[Infowarrior] - US government told to take its hands off internet

[Richard Forno]

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/15/ntia_inquiry_results/
US government told to take its hands off internet
By Kieren McCarthy
Published Saturday 15th July 2006 22:50 GMT

The United States government has been told to end its oversight role of the
internet during its own consultation exercise over the future of net
governance.

In a stark result, over 87 percent of those that commented on the US's
continued control of the internet's hierachy said that it was time for it to
transition toward a new, more international model. The company that the
consultation was designed to review - not-for-profit overseeing organisation
ICANN - fared little better, with nearly two-thirds of comments coming down
against it.

The results will be a wake-up call to the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) - the arm of the US government that
carried out the consultation prior to the ending of its contract with ICANN
on 30 September. The NTIA had quietly announced a notice of inquiry
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/frnotices/2006/NOI_DNS_Transition_0506.htm
) at the end of May in which it asked the public to respond to a number of
questions it had over the future of ICANN's role as technical overseeing
body for the internet.

In the end, the NTIA was swamped with emails and took a week after the
deadline had ended to post all the comments received. Just over half of the
632 comments finally received
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/dnstransition.html)
(discounting multiple emails) were not relevant to the inquiry itself, with
153 concerning themselves with the hot political issue of net neutrality in
the US at the moment, and a further 174 making broad and often unhelpful
comments along the lines of "keep the net free!" and "let the internet the
way it is".

However, of the remaining 305 comments, nearly two-thirds (197) explicitly
stated that the US government should review its own position as ultimate
head of the net (with a further nine saying so as a secondary point),
compared to 26 that supported its role (and four supporting it as a
secondary point). There were a variety of suggestions over how the USG could
transition its role to a new body but a broad consensus was reached that it
should not be a United Nations body but one outside of existing
organisations, capable of moving faster with greater flexibility.
Academia

Half of the comments critical of the USG repeated the same message as
devised by an organisation called the Internet Governance Project (IGP), run
by noted net academic Milton Mueller. The IGP had produced a simple
two-paragraph response to the inquiry which was then used by a large number
of people within the US and outside to make a single point.

It read: "The Internet's value is created by the participation and
cooperation of people all over the world. The Internet is global, not
national. Therefore no single Government should have a pre-eminent role in
Internet governance.

"As the US reviews its contract with ICANN, it should work cooperatively
with all stakeholders to complete the transition to a Domain Name System
independent of US governmental control."

Many of the comments went into great depth about the successes and failures
of ICANN as an organisation since its inception in 1998 and while the vast
majority accepted that the contract with ICANN will be renewed by the US
government, there were still strong words of criticism.

There was almost unanimous agreement that the area where ICANN had failed
most was in realising the "private, bottom-up coordination" aspect of its
role. The organisation remains too secretive and does not take into
sufficient account the views and wishes of everyday internet users and
companies, a very large number of comments pointed out.
Controversy

The most controversial issues were the proposed .xxx domain (which elicited
two comments solely about the saga) and the renewal of the dotcom contract.
Difficulties with the domain name system itself formed the lead point of
eight comments and a further four concentrated on the issue of Whois.

In total, forty-four comments were openly critical of ICANN, and a further
eight criticised the organisation as a secondary point in their comments. On
the other side, 24 comments supported ICANN, saying it had done a good job,
with a further six comments providing support as a secondary point.

There was however a broad consensus that ICANN should remain in its position
for the time being, and be held under the auspices of either the US
government or an international organisation until such a time as it had
solved its existing problems.

ICANN itself did not respond to the inquiry, having decided to run its own
parallel consultation, but there are clear signs that CEO Paul Twomey is
already aware of the feeling held against his organisation. Several new
members of staff have been recruited to improve ICANN's communication with
other stakeholders and encourage greater public participation.

It remains to be seen how the United States government will react to an
overwhelming call for its to end its role as head of the internet. It will
hold a public meeting in Washington on 26 July where the comments will be
discussed. ®

For a more detailed rundown of the comments go here
(http://kierenmccarthy.co.uk/2006/07/15/us-government-gets-a-net-kick-in-the
-teeth/).