consensus on addresses, IP, domains, and there is the At-Large which elects members to the Board. Each wants what the other has. GA's can't elect Directors and the At-Large has no forum to discuss issues and impact policy. Proposes merger - cross SO General Assembly with At-Large - a new structure would be formed for the purpose of debate, election, political parties, outreach, online discussions, etc. Would retain the structure of the SO's general assemblies (all GA members would automatically be part of the new At-Large structure) but At-Large members would not have to be part of the existing SO's. Such a structure would allow consensus building to proceed fairly and also allow important outreach, debate and elections to be part of ICANN in an effective way. Byuong Kim: 240 countries are members of ccTLD constituency and many are developing countries so they need outreach and support from ICANN. They will either leave ICANN or ask local governments for help. Country code administrators need to form local Internet community so this may be good points of contact to reach users in different countries. Mike Roberts: (Speaking for self) Expressed admiration for progress, momentum energy and quality for what is taking place in At-Large study area. Regarding governments and ICANN - we don't have a constitution or legislation - reality is that ICANN is operating under limited and conditional grant of local autonomy. Bottom line for most governments is: can ICANN get the job done? Today over 6 billion name resolutions will take place and more than 10,000 domain names will be issued - these are very tangible things that have to happen if the franchise for ICANN is going to continue to be granted. Governments expect the major stakeholders within ICANN to live together within ICANN. Today the PSO and ASO are working pretty well and the DNSO and At-Large are not. Challenge is to propose re-alignment that gives us the right number of explicitly designed stakeholder groups that are working within ICANN. Important to distinguished between good decisions and good outcomes. Last year's election gave us 5 excellent Directors, but we got them from a highly imperfect voting and election process that doesn't even begin to be a model for going forward. Izumi Izu: As a former MAC (Membership Advisory Committee) member, reminded that MAC advocated no fee but was projecting about 5,000 - 10,000 voters. 1 million users would cost $1 million, one quarter of ICANN's budget. Regarding Ogura's remarks about Japan, added that they didn't really violate any rules or guidelines. MAC tried to encourage more specific rules and implementation monitoring (to deal with issues such as Kuo Wie Wu's, who reached 2% as he counted but somehow staff said he was 3 votes short). We should take some kind of action or legitimacy will be gone. Japanese industry people examined the rules and tried not to violate them, but they believe this was the right way to do it. Unless we can share common, global rules, it will be difficult to agree that the outcome is a success or a failure, and whether it is effective or not. Many diverse societies have very different notion of elections. It is premature to assume that the concept of government and public governance is the same. Need to examine that. Chrisian de Larriwaga: Was told by a Moscow Internet disc jockey that we have no business telling them what to do. In terms of the representation and technical management of the Internet, the future is out there, not in here. Elections in UK - his organization didn't do press releases. One reason is that there wasn't a UK candidate to focus on so it was hard to find a hook the press was interested in. Thought the ICANN election process was too difficult, which was born out by the fact that many UK registrants were unable to vote. Danger of raising expectations to un-realistic levels. ALSC should focus on who is a representative and who is a participant and how to focus on mission. Alan Levin: Currently there is no channel for At-Large membership. Many individuals in Africa are interested. Yesterday ICANN's Board decided that the ALSC was delegated as the channel for everything dealing with ICANN At-Large. There was a request for a separate mailing list for At-Large issues not necessarily related to the Study, but that was channeled towards the ALSC, whose mailing list, they said, should be used for all ICANN At-Large issues. One interpretation is potentially the scope of the study has been enlarged and there were musings that the ALSC's timeline may be impacted. We need some way of legitimately recognizing self-organization of At-Large groups that are happening. Can ALSC facilitate this? And can the ALSC stick to its timeline, because it does have impact on success - extending timelines depletes value? Carl Bildt: We don't intend to change our timeline - preliminary report in mid-September and then after 60 days for discussion there will be a final report submitted to ICANN at the November Board meeting. Whether that is the "last word" remains to be seen; it's not up to us. A couple of other issues have arisen since we started, but it would be wrong to take that as an excuse for prolonging our timeline; it might be necessary to widen the intellectual horizons of our work. Richard Francis: Regarding the utility of geography - ICANN's division of constituencies was counter-productive and may have contributed to some of the problems under investigation. Arab