ICANN-Created Panel Seen Influencing Web Governance Debate at 2014 Fora

The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)’s formation of a panel on the future of global Internet cooperation in mid-November came in the midst of an increasingly important debate over the future of multistakeholder Internet governance, said stakeholders in interviews last week. “The future of Internet freedom really is at a crossroads,” said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a member of the new panel. Although ICANN was a catalyst for the group’s formation, the group is independent of ICANN (CD Nov 19 p17).

The panel is forming at a “crucial time,” following a year’s worth of world events that have made Internet governance an increasingly potent topic of debate, said McDowell, who is on the panel as an individual rather than representing a particular entity. Estonian President Toomas Ilves is chairman and Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf is vice chairman. Other panel members include ICANN President Fadi Chehade, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Mohamed Nasser al Ghanim, director general of the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority. Al Ghanim was also chairman of the ITU-sponsored World Conference on International Telecommunications last December, where Internet governance was a major sticking point. The treaty conference adopted a revised version of the International Telecommunication Regulations that included controversial Internet governance-related language -- a major reason why the U.S. and 54 other nations chose not to sign the revised treaty (CD Dec 17 p1). Internet governance was also on the agenda at the ITU-backed World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum in May, and is set to be a major issue at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference Oct.20-Nov. 7, 2014, in Busan, South Korea.

Internet governance issues have also been a major factor in ICANN and Internet Governance Forum meetings throughout 2013, most recently at an ICANN conference last month in Buenos Aires. There was “anxiety” among stakeholders at the Buenos Aires meeting “about the definition of terms like “multi-stakeholder” or the “objective of ICANN’s role in the governance process,” said FairWinds Partners CEO Nao Matsukata. The ICANN community needs clarity on these issues before getting involved in the panel, he said. “When you set up a group as high profile as that, it’s very difficult” for the group “to back down,” he said. ICANN caused controversy prior to the Buenos Aires meeting with its endorsement of the Montevideo statement, which called for globalizing ICANN and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions following the disclosure of controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA programs have “certainly made matters a lot worse for proponents of Internet freedom, because the Chinas and Russias of the world are using this as an example of American government intervention into the Internet space -- and they'd like to counter that with more government intervention in the international context,” McDowell said. “You don’t resolve an issue regarding government intervention by having more government intervention. But this has complicated the picture dramatically for the United States and proponents of Internet freedom more generally.”

The NSA leaks “charged the environment and heated up the debate,” said Brian Cute, CEO of the Public Interest Registry, which the Internet Society tasked with overseeing the .org top-level domain. “In a charged environment, it’s important to take a couple steps back, take a deep breath and take a look at the fundamentals.” Multistakeholder governance of the domain name system “has worked,” he said. “When you look at the Snowden revelations and how it’s charged all of the stakeholders around those exploits of the Internet, it’s an important discussion to have. But” be careful to have such a discussion “with greater urgency” with “all stakeholders participating on an equal footing,” Cute said. There’s been pushback against the multistakeholder governance model, which came out of assumptions in the Internet’s early days that government could foster innovation and competition, but that the private sector could manage operating the Web, Cute said. “To the extent that any faction says the Internet’s not working and that governments should have more say -- suggesting a model where we don’t have an equal footing of stakeholders -- then we're losing that and risking the health of the Internet at large."

Work on the new Web governance panel’s formation predated the Montevideo statement, said international policy lawyer David Gross of Wiley Rein, a former top State Department telecom official under President George W. Bush. The group is “clearly designed to play a role about many international events over past year in which Internet governance issues have once again come to the forefront,” including the outcome of WCIT and the UN’s ongoing 10-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society, he said. “There are many things that are going on that affect these issues and it’s pretty clear that one of the things this group will be able to contribute to is the Brazil conference."

The panel, set to hold its first meeting Dec. 12-13 in London, is supposed to issue a high-level report by early spring that will recommend “principles for global Internet cooperation, proposed frameworks for such cooperation and a roadmap for future Internet governance,” an ICANN spokesman said. McDowell said he doesn’t know what direction the panel will take, but he hopes it will recommend steps that provide for “enhancement and improvement of the multistakeholder model rather than migrating towards the multilateral model.” To defend the multistakeholder model, the panel “must show flawless execution on a limited agenda of technical issues, like managing the DNS,” said NetChoice CEO Steve DelBianco. “But it’s going to be hard for a new strategy panel of high-profile outside experts to keep their recommendations within ICANN’s limited scope. And the predictable ’scope creep’ could become ICANN’s undoing.”

The panel’s recommendations “should carry some weight to those policymakers in a variety of countries who are looking to make valuable decisions on the future,” said DelBianco. The report will go public in the leadup to a planned April Internet governance summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil. McDowell said the “timing could not be better” for the report to influence discussions at both the Brazil summit and the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference. The Brazil summit, being hosted by Brazil’s government, will discuss that nation’s suggestions for upgrading Internet security. Brazil co-sponsored controversial Internet governance language that failed to pass at the WTPF, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been highly critical of the NSA surveillance programs. The report will likely be used by participants at the Brazil summit, though it’s unclear how it would be used or the extent to which it will influence the debate, Gross said.

The new panel’s recommendations will certainly influence both the Brazil summit and the ITU Plenipotentiary, Cute said. Internet governance is influenced by the entire Internet ecosystem, not just deliberations at ICANN and the ITU, he said. “We really are operating in an ecosystem where a lot of actors are focused on the same issues,” Cute said. “Any discussion -- out of ICANN, out of the ITU, out of the Internet Governance Forum -- can inform how this mode evolves.” Look at “it from that perspective -- the broader ecosystem, recognizing that all players are very focused on this issue,” he said. “While that can present some risk to the open Internet model, it’s also an opportunity to bring players together on an equal footing in multistakeholder settings and ensure that the discussions that come out of one forum are founded on that basis.”