It is going to be a particularly crazy year in terms of Internet policy and governance, maybe even more than so than 2005, when the World Summit on the Information Society happened.

NPR used the launch of the new gTLD program last week to cover the other big issue – actual governance of the Internet. The slow build up of pressure to again try to bring the Internet under United Nations control is going to let out another big blast of steam this December in Dubai at the WCIT meeting when governments – and only governments – try to rewrite the ITU’s International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) to incorporate the Internet. It will be a big fight and I’ll be heading over there to shine as big a spotlight on the weird world of inter-governmental politics as possible.

Anyway, I was interviewed as was Super Rod of ICANN and David Gross – who was the US’ main man in charge during the WSIS negotiations. You can read the piece online, but it was designed for radio, so listening is much better in this case.

Download MP3 of NPR piece on Net governance

It’s a good piece considering the complexity of the subject and the length of time available.

Which reminds me – I *really* need to write a couple of pieces about what is going on with WCIT. It’s vital that something akin to the outcry over SOPA – albeit much more diplomatic – is generated to try to protect the Internet as it exists today, and keep it out of the hands of government representatives who view lack of control as something inherently dangerous.

Quick update: Ha! I see that the bad journalist posing as an academic, Milton Mueller, has taken huge exception to the fact it wasn’t him interviewed for the NPR piece and has written a rambling, bitter post about it. Internet governance is a very silly little world sometimes.

I wrote an extensive review of the dot-jobs saga earlier this week on .Nxt called: The case study that could kill ICANN.

This afternoon, I saw the Stephane van Gelder had referenced it in a blog post: What ICANN is doing wrong.

I wrote a lengthy response to Stephane’s post, but for some reason it repeatedly could not get past his anti-spam mechanisms. Having spent a little bit of time writing a response, I figured I would post it here instead. It’s below:

————

I think you’re being a little unfair to me. It is relatively easy to follow the article, even though the process itself was a little convoluted.

But anyway, this is the real problem: a very large number of people now know exactly what has happened and how bad it is. But what will happen? How will anyone be held to account? Will anyone even admit publicly that this is an example of poor governance?

Even if you were to raise it as GNSO Chair at the next ICANN meeting, you would likely be shouted down or told it is not in the GNSO’s remit, or be put under enormous peer pressure to keep it out of the public sphere. You’d probably be offered a private briefing. Anything to prevent the taboo being broken.

The best anyone can expect is that some Board members will dig into the issue.

And in response they will be told by the staff that some of the criticisms are valid, but they are old news and have already been dealt with. We have already moved on.

Then they’ll be told that there are inaccuracies in the article (but won’t go into too much detail over what they are because they’ll be very minor). And let’s not forget this was written by Kieren McCarthy [insert some slur].

Some weak reason will be given for the delays and the redactions and there will be a promise to do a review, or point to an ongoing review, or some kind of related delay tactic.

And then it will be pointed out that this is really a minor issue and ICANN is dealing with so much at the moment that some things are bound to slip through the cracks…

If a Board member continues to push, they will find themselves under pressure by other Board members: why are you pushing this so hard? Their motives will be impugned and they will find themselves given the cold shoulder by staff. They will find themselves being briefed against on the Board and in the community (and there are a few Board members that can testify to this).

Basically, everything will be thrown at the issue in order to avoid hard questions being asked, and real explanations being extracted.

Once it has then become far too big an issue, the Board members will get their secret apologies and promises to improve and be made to feel as if they have done their job.

But at that stage, they certainly won’t want to embarrass the staff or ICANN: that would only aid the organization’s enemies, and it would only encourage people to do-down the organization. So no one will say anything publicly.

And then you’ll find that absolutely nothing changes.

And when no one follows up on the lack of change (because it was never written down or made public), the impact will be to reinforce the reality that there is no actual accountability.

Now, the staff are not *bad people* – I worked there for years and have a lot of respect for them and the job they do: they work hard, deal with a lot of stress in a complex situation and they keep a smiling public face despite it all.

However, over time the wrong culture has developed and it is *that* which is demonstrated time and again in this dot-jobs issue. When you add up all the small, wrong decisions being made for the wrong (self-serving) reasons, you are left with a pretty poorly functioning organization.

