[WSIS CS-Plenary] FW: [commrights-asia] Internet governance: An opinion report on the UNworking group leading the debate

[Myriam Horngren]

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Subject: [commrights-asia] Internet governance: An opinion report on the
UNworking group leading the debate

Internet governance: An opinion report on the UN working group leading
the
debate
http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=30629

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- The Working Group on Internet Governance
(WGIG):
the beginning

An opinionative report on the first meeting of the Working Group on
Internet
Governance, November 23-25 2004, Geneva.

Carlos A. Afonso
Member of the WGIG, RITS Director of Planning, member of the Brazil
Internet
Steering Committee (CGIbr)
December 2004

Note: This text contains information from reports drafted by various
participants in the WGIG meeting, including W. Kleirwachter, V Bertola
and
others. Responsibility for the opinions included in the text, however,
is
solely the author's.


Introduction

What is today referred to as "internet governance" goes far beyond the
mandate of the entity created several years ago to globally administer
internet addressing resources - IP addresses, domain names and data
transport protocols. This entity, the Internet Corporation for Names and
Numbers (ICANN) created in 1998 by the US Government as a non-profit
civil
society organisation based in California, took some time to recognise
that
its scope of governance needed to be extended, incorporating into its
mandate issues crucial to the future of the internet.

In fact, ICANN and the Internet Society (ISOC), who have a very close
relationship on certain issues, resisted the use of the concept of
governance until recently, preferring to emphasise the idea of
 "coordination" between the different entities of the private sector.
ISOC's
brochure that was distributed during WSIS (World Summit on the
Information
Society) in Geneva in December 2003 had as its title: "Developing the
Potential of the Internet through Coordination, not Governance."

However, one of the consensuses achieved during the WSIS in Geneva was
that
internet "coordination" or governance should have a more comprehensive
character. Paragraphs 47 to 49 of the Declaration of Principles
summarise
this scope, and paragraph 50 states:

"International internet governance issues should be addressed in a
coordinated manner. We ask the Secretary-General of the United Nations
to
set up a working group on Internet governance, in an open and inclusive
process that ensures a mechanism for the full and active participation
of
governments, the private sector and civil society from both developing
and
developed countries, involving relevant intergovernmental and
international
organisations and forums, to investigate and make proposals for action,
as
appropriate, on governance of the Internet by 2005."

The Plan of Action linked to the Declaration of Principles establishes
four
main objectives of the working group:

1.To develop a definition of internet governance.
2.To identify public policy issues relevant to internet governance.
3.To reach common understanding of the respective roles and
responsibilities
of existing governments, intergovernmental and international
organisations
and other forums, from the private sector as well as civil society from
both
developing and developed countries.
4.To prepare a report on the results of this activity, to be submitted
for
consideration and relevant action during the second phase of the WSIS,
in
Tunis in 2005.

The process of forming the Working Group (WG) was quite slow, but
finally in
October 2004, the UN Secretary General established the Working Group on
Internet Governance (WGIG). The WGIG members were chosen from a list of
names compiled by governments, civil entities, the private sector and
international and multilateral agencies, with the final decision on who
should participate being made by the UN. The complete list of selected
names
is at the end of this text (Appendix 1).


Establishment of the WGIG


The WG is presided over by Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for
Social
and Economic Affairs of the UN, and Special Advisor to the Secretary
General
on the WSIS. The executive coordinator is Markus Kummer, whose role is
to
organise the WGIG establishment process.

Desai is seeking to characterise the WG as a group of "specialists", not
as
representatives of governments or other interested parties. However,
disassociating oneself from institutional representation is difficult,
especially for government representatives.

On the other hand, the persons selected by other interest groups
(private
sector, civil society entities, academia) are connected with these
groups
and will seek wherever possible to express opinions that are in
agreement
with them(or are at least non-conflicting). To this end, the free flow
of
information amongst WG members and their interest groups is essential.

The Group is numerically balanced with regard to the various interest
groups, but is seriously unbalanced in terms of gender (only 10% are
women).


