FW: The European Commission Papers on ICANN
OPI Darlene A. Thompson CAP Administrator N-CAP/Department of Education P.O. Box 1000, Station 910 Iqaluit, NU X0A 0H0 Phone: (867) 975-5631 Fax: (867) 975-5610 dthompson@gov.nu.ca ________________________________________ From: governance@lists.cpsr.org [governance@lists.cpsr.org] on behalf of Milton L Mueller [mueller@syr.edu] Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 9:56 AM To: governance@lists.cpsr.org Subject: [governance] The European Commission Papers on ICANN The IGP blog is doing a series on the EC Papers on ICANN. Should be food for thought for people on this list advocating a stronger role for national governments in governing the Internet. Here are the first two: Payback time: The European Commission papers on ICANN http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/2/4891821.html The second EC ICANN Paper: How low can they go? http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/4/4893009.html ____________________________________________________________ You received this message as a subscriber on the list: governance@lists.cpsr.org To be removed from the list, visit: http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing For all other list information and functions, see: http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see: http://www.igcaucus.org/ Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
The second EC ICANN Paper: How low can they go? http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/4/4893009.html
Well, I have to say that Milt has once again extended his streak of being wrong about everything. There's no evidence of public benefit from new gTLDs, so at least they can try to minimize the harm. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Where is the public benefit in 1) restricting TLds to the current monopoly, in acquiescing to an ITU-style government takeover on behalf of big business? j On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 1:00 PM, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
The second EC ICANN Paper: How low can they go? http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/4/4893009.html
Well, I have to say that Milt has once again extended his streak of being wrong about everything. There's no evidence of public benefit from new gTLDs, so at least they can try to minimize the harm.
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
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-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
Where is the public benefit in 1) restricting TLds to the current monopoly, in acquiescing to an ITU-style government takeover on behalf of big business?
Nothing personal, but it's clear from the way you've phrased your question that there's nothing I could say that you would listen to, so I won't waste anyone's time. R's, John
I take it a large proportion of the multistakeholders, the gnso, and the ICANN board, 7 years of process etc, are all as wrong as Milton, are similarly not worth the time. I think it's telling in that interview I posted with Esther, when asked if she had contributed in any way to the discussions about new TLDs, she likewise had declined to bother. But to more pertinent questions, do you not agree that, as TLDs proliferate 1) while many will be unimportant, that some - like for instance .asia which allows trans-regional commercial identity - are going to significantly forward human progress, 2) that "protection racket" schemes will founder as the public becomes more sophisticated, major marks move to .brands, and the URS becomes a familiar process. 3) that the precise reason that the multistakeholder process was initiated in the first place was to avoid EC style shenanigans of the type Milton describes? j On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 6:28 PM, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
Where is the public benefit in 1) restricting TLds to the current monopoly,
in acquiescing to an ITU-style government takeover on behalf of big business?
Nothing personal, but it's clear from the way you've phrased your question that there's nothing I could say that you would listen to, so I won't waste anyone's time.
R's, John
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
I take it a large proportion of the multistakeholders, the gnso, and the ICANN board, 7 years of process etc, are all as wrong as Milton, are similarly not worth the time.
Yes, of course they are all wrong. As I've said before, ICANN is about as egregious an example of weak leadership and regulatory capture as can be imagined.
But to more pertinent questions, do you not agree that, as TLDs proliferate 1) while many will be unimportant, that some - like for instance .asia which allows trans-regional commercial identity - are going to significantly forward human progress, 2) that "protection racket" schemes will founder as the public becomes more sophisticated, major marks move to .brands, and the URS becomes a familiar process. 3) that the precise reason that the multistakeholder process was initiated in the first place was to avoid EC style shenanigans of the type Milton describes?