This is why the calls for improved transparency and accountability continue to cry out, again and again, year after year. You can’t *make* ICANN do anything. And those that have been there the longest know that.

So they continue to do what they think is best, and they develop a raft of defense mechanisms for when people tell them they have got it wrong.

Until ICANN is forced to admit it is wrong on occasion. Until someone is publicly disgraced to set as an example for what is not acceptable. And until ICANN recognizes that the longer it keeps screw-ups ‘in the family’, the more this damaging culture will be reinforced, nothing will change.

That change can only come with a new CEO. And whoever takes over in July will have to constantly focus on the culture issue if they are to impact it because it is so entrenched in key people. Will they have the time and energy to fight that battle when there is so much else going on? Probably not.

So how do you fix an institutional problem? It’s not that hard in reality.

First, you stop making excuses and acknowledge that there is a problem.

And then you hold a proper public review of yourself where the truth, warts an’ all, is allowed to come out.

That is what happens in properly functioning democracies – the unpleasant truths are pulled out in public. And things are always better off as a result.

I’m not holding my breath though.

One of the more bizarre situations I have found myself in while covering domain name system overseer ICANN, both outside and inside the organization, was at the Vancouver meeting in December 2005.

It was a particularly difficult meeting. For one, ICANN was under intense scrutiny because it was about to sign an extension to the dot-com contract and literally no one outside Verisign and the ICANN Board liked it. But secondly, it had come to light that the US government, under pressure from right-wing Christian groups, had pushed the Board very hard to *not* approve the dot-xxx contract.

The Board was planning to approve dot-xxx on the last day of the meeting, but had a sudden change of mind and put it off until the next Board meeting. There was all manner of behind-the-scenes shenanigans as the very worst of ICANN came out and it made important decisions in secret, and then spent huge amounts of time and effort trying to make it look like it hadn’t. No one bought it and there was a lot of anger.

Rumours

In the middle of all this, I heard a rumour that the ICANN Board had been receiving threatening emails and faxes over dot-xxx, so I started digging into it. Whereupon I discovered that someone had been faxing the venue hotel with threats. And soon after managed to get hold of a copy of a fax sent from one Grahame Darcy in Florida which specifically focussed on Board member Mike Palage (who, for some reason Mr Darcy thought was called Michael Palach).

Mike Palage had been a consultant for the dot-xxx application in the first round of gTLD expansion, when it failed. He had also been instrumental in bringing on board Stuart Lawley who then carried over the dot-xxx application to the second round and who, incredibly, finally managed to get it approved five years later in March 2011.

Stuart Lawley was there in Vancouver and just to add to whole thing, had just received a large pile of FOIA requests from the US government over the dot-xxx application and was sifting through them.

Among the most damaging revelations were emails that showed: ICANN CEO Paul Twomey colluding with GAC chair Sharil Tarmizi to encourage the GAC to say ‘No’ to dot-xxx; meetings at the White House between right-wing Christian groups and member of the Bush Administration over dot-xxx; pressure from the White House to the Department of Commerce; pressure from the Department of Commerce to the ICANN Board; and what appeared to be members of the Bush Administration providing personal contact details to the Christian groups of the ICANN Board members.

I wrote up most of a story outlining how the ICANN Board was not only under pressure from the US government but was also received threats from US Christian nuts, and how those nuts may have been given their contact details by Bush Administration officials. And then I asked ICANN for comment before I published.

Odd meeting

Whereupon, shortly after in the press room at the Westin in Vancouver, I was confronted by ICANN chairman Vint Cerf, General Counsel John Jeffrey and Board member Mike Palage who sat down and started trying to pressure me not to publish the story.

In fact, for reasons I never fully understood, Mike gave me what were, frankly, juicy details that would bring the story to life. He told me that not only had he and the others received the fax that I had but that a man had hand-delivered a copy of it to his wife and child at his home address in Florida and, to be honest, he was a bit freaked out by it.

I wished I had recorded the meeting because my recollection of it is faded and I have no doubt the others would remember it differently. But here is what I remember:

I basically outlined the story I had half-written, whereupon Cerf’s and Jeffrey’s faces grew darker and darker. I then asked if they had any comment or if there was any element of it that they felt wasn’t true.