Position of the ITU

The work of the WGIG began on November 23. A total of 38 members were
present, as well as observers from some multilateral organisations (in
particular the ITU) - observers, but with the right to speak (!).

The meeting was opened with an objective speech by the ITU Secretary
General, Yoshio Utsumi. To summarise Utsumi's speech in a few words, the
focus of the WG's work should be to administer names, addresses and
protocols - the rest, according to Utsumi, is fantasy. In other words,
the
WG should concentrate on discussing proposals for the worldwide
management
of the internet transport layer.

It is important to take into account the fact that the motivation for
pro-ITU proposals comes from the fact that the telecommunications
 "oligarchy" (the traditional telephone companies) feel as scared by
digital
convergence (internet telephony, or voice over IP, rapid progress of
connection alternatives via digital radio etc), as RIAA and MPAA feel
desperate with the inexorable and rapid progress of file exchange via
P2P
systems (Overnet, BIT

Torrent, Kazaa etc.)

The pro-ITU strategy (or strategy in favour of a UN-linked
intergovernmental
organisation) seems to be: to join together at least two of the main
internet service layers (the connection infrastructure and the data
transport layer, that is transmission and addressing) under the control
of
the ITU (or the UN) to make our traffic more secure. Addressing means IP
addresses, domain names (DNS) and data exchange protocols - the exact
set of
responsibilities for which ICANN was created.

The reaction of various members of the WGIG to Dr. Utsumi's speech was
decisive - internet governance goes way beyond what ICANN does today
(names,
addresses and protocols) and there is not yet a consistent proposal that
covers all the aspects of governance. Issues ranging from the
interconnection of backbones to the improper use of services, from
global
security of the system to freedom of access, amongst other things,
should be
considered and are outside of ICANN's mandate. Moreover, for some of
these
issues there is no organisation (or coordinated set of organisations)
that
can guarantee adequate treatment of the issues.

Practically the whole morning was dedicated to members' presentations.
Despite the president's appeal for members to present themselves
succinctly,
and emphasise their hopes for the WG's work, many spent too much time
describing their own virtues. This type of self-centredness is not going
to
contribute towards effective work by the WG.

The rest of the day was essentially dedicated to operational items, such
as
the agenda of meetings, work methods etc. There was an attempt by
government
representatives to allow the participation of one more delegate for each
member of the WG, at the discretion of each delegate or interest group.
If
this was approved, there would be an imbalance between the current group
and
governments - as these have representation in Geneva, and can always
figure
on additional participants, while civil entities do not have this
resource.
However, the idea was temporarily set aside, and will be discussed again
on
the third day.

The contribution of Dr Qiheng Hu, Adviser to the Ministry of Industry
and
Information in China was notable. He stated that the work of the WG
should
be innovative, and should seek to add creative mechanisms to the
existing
structure. This statement left the impression that China is not
proposing to
substitute existing government institutions, but to improve the
structure
through adequate consultation in search of consensus.

There was agreement on the following points:

? The work of the WG will seek to use a combination of closed and open
meetings, as well as collaboration via the internet. Closed and open
lists
will be created to facilitate internal work and dialogue with interest
groups and the public in general.
? Face-to-face meetings will be, in principle: in February (before
Prepcom,
in Geneva); in April (possibly in New York or in Brazil); in May (an
extraordinary meeting on the invitation of the Egyptian Government, in
Cairo, still not confirmed); and in June (Geneva?) to close the final
report.
? The work must begin with an adequate approach, possibly going beyond
the
more than 40 points presented in Brazil by Al Gazaleh, seeking to join
some
fundamental topics to become the WG's priorities.


The Open Forum

On the 24th, the meeting will be open to the public (over 200 people,
mostly
from government missions to the UN in Geneva).

Initially, various government representatives expressed concern with
regard
to access to the WG meetings - some requested the possibility of being
guaranteed free access like observers. Desai affirmed that the WG work
will
be as transparent as possible, but that access to the meetings would be
the
object of WG discussions the following day.

