[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [governance] About the Internet governance caucus

[YJ Park]

"Adam Peake" <ajp at glocom.ac.jp>


> I made a very general statement in Plenary this morning saying that 
> the Internet governance caucus is open (open list, open archives, 
> open membership, open meetings.) We welcome all issues and have not, 
> to the best of my knowledge, ever refused to listen to any person's 
> opinion. We welcome contributions from anyone from civil society.


I propose this position be consulted within this Internet Governance

caucus and presented to an appropriate channel in the future.



This position was developed yesterday in case of intervention today 

and sent to CT group but today's interventions were limited on financial

mechanism.



Therefore, some parts of paragraph should be modified accordingly.



----------------------------------------------------------



Civil society presented at World Summit on Information Society 

welcomes strong support for civil society participation expressed by 

numerous governments' delegation yesterday. Civil society would like 

to contribute to Internet Governance debate as substantial stakeholders 

as it has been requested at the plenary.

 

Civil society at WSIS would like to echo interventions made by Brazil 

government, India government, China government, South Africa 

government in general and other governments who shared their supports 

for more internationalized, transparent, and democratic governance 

mechanism for Internet address management. However, we, civil society, 

are also concerned in new intergovernmental governance mechanism 

proposed by Brazil government. Such mechanism cannot recognize 

civil society as legitimate stakeholders as it has been promised through 

World Summit on Information Society since 2002.

 

Civil society here in Geneva would like to also re-address issues 

presented by some governments.   

 

Political decision of root-server zone file management of one 

government has caused unreliable situations in several countries 

that don't have diplomatic relations with the current oversight 

government. This situation still continues and it has prevented 

certain countries from developing its own IT infrastructure under 

their country code top level domain name. 



There are also island countries who don't have its own TLDs 

as of today due to lack of their knowledge on country code top 

level domains in early period of Internet as addressed by Samoa 

government. These issues should not be ignored and coordination 

mechanism between a global ccTLD coordination body and each 

country code top level domain name should be managed in a 

transparent, internationalized and democratic manner.

 

The current Internet address governance body, ICANN's 

decision making process has been dominated by some parts 

of the world and it failed to embrace voices from Asia, from 

Latin America and from Africa. There are currently around 

15 generic top level domain names and around 10 top level 

domain names have been controlled and managed by companies 

based in one country and the rest of them in Europe. Some of 

generic top level domain names like .edu, .mil, and .gov, have 

served only citizens of the one country and this expedites unfairness 

in Internet resource management. These resources should be 

globally shared and fairly used for everybody as it has been promoted. 

Internet for everybody not for citizens from a certain country.

 

ICANN also fails to recognize Internet users as substantial 

decision-makers even though ICANN committed itself to 

implementing individual users' participation in decision-making 

process. Currently ICANN still maintains At-Large structure and 

At-Large representatives in ICANN have been selected by insiders 

of ICANN circle through nominating committee process but this 

hand-pick system can not be recognized as a legitimate tool to 

facilitate individual users's participation in Internet Governance.


Submitted by co-founder of WSIS Internet Governance Caucus
YJ Park