I got a pretty angry response questioning my motives and my professionalism and was told it wasn’t a story. Whereupon, I said whether it was a story or not was pretty much up to me, and if it wasn’t a story how come they were all in the room? Vint calmed down and then asked me to consider whether publishing the story would only give publicity to people who were making threats.

I recall I said I would consider it, at which point he turned to John Jeffrey and said angrily: “I told you it would be a waste of time talking to him.” I decided, perhaps unwisely, that this was the best time to ask if he was aware that the Bush Administration officials had been providing his contact details to right-wing Christian groups. Vint reacted by flicking his Google card at me across the table and exclaiming that his contact details were all over the Internet.

And with that I said I would consider their plea not to publish the story, and they walked out in a grumpy mood.

Decision and message

So my final decision was not to publish the story. And I had a look for it this morning to see if it had survived the three laptops since then – it hadn’t. What I do have though is the original fax sent to the Westin from Grahame Darcy, so I’ve transcribed it and posted it below.

Why didn’t I run with the story?

Because, frankly, I *didn’t* want to give the people who were sending threatening emails and faxes any publicity. Especially when they were turning up at people’s homes and intimidating someone’s wife and child.

Was the story in the public interest? Not really. And this wasn’t a really big story. ICANN is, and remains, a little niche world and I was used to dealing with topics that had far wider and more important impact on the world.

The atmosphere was also so oppressive already that I thought it would only serve to make it unbearable – and all for the sake of a story. And of course the truth was that I had a rack of about another five stories ready to go, all of which would cause me far less hassle, take less time and so earn me more money (I had flown from the UK and had a hefty pile of expenses I needed to cover before I even made a profit).

What is interesting on re-reading the fax five years later is that it doesn’t seem that threatening. It is clearly a bit mental, but could easily be from one of the many, shall we say ‘passionate’ members of the Internet community. In the atmosphere at the time though, combined with the fact that I had found out that Grahame Darcy was one of the right-wing Christians that was hounding ICANN, rather than just an over zealous member of the community, I decided against it.

I’m still in two minds as to whether it was the right decision.

Anyway, now that dot-xxx actually exists in the root I figured it was a good time to put this little piece of history out there. Below is the fax. It was sent from a Kinko’s in Florida. I did track down the exact address but I don’t recall it now.

To: Michael Palach

Cc: Vint Cerf, Paul Twomey, Suzan Crawford, Mouhamet Diop, Hualin Qian, Thomas Niles, John Jeffrey, Diane Shrouder

Subject: Michael Palach, taking his baggage to Vancouver

I have become increasingly aware of a growing concern in the community regarding your alleged involvement with .XXX. I believe there have been questions in the past about your on-going relationship with AFlLIAS but your alleged jnvolvement with .XXX brings your credibility into the permanent spotlight this time.

As a Board member of ICANN do you think the “Consulting” to .XXX and its associated companies or even advising its directors and major stake holders is appropriate behavior for an ICANN Board member?

Could it be that these associations could bring the Board into disrepute?

You appear to come across as a family man with strong family values, so why the association with the .XXX movement?

By appearing to have a foot in both camps, your motivations are questionable.
Part of ICANN’s charter is to promote fairness and transparency; this does not appear to be your mantra.

Now you have left the warmth of Florida and traveled to your winter meeting in Vancouver I suggest you ponder these questions and respond. The community eagerly awaits a full explanation.

Could I be forgiven for assuming that you’re traveling on an .XXX ticket to Vancouver and not that of ICANN?

Regards

Grahame Darcy

Credit where credit’s due, the disclosure of Board materials of the organisation that oversees the domain name system, ICANN, has greatly improved since its first and woeful effort.

The materials for a special Board meeting held in September over the “new gTLD” process are clear, organised and understandable. They also help to publicly demonstrate the large amount of professional work that goes on at ICANN. The issues in front of ICANN are clearly and concisely laid out, complete with arguments and recommendations with rationale. ICANN should be rightly proud of this sort of work.

