The 463: Inside Tech Policy

IGF: Rio Wrap

David McGuire in Rio -- Well that was entertaining. I'm sitting in the lobby of the Windsor Barra hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and all around me (iPhone photo from my balcony above), the detritus of the Second Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is being disassembled and packed away. (Ed note: Detritus? WTF, who is this McGuire guy?)

Hard to draw any real conclusions out of the event and that's probably a good thing. In one of the final sessions of the day, Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, remarked on what made the IGF a good thing.

"It's a non-negotiating climate. Sometimes people disagree, and that's ok."

I certainly can't put it any better than that. In the end, those who had concerns about the current state of Internet governance were heard, as were those opposed to wholesale changes. Companies, advocates and governments were able to collaborate and share best practices, and no chairs were
thrown. Mission accomplished.

If there was any worrisome note in the whole thing, it came toward the end, when one of the Russian delegates announced his intention to ask the UN to create a special working group charged with transitioning control of ICANN to a multinational bureaucracy.

That would obviously be a nightmare scenario, but he's got a tough row to hoe, and it seems unlikely the UN would want to reopen this can of worms so soon after the conclusion of the controversial two-year process that created the IGF.

For the most part, the IGF stayed true to its original purpose. As long as it keeps to that path, it will be remain a unique and worthwhile component of the global Internet governance discussion.

More News from Rio

Greetings from lovely Rio de Janeiro!

At least I assume it's lovely. No matter where you go in the world, all hotel conference facilities look alike. I could be sitting in Arlington for all I know (I realize your hearts bleed for me).

I'm down here with 463's Jim Hock and 2,000 of our closest friends for the second annual Internet Governance Forum where the issue du jour -- if the media reports are to be believed -- is "U.S. control of the Internet." Never mind that the UN bickered about this very topic for two years when they were supposed to be discussing ways to increase technology resources in developing nations (an important topic that still hasn't received enough attention) we apparently need to bicker about it some more.

Now if the IGF stays true to its original vision -- an open forum where government, industry and public interest voices from around the word can speak and be heard on issues critical to Internet development -- there's absolutely nothing wrong with these discussions (though they do get a trifle repetitive). The problem is that some governments are simply not content with the Internet Governance Forum being a "forum." They want it to be a decision-making body and are engaged in all sorts of behind the scenes shenanigans aimed at pushing the IGF in that direction.

The flashpoint is likely to be Thursday, during the "Taking Stock and Way Forward" session meant to wrap up the themes of the conference. That's where we're most likely to see advocates of greater government control push for some sort of negotiated document meant to spin some sort of "findings" or "conclusions" from this whirlpool of opinions. That would be bad news from Brazil.

More to come...

-David McGuire

Rio IGF: Call for New Internet Regulatory Body

Jim Hock, Rio de Janeiro -- I am in Rio for the second Internet Governance Forum (lucky me, although it’s raining cats and dogs in the land of the Bossa Nova) and am disappointed to report that the Italian representative speaking at the opening session called for a new regulatory body to oversee the Internet.  Did I miss something?  Is the Internet broken and need to be overhauled under a bureaucratic regime? 

Seems to me that this debate is yesterday’s news.  Instead, we should be talking about how to best work within the current institutions such as ICANN and others to help connect the rest of developing world to the Internet. 

One random thought:   I am listening to a panel presentation on open standards featuring Thomas Vinje, a lawyer who founded ECIS.  The irony of ironies is that when Vinje started talking after three others, his microphone cut off with the very earnest IGF tech folks trying to fix the problem.  At that very moment these capable folks were trying to fix the problem, a very quick flash of the Microsoft logo appeared on the screen.  Too funny.  When talking about the EU competition ruling in September, Vinje had this money quote:  “Governments can do things to ensure that standards survive and thrive, even in a sector dominated by a single company.”

Andrew Noyes from Tech Daily is also providing IGF updates.  Web casts of sessions here.

Sex, Domains and Governance

       

The ICANN board once again quashed an application for a new .xxx top level domain.  It would have been used adult content sites who chose to zone themselves in that Web neighborhood.

The board voted to reject the application 9-5 and the there was a good amount of contention among the members on the decision.  And, if you have followed the history of ICANN, even knowing this is a pretty remarkable thing.  The organization has been long dogged by Internet activists for being secretive, unaccountable and opaque in its decision making process.  By contrast, the transcript of the .xxx debate was almost immediately posted to the new ICANN blog.  On top of that, one of the board members, Susan Crawford, posted her own objections to the decision on her blog.  Another board member in the minority echoed her perspective on his blog.