No, I do not agree with any of those. That was easy, wasn't it? R's, John
Hi folks. I respect the views of both John and Joly and am somewhat distressed to see them talking at each other rather than to each other. The more time I spend in ICANN At-Large, the more I believe it to be captured in the manner John describes. His cynicism is well-deserved. The pushback against public-interest concerns such as reduced gTLD fees in developing countries and reliable WHOIS date is, to say the least, astonishing. The vitriol launched against Knujon's research and the subsequent personal attacks against its principals have me absolutely convinced that the Bruens are onto something, and touching a very raw nerve. And the funding of registrar outreach events while starving of At-Large ones speaks for itself. ICANN's commitment its the vaunted multi-stakeholder model ebbs and flows depending on the politics of the moment. The fact that the ICANN Board has rejected or ignored every single initiative of At-Large (save for the Summit whose policy recommendations were themselves ALL rejected or ignored) belittles its claim to represent the broader community. Yes, we've been told, At-Large has made tremendous strides. We're respected. We elect someone directly to the Board. Bully for us. Yet the public interest routinely gets trashed in favour of the interests of the domain industry. (Something as seemingly no-brainer as eliminating domain tasting was needlessly drawn out.) And now the governments of the world have woken up to that fact -- thanks to grotesque arrogance of ICANN and its patrons in earlier policy stages -- such that the resulting (and legitimate) debate is whether the cure will be worse than the disease. ICANN has separate sets of openness rules for its contracted parties and everyone else, as At-Large has found when trying to send representatives to ICANN-organized "technical" meetings with registrars. Having said all that, I am still here, not yet having declared my efforts here a waste of time. But I've come close. I *like* to think that ICANN, seeing the oncoming threats from governments, will see "multi-stakeholder" as something else than the "50% domain industry, 50% everyone else" formula which describes the current GNSO. But if that happens it will be a massive change of momentum. Even though the GNSO just came through a major restructuring -- in which the domain industry had far too much influence -- I expect another one is in the cards if ICANN doesn't want its industry capture replaced by government capture. But I also see Joly's points. The namespace needs some new TLDs, if only to relieve (but not correct) a problem of ICANN's own making -- a wild west environment in which having as many names as possible out there is more important than only having names useful to those who are actually looking for or providing Internet content. A few new TLDs, properly marketed, may help remove perception of dot-com as the must-go-to place. It might, but it might just as easily not. And then there are the many communities who think they can duplicate the success of dot-cat. Most are in for a nasty surprise, but some will also survive and maybe even thrive. More depends on the dynamics of the communities themselves than whether the TLD was well-conceived. But some of the efforts are so bad they're unintentionally hilarious<http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=wkvqrzcab&v=001hS7OD_Ihnl...>, some are just merely bad, and some are just sad. Every time Tom Lowenhaupt comes on this list to talk up dot-nyc I practically want to cry for him; the more he promotes it, the less viable it seems to be. Still, I guess they have the right to try, but how much pain will the public go through dealing with both the flood and the subsequent contraction? I'm just glad I'm not one of the ones funding any of them, and I myself would fight strongly against using my municipal tax money for, say, dot-toronto. Yes, the process is massively tilted in favour of the domain industry, and the interest of Internet content suppliers and consumers is only indirectly (if ever) considered. The existing domain industry -- registry providers, consultants, registrars and speculators -- stands to make an awful lot of money from investors and communities, most of whom are going to endure a financial evisceration not seen since .... dot-travel. Having said that, while a few new gTLDs are needed we will get far more than we need -- to the disgust of information suppliers and consumers but the delight of the domain industry. John is right that the dam has burst, but Joly is also right that we still need to put up some levees. Personally, I am undecided whether governments could be a worse steward of the name system than the domain industry -- through its proxy, ICANN -- has been so far. One way or the other, the status quo will change. I can hope that the ICANN Board sees what's coming, but history has not offered much optimism. This board can't even manage its own staff. Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56 On 7 September 2011 13:31, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
I take it a large proportion of the multistakeholders, the gnso, and the ICANN board, 7 years of process etc, are all as wrong as Milton, are similarly not worth the time.
Yes, of course they are all wrong. As I've said before, ICANN is about as egregious an example of weak leadership and regulatory capture as can be imagined.
But to more pertinent questions, do you not agree that, as TLDs proliferate 1) while many will be unimportant, that some - like for instance .asia which allows trans-regional commercial identity - are going to significantly forward human progress, 2) that "protection racket" schemes will founder as the public becomes more sophisticated, major marks move to .brands, and the URS becomes a familiar process. 3) that the precise reason that the multistakeholder process was initiated in the first place was to avoid EC style shenanigans of the type Milton describes?
No, I do not agree with any of those. That was easy, wasn't it?
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I admit I am somewhat of an outsider and my opinions are subjective. But it seems to me that all the vocal opposition to new TLDs is coming from the 80s/90s Internet old guard. In contrast, at ISOC-NY we sponsor something called hackNY that brings in students from all over the country to work at startups over the summer, and mounts bi-annual hackathons. To these kids the Internet, particularly mobile, is their playground and they are straining at the leash to explore every quirk and facet they can discover. They look with enthusiasm at widened addressing possibilities. Admittedly it's all relatively confusing to the average Joe, but he has shown a remarkable aptitude for adopting useful, and ignoring other, aspects of Internet development. One thing that really impressed me at our recent INET was Vint Cerf's continued emphasis, and he should know better than anyone, that the Internet is a dynamically changing entity driven by its users. j -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
I admit I am somewhat of an outsider and my opinions are subjective. But it seems to me that all the vocal opposition to new TLDs is coming from the 80s/90s Internet old guard.