The September materials also show clear improvement over those for the previous meeting in August – which are not as well structured and suffer from many of the same fault as previous months. That said, and despite a clear improvement for September, several significant procedural problems remain with the publication of Board materials, namely:

1. There is no notice that the materials have been published. This is important and very easily rectified
2. There is no explanation or apparent timeline for publishing the materials. This is unprofessional
3. Entire sections – including their titles – continue to be redacted. There is no explanation for this redaction, and no mechanism for querying the redaction. So long as this unaccountable process is allowed to continue, there can never be full confidence in the publishing process as at any time, staff are in a position to redact whatever material they wish with no requirement to justify that redaction. The Board should be in charge of the redaction process – and they should be in a position to justify any redaction publicly. There should also be a process for publishing redacted material after a certain period of time.
4. The materials are published in a very unhelpful format: long PDFs on a page four pages deep on the ICANN website. This hugely limits the ability to find and digest the information. If ICANN were to spend a little more time making its most important documents available as text on webpages, it would benefit significantly from all the tools that exist on the Internet. As a result, its work would find a far greater audience.
5. There are some errors in the work product. If ICANN were to learn to relax its control mechanisms, it may find that the broader community is in a position to *improve* the Board materials, and so improve decisions made by the Board
6. There materials continue to demonstrate a very insular approach to information provision – everything given to the Board comes through a staff filter. What is lost is a broader context. There is plenty of high-quality commentary and analysis on issues before the ICANN Board; the Board should be in a position to see this. If the staff work product is sufficiently high, it will stand on its own. Without a mechanism for external material, Board members will continue to be lobbied on a personal basis, encouraging the insider culture that remains entrenched within ICANN and continues to damage its reputation on the broader stage.

But back to the positives.

The materials for the new gTLD special meeting are a very useful summary of where we are up to with the process for new Internet extensions. It is encouraging to read the materials and overall they give a much greater sense of confidence in the staff, Board and overall organisation.

It is inevitable that there will be complaints from those who did not get their way – in this case the the Registry Constituency made several requests that the staff makes clear it does not accept. But by publishing the documents, everyone can follow the rationale of staff and – if the Board meeting minutes are improved – see the Board’s thinking as well.

This process – the open, transparent approach that ICANN is supposed to be ideologically wedded to – is what allows ICANN to make difficult decisions. By being open, decisions can become easier, not harder.

Here’s hoping that this improvement in Board materials will continue, tackling some of the remaining issues outlined above, and with luck it is possible that ICANN will start to rediscover its original philosophy and wisdom in being open after many years in the darkness.

Board materials:
September: Part One | Two | Three | Four | Five
August: Part One | Two

In the 1990s, on Channel 4 in the UK, the Pakistani team game Kabbadi was shown Sunday mornings for several hours. The only explanation can be that the broadcasting rights were cheap.

Kabbadi is a silly but oddly fascinating game. A bunch of middle-aged, overweight men stand at opposite ends of what looks like a small beach-volleyball court (without the net). One man steps forward from one team (the attacker); one man from the other team meets him. The first man has to get past the second to the other end of the court; if he does, he gets a point. If he fails; the teams switch, defense to attack and vice-versa.

The twist is that the attacking man has to constantly mutter the word “kabbadi”. The usefulness of this is that it naturally limits the time the attacker can spend trying to find his way past his opponent – because he runs out of breath.

At the ITU Plenipot, they have their own version of Kabbadi called “Chairman”. So long as government delegates say the word “Chairman” or “Mr Chairman” every ten seconds they can keep talking, and talking and talking.

The game is played by the same middle-aged, over-weight men, although they are dressed in suits rather than stripped to the waist. There are always two sides (although the team members vary). And they take it in turns to square up to one another and find a way to sneak past them. Just like Kabbadi it is very silly but oddly fascinating.

A tag cloud made from the Plenary transcript on Tuesday

What the fax?

So if you ever had any doubt that there are some entrenched and appallingly out-of-date government representatives in the ITU, it was wiped out during a discussion on budgeting restrictions.

Several large countries have reduced their contributions to the ITU. Both France and Germany went from paying the maximum 30 units to 25 units, leaving just the United States and Japan as the “Big Boys” paying full whack.

With each unit worth 318,000 Swiss Francs ($330,000), that means a reduction of $3.3million. Some of this was balanced with increases from others – Saudi Arabia and China for example – but the ITU is still down around $1.5million. And so it outlined different ways in which costs can be cut back, including cutting staff.