Yet, obviously, it's the decision here that is really important and not how it was disclosed.  And, in reading the transcript, it's a pretty interesting exploration in the current state of Internet governance, how governments interact with ICANN (or not) and the impending pressures related to content and "community" norms that are hitting the Internet as it becomes more mainstream in diverse cultures around the world.

Much of the debate had to do with whether or not the board was unduly influenced by governments to make this decision.  Clearly, a February 28 letter (pdf) from Australia's Minister of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Helen Coonan, was a big sticking point for some.  In the letter, Coonan, who has called mobile phones "pipelines for perversion" wrote:

TPS: VeriSign's CEO Stratton Sclavos

Today's feature CEO interview at the Tech Policy Summit was between VeriSign chief Stratton Sclavos and CNBC's Jim Goldman. Paraphrased and condensed notes after the leap....

PFF's Tech Policy Agenda

   
The Progress & Freedom Foundation announced its 10-point tech policy plan for the 110th Congress on Friday.  The 10...

1 - Renew fundamental reforms of communications regulations.
2 - Leave network neutrality concerns to the market and antitrust.
3 - Leave content business models and fair use to the market.
4 - When addressing patents, take a first-principles approach to property and innovation.
5 - Enact meaningful reform of archaic media ownerships laws and regulations that hinder media marketplace experimentation.
6- Pursue greater First Amendment parity among modern media providers by leveling the playing field in the direction of greater freedom for all operators / platforms.
7 - Subject data security and privacy proposals to careful benefit-cost analysis, including full examination of consumer benefits from services and technologies affected by these proposals.
8 - Promote pro-competitive, non-regulatory internet governance.
9 - Avoid open-ended, intrusive data retention mandates.
10 - Promote more efficient taxation of telecom services and Internet sales.

The full study with further descriptions of the positions can be downloaded here.  After the jump are two of the full recommendations....

The Bob Parsons Show!

Between his business, Internet radio show and guest appearances, it’s difficult to figure out what exactly motivates GoDaddy’s CEO Bob Parsons.

It isn’t the continued stability of the Internet, for which his domain name company depends, that’s for sure. Faced with a choice of pumping up GoDaddy’s margins or ensuring the companies that operate the core infrastructure have the means to continually invest to keep it stable and secure, he votes for his margins everytime.

And it can’t be his customers or Internet users, as he sometimes claims. If it was, he wouldn’t have pocketed the $1.3 million windfall GoDaddy got when prices for .net names went down last year. GoDaddy didn’t pass on that financial windfall to his customers, he pocketed the cash. Heck, that’s almost enough to pay for a Super Bowl ad!...

ICANN Board Approves VeriSign Settlement

Today, ICANN's Board of Directors approved a set of agreements settling a long time dispute between ICANN and VeriSign, the registry operator for the .COM registry, and cleared the way for business certainty for registrly operators in the process.

Is the Internet Industry Maturing?

That is the underlying question at the fall ICANN meetings that 463 is attending in Vancouver. The Internet policy world has always been a geeky wild, wild west, but there are signs that the Internet infrastructure community – operators, users, businesses – are trying to get  their house in order. And none too soon given the fact that the UN, ITU and some freedom-unfriendly countries (read Syria, Iran, Cuba) would like governments to control the Internet.

A big test for the Internet community is whether it can resolve long-standing differences. ICANN announced two months ago a lawsuit settlement with VeriSign, but it has yet to take final action to end the litigation. There are many special interests who justify their opposition using a myriad of arguments but most center on their fear they will lose the ability to dictate ICANN actions by controlling their budget and policy process.

Of course, it’s often easier just to kick...

One Small Step for WSIS; One Big Leap for the Internet

Calmer heads prevailed at this week’s international meetings on control over the Internet. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) meetings in Tunis are coming to an end after a compromise was reached about control over the Internet infrastructure. ICANN currently coordinates the technical foundation of the Internet, with the United States playing a mostly hands-off role as the legal backstop.

Some more “hands-on” countries (China and Syra, for example) were cheerleading an EU effort to insert governments into the role of overseeing the Internet. The stalemate was more about businesses vs. government control than US. vs. The World angle in the papers, but hey the media needs controversy and that’s a sexy if oversimplified story....