UN mulls internet regulation options

Mon Dec 20 14:52:19 UTC 2010

On 12/19/10 8:28 PM, John Curran wrote:

> ... I also intervened twice requested clarification of exactly how a government-only decision body for Internet policy would fulfill the "consultation with all stakeholders" paragraph specified in the Tunis agenda. The answer from several countries was not encouraging, suggesting the consultation could be done in the UN manner through their Member State delegations.  This government-only view is being asserted by several countries, but India, Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia are carrying it most strongly ...

john (et al),

not that my year as a regional officer within the at-large advisory 
committee of icann is a pedestal much grander than an acronym to 
laborious declaim, but the fundamental claim for the at large is to 
provide an institutional means for public interests not necessarily 
addressed by national governments, nor necessarily addressed by other 
supporting organizations or advisory committees, in the curious 
public-private multi-stakeholder model ira magaziner stuck us with.

india abandoned public control of the .in name space, providing the 
operational franchise to afilias, a for-profit registry services 
provider who's facilities are located in north america.

south africa is currently in the process of re-organizing the .za name 
space, having issued a tender for consulting, won by ausreg, a 
for-profit registry services provider who's facilities are located in 
australia. while this is not a complete retreat from public control of 
a public resource, as in the case of india, the rfp proposed a 
subsequent rfp which would similarly transfer operational control to a 
for-profit registry services provider.

brazil's public name space operator is, to the best of my knowledge, 
is reasonably well-informed of the outstanding issues in the icann 
experience in a public-private multi-stakeholder model, and reasonably 
content with the icann instance of this model. fix yes, break no.

saudi arabia presents a more nuanced case, at icann. the state is 
aware that the ratio of arabic langauge content "on the net" is not 
proportional to the ratio of arabic language speakers. this is the 
focus of a government initiated program. the state, through the league 
of arab states, has published an rfi for contractors to operate a pair 
of name spaces, "arabi" in arabic script, and "arab" in latin script. 
the adoption of the country code name spaces by the aggregate members 
of the league of arab states, all of which have significant 
administrative costs to would-be registrants, is less than the 
adoption of the .ir name space, which has a healthy and competitive 
(though consolidation is taking place for market economic reasons) 
registrar regime, and vastly less effective "statist" administrative 
cost to would-be registrants. in sum, the state is aware that 
"statist" approaches to arabic language uptake and operational 
investment in infrastructure compare poorly to alternatives. in other 
areas, from wireline to wireless voice, to petroleum, that state uses 
non-state resources to promote public policy goals.

as the gac is working more closely with the alac than at any prior 
point in the past, and the gac has vigorously and overtly represented 
private interests (primarily trademark holders), the "governments 
only" model advanced elsewhere seems ... largely uninformed by the 
operational practice of a working policy body with significant 
government participation as governments.

> I hope this helps provide some context as you requested.

it provides some specific questions to pursue. note that there will be 
an intersessional meeting arising from the gac's formal notice to the 
board that it considered its advice on two subject areas to have been 
rejected by the board, triggering the icann bylaws.

are the respective wsis++ folks are not in sync with the respective 
icann++ folks?

granted, almost all of this is on the names side of the {addr,asn,dns}
triple that icann is self-or-other-tasked to administer, so the v6 and 
rir bits are mostly not addressed.

thanks for the pointers, i'll catch up on the wsis bits i've ignored 
for most of a decade, but it will be in my spare time, and there are 
so many people in wsis i find less pleasant company than a room full 
of trademark lawyers.

eric

p.s. the acronym to laborious declaim comes with no other benefits, so 
someone with travel nickles will have to cover the june wsis in 
geneva. as i don't work for core any longer i can't wrangle a trip to 
check on the fondue supplies or the secretariat operations or ...