Incredibly it was the very last cost-cutting measure that was the focus of debate. Measure number 20 suggested that it would be a good idea to: “Move, to the extent practicable, from present communications by fax between the Union and Member States to modern electronic communication methods.”

Currently communication between the ITU and its 196 192 members states is done both by fax and by email. Most of the governments find the piles of fax material an unnecessary hindrance.

However, a number of countries were appalled by the idea of moving away from fax machines. Almost as if it has been scripted, it was the same countries that have been holding up Internet discussions all week that spoke out against a move to email: Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

Senegal argued that the fax was “more reliable” than “modern communication methods”. Iran and Syria simply stated they were against it. Lebanon said that the big advantage of fax was that a fax can have a signature “and you are not able to do that with modern communication methods”. Which is probably news to the multi-billion-dollar digital certificate market.

It is worth noting that these same delegates are the only ones in the room that do not have laptops. And it may also be worth noting that Syria had earlier insisted that the use of telex be included in one of the documents talking about IP networks.

Quick! A message from the ITU is coming through

Now, you can argue back and forth about the state of networks in the Middle East and Africa, but the stark reality is that there are permanent representatives to the ITU – the body that decides cutting-edge technology standards – that are ten years out of date.

We all have a relative who won’t replace their ancient mobile phone or who can’t find the bookmarks in their Web browser, but usually they spend their time watching TV or pottering about in the garden. Very few of them are dictating global telecommunication policy at the United Nations.

You can almost taste the frustration at the ITU as they wait for these old men to retire so they can get on with bringing the organisation in line with the modern world. It will happen in the next few years, and then you can expect to see a huge raft of structural changes. Hopefully one of them will be a term limit on representatives and a removal of the position of “permanent representative”.

Divine intervention

There are light moments in the day-long slog at the Plenipotentiary. We were treated to one yesterday when a representative from no less than the Vatican made an intervention in the middle of some contentious discussions about the Internet.

We were just about to embark on a ludicrous discussion about whether to include a footnote to a document that named several Internet organisations, including ICANN, RIRs, IETF, ISOC and W3C.

For reasons that are as petty as they sound, the Old Men do not want to recognise the existence of ICANN – with whom the ITU has had a long but increasingly pointless rivalry.

Although they will occasionally bark out furious declarations. “Do not surrender to the ICANN!” yelled Syrian representative Nabil Kisrawi at one session, leading to bemused looks from the rest of the room. Later on, he exclaimed “there is even a representative of the ICANN in this room!” as if it was the greatest provocation known to man. Sadly he was wrong, there wasn’t.

So it was with calculated bonhomie that the representative from the Vatican asked for the floor and proceeded to congratulate Iran for the recent approval of the country’s top-level domain “.iran” in Persian.

The new, multilingual domain was a great example of the successful relationship that the Iranian government, among other governments, had forged with ICANN, the Vatican continued, and a demonstration of the best way forward, with different organisations working together in the benefit of all.

The intervention may have come from one of god’s representatives rather than the Big Man himself, but it was nevertheless divine.

Open or closed?

The most frequent and significant criticism of the ITU is that it is a closed shop. Only governments can get in. Others get limited access but only for a big fee. You can’t even read its documents. A shadowy organisation that thinks it should run the world while making deals in smoke-filled rooms.

The reality is quite different. Parts of the ITU are indeed closed. I registered for the conference as a member of the press and entry was free. But, crucially, that did not give me access to the conference documents.

Everything at the Plenipot revolves around the documents. Without them, you have no idea what anyone is talking about. Even with them, it is a struggle. There are at least five different categories of documents, all numbered but with different prefixes: C, DL, TD (also DT), INF, ADM. Some documents are simply lists of other documents in an effort to keep people following events.

The documents sometimes contained a resolution; sometimes several resolutions; sometimes a new resolution, sometimes a revised resolution. Sometimes there can be a 45-minute discussion of several documents, ending with a resolution passed, and not a single mention of what we are actually talking about.

Without the documents, you might as well as be sitting at the back of a bingo hall. Without a card.

It is also the case that unless you are an official government representative or a representative of a “sector member” – which costs anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 – you cannot get into the conference centre. So, yes, this is a closed meeting.

