[kictanet] Obama administration joins critics of U.S. nonprofit group that oversees Internet

[alice at apc.org]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022803719.html?hpid=topnews

Obama administration joins critics of U.S. nonprofit group that oversees
Internet


By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 28, 2011; 10:39 PM

The California nonprofit organization that operates the Internet's levers
has always been a target for such global heavies as Russia and China that
prefer the United Nations to be in charge of the Web. But these days, the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is fending off attacks
from a seemingly unlikely source: the Obama administration.

Concerned about the growing movement to cede oversight to the U.N., the
U.S. government, which helped create ICANN in 1998, has been reprimanding
the nonprofit group to give foreign nations more say over the Web's
operations.

The battle has come at a sensitive time for ICANN, which this month is
meeting with foreign governments as it pulls off the biggest expansion
ever of Web suffixes - including .gay, .muslim and .nazi. Also this fall,
the nonprofit organization is seeking to hold on to its federal contract
to oversee the Web's master database of addresses - a sweeping power that
governments fear could be used to shut down foreign domains that the
United States finds unsavory.

"There's a deeper question of how the world is reacting to a small company
- even a nonprofit - completely in charge of a key part of the Internet.
Is that acceptable? There's no 100 percent comfortable solution here,"
said Steve Crocker, ICANN's vice chairman, who lives in Bethesda and is
the chief executive of Shinkuro, a technology company.

With some Middle East countries shutting down the Internet within their
borders to curb uprisings, the question of who runs the Web is
increasingly figuring into global foreign policy debates. Some fear that
governments such as those of Libya or Iran could more easily crush
rebellions if they gained more control over the Internet's inner workings.

ICANN quietly wields vast influence over the Web, a power unfamiliar to
many Americans and elected officials. Based in an off-campus University of
South California building, the company has more than 100 employees and is
led by a chief executive and a board of directors comprised of private
sector executives and technology experts. ICANN's core function: Decide
which Web addresses get seen on the Internet.
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In Washington, ICANN remains somewhat mysterious to elected officials,
according to Nao Matsukata, a senior policy adviser to the Coalition
Against Domain Name Abuse, a grass-roots organization in Washington.
Matsukata's main problem, he said, is trying to explain what ICANN is to
people on Capitol Hill. His group has met with more than 50 members of
Congress.

"Sometimes, when we're in meetings on the Hill, they're just nodding their
heads," said Matsukata, a former trade official in the George W. Bush
administration. "Very few people understand where all these decisions are
coming from, and that this is something that impacts us every day of our
lives. Someone is determining what is allowed, what is not allowed, and
someone is profiting from these things."

The tiny nonprofit group can be especially provocative for a trade press
that covers its every move, and for a rival U.N. agency, the International
Telecommunications Union. When the ITU, a 145-year-old agency of nearly
200 nations and territories, held its annual meeting in October in Mexico,
a Syrian emissary representing Arab states raged against ICANN as if it
were an enemy nation.

"Do not surrender to the ICANN!" Nabil Kisrawi yelled during one of the
conference's sessions, according to a story in the Register, an online
publication on Internet governance. "There is even a representative of the
ICANN in this room!" Kisrawi said. (Kisrawi recently died.)

Other nations have been mobilizing against ICANN. China, which monitors
dissident activity on the Web, has been leading a campaign among dozens of
developing nations to lobby the U.N. for oversight over ICANN, according
to former and current ICANN officials. And a coalition of former Soviet
states led by a Russian minister has been pushing the U.N. to obtain veto
power over ICANN.

Some countries also worry that the new wave of Web suffixes might be too
controversial and that others might require companies to spend vast sums
to protect their online brands and trademarks. (Who gets .merck? The U.S.
drug company? Or the German drug company with the same name?)

Chris Disspain, chairman of an ICANN internal group and an executive who
oversees Australian domain names, said the prospect of governments running
the Web would be calamitous. "China, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia and
number of others have said in meetings they believe ICANN shouldn't be in
existence, or be replaced by some U.N. body," he said. "Frankly, that
would be a disaster."

Some countries fear that the United States has, at the very least, the
appearance of too much power by owning the contract to run the master
database of Web addresses.

"One concern is that if the U.S. decides Syria is behaving badly, then
they could make all Web sites using Syria's country code domain - .sy -
point to freedom of expression sites, for example," said Avri Doria, an
ICANN group chairman. "Countries say, 'How can we subject ourselves to
that?'"

Crocker, the ICANN board's vice chairman, said the chances of the United
States tinkering with the master Web database are "nil." ICANN can only
request changes in the master database; the U.S. government reviews those
decisions, then the Dulles-based company VeriSign executes the change.

The Commerce Department, however, worries that other countries might soon
lobby en masse for the U.N. to take over instead. Commerce officials
prefer a nimble private-sector organization to run the Web's addressing
system, but the government doesn't believe ICANN is listening enough to
the international community.

Some ICANN officials worry that, if tensions continue with the Commerce
Department, the nonprofit organization might lose its contract to run the
Web's master database. That contract, which the Commerce Department last
gave to ICANN in a no-bid process, comes up for renewal in the fall.
Commerce officials have yet to decide whether they will ask for other
organizations to compete for it.

In mid-February at a technology conference in Colorado, Lawrence
Strickling, an assistant secretary in the Commerce Department, put ICANN
on notice, declaring it "must act" by June on a set of accountability
guidelines made by him and international leaders who will continue to
"monitor" it. Strickling warned about the "forces at play" lobbying for
the U.N. to run the Web.
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Strickling said he met privately in December with ICANN board members in
Colombia, where he urged ICANN to be more transparent and open to
recommendations from foreign nations. "It's not out of hostility . . . but
I am trying to nudge ICANN to be its best," Strickling said in an
interview. "It's important that this model have buy-in from other
governments in order to support the global growth of the Internet."

ICANN scored one minor victory in February. Its advisory body of foreign
nations rejected the Obama administration's proposal that would have
required ICANN to make it easier for nations to object to controversial
new Web suffixes such as .gay or .xxx.

The United States proposed that any country within ICANN's advisory
council should be able to recommend eliminating any new domain name. If no
other country objected to that nation's veto recommendation, then ICANN's
board would have to follow suit. ICANN, however, wants those challenges to
go before three experts guiding the International Chamber of Commerce.

But ICANN's advisory body of foreign countries recently decided that any
nation's objection will be considered as non-binding advice to ICANN's
board.

Commerce Department officials worry that if foreign governments feel they
have no role in the process, they will start ignoring ICANN, blocking Web
sites and splitting up the Internet so that only certain domains can be
accessed, depending on the country.

Critics of the Commerce Department say the agency is bending too much to
other nations' preferences. "The U.S. government was pushing hard to give
any country the power to object and have that right be decisive," said
Milton Mueller, a Syracuse University professor who has chaired and
participated in several groups that developed ICANN policies that would be
overridden by the U.S. intervention. "We think they were playing a
geopolitical game of placating governments."