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On the eve of a major meeting of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) at Bucharest between June 24 and 28, (in which any interested person can attend either in person or through webcast and remote participation,) an US Republican Senator Conrad Burns, has threatened that he would introduce a Bill to require ICANN to give the U.S. government more influence in managing the domain-name system. He has stated that if ICANN fails to cooperate,  it could be stripped of its authority when its contract comes up for renewal.

It must be stated in this context that ICANN today represents a global Netizen community in which the population of US Citizens is less than 50 %. In the coming days, it is likely to come down even further. Mr Burns proposal to take over Internet administration under the US control is a sure way of creating a dissatisfaction amongst the non US Netizens. Already, the distribution of the IPV 4 number space has been considered skewed towards US and any further attempt to stake a claim that is democratically not defensible would not be wise.

Even though the proposal of Mr Burn is unlikely to get the support of US Citizens themselves, it is necessary for other countries to raise their voice of protest and ensure that this proposal is dumped forthwith.

As we all appreciate, ICANN is the apex body today for management of IP Number Space, Domain Name Space as well as the Internet Technology Standards. The functions of ICANN are so critical to the functioning of the Internet that we can say that the "Cyber Space" is fully under its control.

Since ICANN has the power to "Banish" an individual or a website from the Cyber Space by blocking the IP Address or the Domain Name, ICANN controls the virtual property on Cyber Space.

Control of ICANN therefore means controlling the aggregate Virtual properties of all websites including the value of Copyrights, Patents , Domain Names etc as well as the opportunity costs of all E-Commerce revenue generated on the Internet.

In short, ICANN is the key to the Internet Economy which encompasses the entire globe and owning ICANN is owning the E-World.

The desire for politicians to control such a huge property is therefore natural. It is not only the Burns kind of US senators in US who are interested in controlling ICANN, but  many of the politicians of countries such as Myanmar and China who have already taken effective control of the Country Specific Cyber Space by a strict regulation of the ccTLDs of their respective countries are waiting for more power. 

It must be said to the credit of the US Government which originated the Internet project that it saw the potential of the Internet to be a global movement of ordinary people and voluntarily gave up its control on the activities which are with ICANN today. At the time of transfer of the Domain Name registration service for generic TLD s, the US Government ensured that no single private company would have a monopoly over the system and paved the way for a large number of registrars to manage the gTLDs.

Further, the management of ICANN developed the concept of At large Community  and its participation in the management of ICANN through representatives elected over a democratic process.

As a result of these developments, ICANN today has developed into a "Self Regulating Body of those who represent the Internet World". The role of Governments is very restricted.

One of the major proposals that is now coming up for discussion at Bucharest and which can change the face of the Internet is a proposal to increase the role of Governments of different countries. It is suggested that there will be as many (5) nominees from Governments as the elected persons in the Board of Trustees. In effect this will  dilute the current democratic process and in due course, representatives from China, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia will ensure that the policies of ICANN are dovetailed to the needs of these countries rather than US, UK or India.

The main reason for the suggestion for greater Government participation, which has come from the current president of ICANN,  Dr Stuart Lynn  himself, is that the organization is financially incapable of sustaining without the patronage of the different Governments of the world. He envisages that non-cooperation of the ccTLD management which is today essentially in the hands of the  local Governments will make ICANN incapable of meeting its core objectives of ensuring global DNS inter-operability.

There is no doubt that some logic in the proposal made by Dr Lynn. If the 243 ccTLD managers act in concert against ICANN, the gTLD domain space can be theoretically eliminated from the face of the Internet. By strictly blocking the gTLD domains, individual countries or a group of countries can ensure that the Netizens of their country would effectively surf around the artificial barriers created around "Permitted TLDs" only. For example, the group of Muslim countries can restrict the Internet access to only ccTLDs of other Muslim countries to preserve their culture political hold on the masses. If any international site such as Yahoo or Amazon wants to reach out to these audiences, they may be forced to operate through the local domain name only. The fear of Lynn is therefore legitimate.

However, in buying the support of the ccTLD managers, it is a moot point if Dr Lynn is proposing to dismantle what could have been a glorious "Global Democracy through Internet". With the support of the majority of countries which are democratic in nature, ICANN is well placed to promote "Cyber Democracy" which would have given representation to all Netizens through a registration and voting process. Since these would have included the Citizens of a local country, they could have been used to influence the local Governments if any of the ccTLD managers were upsetting the balance.

By not pursuing the "Idealistic Goal", Dr Lynn has perhaps given up a noble fight a little too early.

While admitting the need for greater participation of the local Governments, it would have been possible to retain the election process of the Board and have country wise "Coordination Committees" through the At large members so that all the apprehensions of the Governments could have been addressed. This would have perhaps meant that instead of one advisory committee for all Countries as at present, there would be country specific advisory committees who operate within the jurisdiction of the particular country, who form regional councils and a federation of "Advisory Committees". This would be a pressure group whose views have to be respected by the directly elected representatives of the ICANN.

It appears that powerful interests are at work in forcing Dr Lynn to come up with the proposals as he has now done to let ICANN be taken over by one or the other Government bodies. Let us hope that the Bucharest meet will show the world that there is still scope for Cyber Democracy to be alive in the form of ICANN.

Naavi

 June 15,  2002

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