Culture club

But much more importantly, the *culture* of the ITU is surprisingly open. Once you are in the door, the atmosphere is very relaxed, even collegial. The elected officials are happy to talk to you, friendly and open. Their interactions with the room are honest to a degree I have rarely seen in either the public or private sector.

The official rules are such that many of the meetings could be closed to me – and to sector members – but these rules are ignored. The only security is at the main entrance; from there you can wander about as you wish.

What is even more stark is that as you walk in, all the staff’s offices are lined up on the right-hand side, opposite the main hall, with name plaques above the door. The doors are always open as a default. I have stuck my head in one or two and each time have been greeted with a helpful query as to how they can help me.

I promised myself I would keep comparisons between the ITU and ICANN to a minimum, but in this case, you can’t help but be struck by the disparity. At ICANN meetings, the staff is purposefully hidden away in a corner of the venue, all in one room. You are not allowed near the room and if you put your head in – even as an ex-staffer – you are met with a challenge to explain yourself. Open and engaging it is not.

But what you can’t do here – and what the ITU really needs to look at – is provide input to a meeting, even in the smaller discussion groups.

It is peculiar that sector members – signed up, paid up and a part of the organisation – are not allowed to talk. Even when the subject is their specialist area. Only member states can interject. This is stupid and everyone knows it. In fact, the restriction is widely skirted by governments who just name non-government employees as delegates so they can speak, but this is a fudge that can only ever be temporary.

If the ITU is serious about opening up to more sector members i.e. non governments, it has to allow them speaking rights. It already does that in its other meetings; the Plenipotentiary needs to lose its special status if the ITU’s promises to open up are to be taken seriously.

Coo-coo

Did I mention that there are banks of several thousand pigeonholes – one for every delegate – along the side of the main room. I have box 1324.

I wandered around and located my box, hoping to find reams of faxed documents. With some disappointment I found it was empty. The Iranians must have got there first.

Nothing like cutting-edge technology

A set of three documents filed in California Bankruptcy Court earlier this week reveal that the world’s most valuable domain name – Sex.com – has been sold for $13m, just one million dollars more than it was sold for back in January 2006.

The tale of Sex.com is a fascinating and complex one (I wrote a book about it), and never short of twists and turns. The most recent twist came earlier this year when the company that bought Sex.com from Gary Kremen in 2006 (for $12m plus $2m in stock and other options), Escom LLC, declared bankruptcy. Escom has been unable to make Sex.com sufficiently profitable and was overdue on interest and debt repayments.

This announcement was quickly followed by the news that Sex.com would be put up for public auction – the time, date and location and the need to be holding a cheque for $1 million to even be allowed in the room, were published. But then, one of the owners of Escom, Michael Mann, broke cover (Escom has always been purposefully cloaked in corporate law cloth) in order to prevent the auction going ahead.

After some more fighting, it was agreed in July that the Sex.com would be sold in a closed auction run by domain brokers Sedo.

That auction ended at the end of September but no news emerged, although Sedo did tell me that something had been agreed but they weren’t in a position to discuss it. Finally, a set of three documents provided to the Central District Court of California on Monday, put into the record on Tuesday and first noticed by Kevin Murphy/DomainIncite today outlined the sale of Sex.com by Escom to another strange corporation, Clover Holdings Ltd, based in Caribbean offshore tax haven St Vincent and Grenadines.

You can view all three documents here: 115 (details of the sale); 116 (legal request to speed up sale); and 117 (setting the date for a hearing on 27 October). I think I’ll attend the hearing.

Anyway, possibly the most interesting thing, apart from the peculiar behaviour of all parties yet again, is that the domain has gone up in price by only $1m in nearly five years.

• Does this mean that Gary Kremen got a great price back in 2006?
• Does it mean that the value of dot-coms, even Sex.com, is stabilising?
• Or does it mean that the buyers kept Escom down to the original price because they knew Escom had no real choice?

I’m not sure. I’ll give it some thought. My feeling is a bit of all of them, but mainly the last one.

The International Telecommunication Union is a walking contradiction.

There are many things wrong with the organisation: its closed nature; its budgeting; its out-of-date and out-of-control procedures – and yet not only is the ITU aware of this, but there are formal proposals here in Guadalajara to make changes to fix many of them.

The ITU is stuck in the past, but at the same time its staff and many of its members are living in the immediate present, sitting at the cutting-edge of technology. So why is there such a huge cultural disparity?