region should be viewed in a different way - doesn't fit into rest of the continent. Interested in following ccTLD regional organizations model -- Gulf Cooperation Council states are in effect creating a center, or a AFTLD or APTLD and there are only 9 members. In terms of educating the community on what ICANN is and what the issues are, they've done it in 9 months. Utility of geographic areas defined by process in first elections need to be re-considered. Can look at 1591 backbone (Internet utility; UN list of 2 letter country code) and then carve up natural subsets, which aren't by continents. CcTLD's are defined by reference to this external identifier. Carl Bildt: ICANN deliberately chose that list, and it was a good way to avoid a lot of political problems. It wasn't an unbiased and neutral choice, though, and there are lots of other lists that could have been used. Richard Francis: There are RTLD (regional top level domains) that don't work under ISO 3166 - such as Government Corporation Council and ".eu". If you're a region you have to establish a currency and convince the UN to put you on the "B list." Carl Bildt: If there's going to be an election regional issues need to be dealt with. The voting tendencies are there - tends to be national basis. They are unavoidable and we should try to restrict the scope for it. We have reached the end for our time, but not the discussion. At 14:00 everyone is invited to listen to presentations and discuss several independent studies. We feel it is extremely important to encourage these studies and that their results and points of view and analysis are known by as many people as possible. We encourage people to come and listen and those who have studies to come and present them. Called for closing thoughts? Raul Echeberria: Don't think it is possible to create one structure to represent 400 million users throughout the world. Creating structures to represent organizations with specific Internet-related interests (such as DNS), organizations that try to represent others with the same interests - they are the SO's. Are there still people who are not represented? Who are they? Every person who is interested as an individual in any ICANN matter or its impact in society, everyone who is a domain holder, etc .. we have to create a structure to allow these people to participate and keep informed. Perhaps we need a new SO. It is time to bring to a close the discussion about the last election and its problems, and the number of Directors. The discussion should now focus on At-Large membership and how to improve their participation and give them accountability. Wolfgang Kleinwaechter: Likes the 3 "D's" - dialogue, diversity and de-centralization. This promotes inclusion and you need a channel to bring diversity to a decision-making body. Important to remember that the Board makes decisions based on rough consensus and no Director has a veto. Disenting voices on the Board are good and indicate that ICANN is inclusive. If you are able to self-organize ICANN, you will keep governments out. Perhaps, historically, we are at the stage of having 2 systems at the same time - a non-government driven system on global scale and a government-driven system on a national scale, and we need to find a way to balance these. Hans Petter Holen: The real work in the SO's doesn't happen in the GA's it happens in the IETF and the policy forums. Likes proposal of merging things. Personally, from the perspective as an Internet user, not that interested in how to be represented on the Board, more interested in how to participate and how to change things. To do something about the name policies -- in Norway I can participate in the local policy mailing lists and influence things at the bottom, and if I want to influence address policy I will join RIPE. If I want to have a new Internet standard, I may not be technically capable of developing it myself, but I could talk to someone in IETF and encourage them to address it. Important to see how individual users can participate in the future of the Internet and that's the key to how to build this organization. Kuo-Wei Wu: Regarding diversity, be careful when referring to cultural or geographic diversity, because diversity is a status, situation, or phenomenom, not a goal. Diversity means that we like to hear different voices, respect different cultures and opinions, but the real goal is to have diverse discussions arrive at consensus. Diversity should not be used as a weapon to address some interest group's goals. This would be dangerous. We are not building an Internet that is a group of islands. That would be a tragedy. Toshimaru Ogura: Review last election process from viewpoint of bylaws, whether violations occurred or not. Global election is very difficult, however, ICANN should not be a "big brother" requiring such things as individual certification and trying to protect Internet user's privacy. David Johnson: This is a hard problem and you'll have some excuses to make it easier on yourselves to focus narrowly on the elections. We all will be grateful if you keep it as hard as possible - take on the full structural implications. Christian Ahlert: NAIS invites comments and input. Hye-Young Kang: It is the time for action. Carl Bildt: Thanked all the panelists and participants; it was very useful for the ALSC Members who have been listening and digesting the arguments and information. |
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