With regard to governance themes, the principal concerns expressed by
the
representatives of developping countries were related to security and
improper use (spam, pornography, fraud etc.) as well as inequality in
the
sharing of interconnection costs (see more on the subject of
interconnection
below).

Also debated was the proposal expressed in the recent text by Houlin
Zhao,
Director of the ITU's Telecommunications Standardisation Bureau, which
proposes the introduction of a dual system of Ipv6 address distribution,
in
which each government will receive a stock of IP addresses and will be
responsible for the national distribution of these addresses, while a
similar structure, currently under ICANN, would distribute addresses
from
another IP address stock. Some governments support the idea in the name
of
national sovereignty, but there is strong criticism from the technical
community, and from civil society. The debate was certainly not
conclusive.

An important observation which was made at the open meeting refers to
the
attitude of ICANN members and affiliated organisations towards the
interconnection issue. It is understood that ICANN cannot deal directly
with
this issue, as it is not within its mandate. Neither is it the ITU's
problem, as the subject is more closely related to interconnection
cost-sharing in the so-called "internet transport layer", and not to
physical connections (referred to as the "infrastructure layer" in
internet
jargon).

An important introduction: in any internet connection, there is the cost
of
the physical connection to the internet (telephone connection, cable
connection, connection between a service provider and a backbone,
connection
between the backbones of two countries etc.). This physical connection
is
normally made by one or more telecommunications companies. In general,
there
is in this case a cost-sharing agreement according to established rules,
laws or practices. For example, in a satellite connection between one
country and another, it is the rule that each country pays for the cost
from
"their side" of the physical connection (from country A to the
satellite,
the operator from country A pays, and from the satellite to country B it
is
the operator from country B who pays).

However, there is another cost component for which there are no norms or
agreements: the cost of internet data packets at a set speed (expressed
in
kilobits, megabits or gigabits per second) -the so-called "internet
transport layer". In general, there is a "food chain", where the
strongest
unilaterally covers the weakest, and at the top of this chain are the US
telecommunications and internet backbone operators - including
ex-WorldCom,
now MCI, one of whose vice-presidents, Vinton Cerf, is ICANN's
president.

What justifies cost-sharing in the transport layer? The fact that any
connection to the internet is bilateral - whether sending or receiving
data
traffic. In a connection between countries, users from either country
can
use services in either of the two countries (presupposing democratic
regimes
on both sides).

At the end of October, Vint Cerf published an article in which he
acknowledged that the concept of internet governance makes sense, and
that
there is an extensive range of management and policy issues that go
beyond
ICANN's mandate, and that need to be taken into account by the WGIG. He
mentions some of these issues, but ignores the interconnection issue.

ISOC, closely connected to Vint Cerf and to the ICANN structure (from
which
it "earns" a basic source of income, management of the generic gTLD.org
domain), stated in an open letter of November 1, 2004 to Markus Kummer:

"We urge WGIG to avoid any plans to create new organisations to control
internet standards, to allocate domain names and IP addresses, set
prices
and policies for international internet connections, or to control what
type
of content and applications are delivered over the internet."

ISOC's message for the WGIG to ignore the interconnection issue, is
clear.

Vint Cerf continues to repeat the argument that "what is working does
not
need to be fixed", a metaphor to say that no-one from outside should
dare to
meddle in ICANN. The argument misses the mark - although some have the
vision that the WGIG should only concentrate on the ICANN x UN issue (an
argument supported by Mr. Utsumi) - the fact is that there are many
relevant
issues that are not being adequately covered (or are not within anyone's
portfolio) in ICANN's "wagon".

Repair of ICANN's "wagon" is not being proposed, but a more advanced and
far-reaching "means of transport" is being sought that will take into
account the set of governance themes placed on the discussion table, in
which ICANN's "wagon" will continue playing its part. But, this will
inevitably also require modifications to the "wagon".

It is fundamental that ISOC's main organisations, obviously as well as
ICANN
and related organisations, contribute effectively towards the careful
examination of governance issues, cooperating with the WGIG in a frank
and
open manner.


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