An answer of sorts comes in the form of Syria’s permanent representative to the ITU, Nabil Kisrawi. Mr Kisrawi used to work for the ITU – between 1979 and 1992. Since then – nearly 20 years – he has been a constant feature of the ITU.

Mr Kisrawi has an encyclopedic knowledge of the organisation and its procedures. Younger delegates speak admiringly about how he helped them understand the complexities of the ITU when they joined. He is also admired for his ability to follow events in multiple rooms and turn up at the right moment to speak to the room – which he does with no more than a notepad and a bundle of the latest papers. And he is, I am told, a pleasant and friendly person to converse with.

Unfortunately, on the basis of every intervention I have seen Mr Kisrawi make in the past week – and there have been hundreds of them – he is also the most obstructive, unhelpful, out-of-touch and stubborn government representative I have ever come across. And that is some achievement.

For literally days, Kisrawi has been blocking efforts by dozens of other governments to put forward resolutions that will help bring the ITU in line with current Internet realities. And in its place he has proposed – and constantly defended – a series of alternative proposals, put forward by himself, that bear no relation to reality.

Go-go dancer

On one level it is extremely funny. When the clear conclusion of a study group on IP addressing (that the system works well) was raised, Mr Kisrawi complained that the group had failed in its objective – to find problems with the system – and asked for a new study group.

He equates IP addresses with spam – which is sort of like blaming the sea for rain; has been insisting on receiving data that cannot exist; and he is furious about the fact that IDNs do not exist when, well, they do. It has got so ludicrous that if he announced he was a go-go-dancer from Brazil, no one would bat an eyelid.

But at the same time, it is precisely this extreme stubbornness – where anything at all will be said in order to prevent others from moving forward – that is at the heart of the ITU’s inability to modernise itself.

It only takes one or two individuals to dig their heels and no one can move forward. And the rules that allow this self-defeating process to continue cannot be changed unless everyone agrees. It is the reason why the meeting goes on for three weeks; it is also the reason why the ITU has a seemingly endless number of procedures that aren’t needed and makes everything go pointlessly slow.

I explained yesterday how it takes three days for 200 people to vote on five positions. Today I found out why it takes two days for the meeting to simply approve what it has spent two weeks agreeing to: because every resolution goes through a three-stage process, each stage given a different colour (I forget the actual colours). Apparently it is very bad form to ask for anything but cosmetic changes as the traffic lights change, but nevertheless through the system it goes – every resolution.

On the plus side

Of course the worst situations are also the most visible. So it’s only fair to highlight areas where the ITU works, and works well.

For one, the organisation has moved quite successfully to an electronic document model – far more successfully than other organisations of the same size. Sure there are still plenty of physical documents on the tables in the main room, but the process by which the enormous number of documents produced, including new documents every day and revisions of existing documents, are relayed, linked to, and made accessible through the ITU’s website, is nothing short of extraordinary.

Well, unless you don’t have a login for the website, of course, in which case you are wasting your time.

Also, it is only fair to point out that the Plenipotentiary is the big, arcane monster of the ITU. The organisation runs many other global meetings on many different aspects of its work. They can be a little stuffy but they are professionally run and then bring together a lot of people with a focus.

On other aspects at this meeting, the ITU has also managed to tackle difficult subjects and come up with solutions. There was agreement today to open up the organisation to academia – and a far lower price than normal: $4,000. There was also agreement to charge for access to documents on a cost-recovery basis for members and open up documents to non-members at market price – a crucial development and one that should help the organisation appear more relevant.

When it comes to finances, the meeting agreed a raft of 20 very sensible measures to cut costs. And it has also passed gender equality and disability measures, opening the 19th century shutters and letting the light in.

But even so, two worlds are currently co-existing here: the old men, rooted in the old ways, sitting at the top and doing what they can to maintain the status quo; and the new world, demonstrated by the surprisingly large number of young women at the conference, but almost all of them sat behind the top table.

It’s a generational shift sitting in the same room. And you get the feeling that the old guard are clinging to symbols – the arcane procedures, the late-night meetings, the stubborn formality – while their world is gradually eroded by the determined efforts of others.

