[kictanet] New Chief Defends U.S. Base for Agency That Manages Web

[alice]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/internet/13iht-icann13.html?_r=1&hpw

New Chief Defends U.S. Base for Agency That Manages Web


Rod Beckstrom spoke after he was announced as the next chief executive 
of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in June.

PARIS — The U.S.-based agency that regulates Internet addresses, facing 
criticism that it is too America-centric, remains the best guardian of a 
“single, unified, global Internet,” according its new chief executive.

Rod Beckstrom, a technology entrepreneur and former U.S. government 
Internet security official, took over this month as head of the Internet 
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, succeeding Paul Twomey, an 
Australian.

As use of the Internet expands around the world, there have been rising 
calls for a new way of overseeing some of its basic functions, including 
the allocation of domain suffixes like .com and .org. This duty, and 
other important technical functions, have been in the hands of Icann, a 
private, nonprofit organization based in Marina Del Rey, California, for 
the past decade, under an agreement with the U.S. Commerce Department.

“There will always be different voices out there, but the ultimate proof 
that Icann is functioning properly is that the Internet is functioning 
properly,” Mr. Beckstrom said by telephone last week.

One critic of Icann, the European Union media and telecommunications 
commissioner, Viviane Reding, recently called for a severing of Icann’s 
links with the U.S. government when the current agreement with the 
Commerce Department expires this autumn. Instead, she proposed the 
creation of a “G-12 for Internet governance” to oversee an independent 
Icann.

“In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of 
only one country has oversight of an Internet function which is used by 
hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world,” Ms. 
Reding said in May.

Ms. Reding also called for the creation of an “independent, 
international tribunal” to review Icann decisions.

Now, any legal challenges generally occur in California courts.

“California law is good law for technology,” Mr. Beckstrom said.

He said that at a recent Icann meeting in Sydney, there had been 
discussion of creating an international subsidiary of the organization, 
possibly based in Switzerland. But he said he would oppose efforts to 
fragment Icann.

“Everyone can’t have it their own way and have it unified,” Mr. 
Beckstrom said. “Part of the power of the Internet is that the standards 
that parties have to agree on are so minimal.”

Icann has moved over the years to give itself a more international 
profile, holding three major meetings a year outside the United States. 
Gatherings are also planned for Seoul in October and Nairobi next March.

The organization’s Governmental Advisory Committee, which has 
representatives from more than 80 countries, has been trying to broaden 
its membership. China, for instance, recently agreed to rejoin the 
committee after a five-year absence, Mr. Beckstrom said.

Now he is trying to woo another big holdout, Russia. Mr. Beckstrom said 
he hoped that a plan to allow Internet domain names to be rendered in 
Cyrillic, set to begin next year, would help.

The move to embrace Cyrillic addresses, along with other scripts like 
Arabic and Chinese, is part of a broader drive by Icann to open up the 
domain naming system, an initiative that also has its critics.

The organization plans to start adding large numbers of new address 
suffixes, or “global top-level domains,” next year, making it possible 
to register city or company names like .paris or .nestle.

While Icann says the creation of new addresses will help accommodate the 
international diversification of the Internet, some companies worry that 
the process will make it harder to protect their brand names. The 
Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, a group based in Washington and 
representing multinational marketers, says the expansion of domain names 
could lead to a rise in the practice known as cybersquatting.

Joshua Bourne, president of the coalition, called for Icann to “halt all 
current or future policy initiatives” until a commission, appointed by 
the U.S. president or Congress, and consisting of government, academic 
and business representatives, had reviewed its operations. Mr. Bourne 
said Icann was too beholden to companies that sell and manage actual 
domain names on behalf of Web sites.

Mr. Beckstrom is no stranger to conflict. In March, he left his previous 
job, as head of the U.S. National Cyber Security Center, part of the 
Homeland Security Department, saying he feared the National Security 
Agency was seeking too much influence at the center.

Before that, Mr. Beckstrom was a technology entrepreneur, starting a 
company in 1984 that created derivatives trading software, which he sold 
in 1999. He said he intended to take a pragmatic approach to his new 
job, rather than moving Icann in new directions.

“There is a lot to do,” he said. “My focus very much is going to be to 
support the execution of these primary tasks.”