Some of it is from us geezers who've been around long enough to understand how utterly different ICANN's rhetoric is from its reality, but I don't think the EC or the IAB are the old guard. And in any event, perhaps one might take a hint from the observation that the longer people have been observing ICANN, the more cynical and hostile they become. Perhaps it's not solely because we're going senile. Look, I spent three years on the ALAC doing what the ALAC does and going to all the ICANN meetings. I initially asssumed that ICANN was run in a more or less straightforward way, but the more I saw, the less I liked it. Evan's note is spot on, the blather is all lovely, but as soon as you suggest something that might interfere even a little bit with the registrars or registries revenue stream, ICANN freaks out. If you compare the reality of every new TLD added since 2000 to the promises made, they are without exception total failures. If you dial back the expectations by about 98%, you could argue that .CAT and .COOP are somewhat successful, since they each serve s modest fraction of their quirky little communities, but the enormous cost of new TLDs in the future ensures that will never happen again. Why in the would (other than the usual Upton Sinclair reason) would anyone expect anything different in the future? Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
Hello John, On 08/09/2011 00:31, John R. Levine wrote :
Look, I spent three years on the ALAC doing what the ALAC does and going to all the ICANN meetings. I initially asssumed that ICANN was run in a more or less straightforward way, but the more I saw, the less I liked it. Evan's note is spot on, the blather is all lovely, but as soon as you suggest something that might interfere even a little bit with the registrars or registries revenue stream, ICANN freaks out.
I'm not going to contradict you on this John, you have made a very fair point. The question I therefore ask you and all of the cynics is, "how do we change that"? You'll notice the ALAC recently released a joint statement with the GAC. This opened the way to the ALAC joining forces with the GAC on issues it felt very strongly about - thus bringing sustained firepower into effect. Are there any other alliances or any other things that we can do, as the ALAC, or that RALOs can do in their part of the world, to strengthen the points of view of the Internet user the ICANN processes? I'm not blind & naive and I have studied ICANN's history extensively prior to accepting the post of Chair. I have learned as much as I can of the ALAC's history and understand how many old timers feel that "we" are short-changed. But this is today. I remain convinced that we have more resources than any other constituency in ICANN due to our extraordinary membership. We are the world. Kind regards, Olivier -- Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
The question I therefore ask you and all of the cynics is, "how do we change that"?
From within the ALAC? We can't. We have no influence other than at the margins.
You'll notice the ALAC recently released a joint statement with the GAC.
Yup, the GAC has actual influence. To the extent we can nudge them, that would be useful.
I remain convinced that we have more resources than any other constituency in ICANN due to our extraordinary membership. We are the world.
Not to be unduly crass, but we have no budget. In all the consituencies that matter, people get paid to lobby ICANN. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
On 8 September 2011 09:09, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
You'll notice the ALAC recently released a joint statement with the GAC.
Yup, the GAC has actual influence. To the extent we can nudge them, that would be useful.
There is a good mesh here. The GAC has a big stick but is slow to move and generally doesn't follow the daily ebb and flow. The ALAC (and At-Large) has a feather but is nimble and aware of the issues. The recent joint statement was about a very specific point -- reducing new TLD fees for in poorer countries. This point is being made emphatically and directly by the GAC and ALAC, and indirectly by the GNSO (which is one of the chartering bodies of the "JAS" working group studying the issue). I am told there is significant resistance at the Board level to this recommendation. If the Board rejects this, it will speak volumes to the world about the true value of the bottom up process.
I remain convinced that we have more resources than any other constituency in ICANN due to our extraordinary membership. We are the world.
Not to be unduly crass, but we have no budget. In all the consituencies that matter, people get paid to lobby ICANN.
True. Keeping the motivation of volunteers without financial incentive is probably At-Large's biggest challenge. And the money ICANN spends on At-Large is barely enough to keep the handful who get past that challenge to be sufficiently engaged (let alone draw others in). But I do agree with Olivier that what remains is indeed extraordinary, and has certainly given ICANN something that can well advance the end-user point of view. Whether ICANN recognizes that resource for more than promotional value is yet to be seen. The Board vote on the JAS issue will be very telling. And this time, governments are watching too. - Evan
One thing that really impressed me at our recent INET was Vint Cerf's continued emphasis, and he should know better than anyone, that the Internet is a dynamically changing entity driven by its users
Part of that dynamism is an evolving ability to work around obstacles. The Internet-using public has already found a way around domain names -- efficient search engines. It's no coincidence that the Chrome browser combines the search and URL areas into one. If you're looking for a specific website, chances are you'll more likely to find it -- rather than those of name speculators and typosquatters who have taken what-you-want.com <http://something.com> and similar names -- by doing a search on Google or Bing. The search engines will automatically find you, more often then not, what you really want. This increasing use of search engines is one more reason why the new gTLD boom is pointless. If you needed a domain name by now, chances are your first choice -- or maybe even your first 50 choices -- were taken. But you finally found something workable; your stationary and promotion uses it, and the public can find you using that and search engines. Will the new availability of "your-fourth-choice.newTLD" (the first three were already scooped up by squatters during the sunrise period) really make you want to uproot? Some will, most won't -- but they may still have to do it anyway as a defensive measure. - Evan
Personally, I am undecided whether governments could be a worse steward of the name system than the domain industry
That's because you're Canadian. Here in the U.S., we see that government is even more captured, more divided, and less responsive to the needs of the people it is designed to serve. Bret
participants (6)
-
Bret Fausett -
Evan Leibovitch -
John R. Levine -
Joly MacFie -
Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond -
Thompson, Darlene