In that context, Kisrawi and others like him, are determinedly demonstrating they still retain power with their use of interventions, and square brackets, and marathon stalling sessions. Unfortunately they are sadly unaware that the result of this effort to display virility is a frankly embarrassing public spectacle.

Steak is for real men!

Talking of young women. Two days ago, sick of the roast beef paninis, buffet splodges, and the 101 different ways that Mexican can serve you beans and bread, I decided to head to the steakhouse – called a Butcher’s House for some weird reason – at the Hilton opposite the venue.

It’s a bit of a strange layout – more jazz club than restaurant – and the lighting is so low that you have trouble figuring out exactly what it is you are putting in your mouth. But I ordered a beer from the waiter and then started going through emails on my phone, as you do.

I was somewhat surprised to find a few minutes later a half-naked woman wearing what can only be described as a leather fantasy outfit standing next to me opening my beer. Now, I’ll be honest, this isn’t the first time a half-naked woman has poured me a beer in a dark room in Mexico – but never the Hilton!

It was also lunchtime. Which, frankly, is a little disconcerting.

It seems that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Hilton in Guadalajara is renowned for this unusual kind of waitressing. And if leather isn’t your thing, there’s another waitress dressing in a red two-piece fluffy cowgirl outfit serving fajitas.

I would love to say the food was good, but as with everywhere else in this world, the quality of food is closely linked to the amount of flesh on display. Nevertheless you can’t help but wonder that if you took all the old men in the negotiating room out for dinner at the Hilton and left their female second-in-commands behind, we would all be heading home tomorrow morning with a full set of resolutions.

[Quick note: I've been told that people have understood the last sentence to mean that decisions would be made *by the men* if they were taken out of the room and to the salubrious steakhouse. In fact, I meant the opposite: that if you took the old men out the room and left the decision-making to the female second-in-commands, then *they* would make the decisions much faster.]

The International Telecommunication Union is a walking contradiction.

I’m here in Guadalajara, Mexico at the organisation’s Plenipotentiary – a meeting it holds every four years to decide the strategic direction of the ITU.

Here’s what you need to know about the “Plenipot” first off: it goes on for three weeks. Yes, three weeks. It used to be four. The first week is taken up entirely with electing new officials; the second week is used to spread out and discuss the papers that have been provided to the conference; and the third is about refining the details and getting them approved.

If this sounds like an arcane way of doing things in the modern world, it’s because it is.

The clue is in the title – Plenipotentiary comes from Latin: plenus and potens meaning full and power. Government representatives (and no one else, mind) are given full powers to negotiate on their country’s behalf and at the end what is decided has full power on the countries represented (more or less).

Of course this approach was much more useful in 1865 when the ITU was created. It wasn’t until 1903 that the Wright brothers flew for the first time. Henry Ford started producing cars in 1908. John Logie Baird’s first public experiments with television were in 1926. In this world, representatives would take days to reach a meeting, and news of what they discussed and decided would take just as long. They had to be given full power in order to be of any use.

But the Plenipot name, and the fact it goes on for three weeks, is just scratching the surface of ITU arcanery. The election process is, by all accounts, so bizarrely out of step with the 21st century that it takes on an almost surreal air.

One day is taken up with the election of Secretary General (SG) and Deputy Secretary General. The next day with the election of the three bureaux chiefs (which actually stretched into a second day this time around). How can it take a whole day to choose two people with less than 200 voters? Strap yourself in, you’re about to find out.

Election madness

This is the rundown for the SG election. It has been pieced together from the recollections of those who were there, most slipping in and out of consciousness.

There are, roughly, 196 voting countries. Every representative is given a special pen (I am trying to track down a picture of this holy scribing instrument), and a special ballot paper, and a long series of instructions. You must mark a cross, and only a cross. It must not stray beyond the borders of the box provided for the cross. Disobey any of these rules and your vote will be discounted.

Oh, and you’re locked in. You can’t leave the room. Actually you can but you won’t get back in if you do. A lot of attendees bring some food and drink in with them.

Before you vote though, you have to wait for every single government entitled to vote to be read out – all 196 of them. In French. Okay, that’s done, now vote. No, hold on, Japan has two ballot papers. Everyone stop. Okay, we have taken one ballot paper away. Leaving Japan with two minus one ballot papers, which is one. One ballot paper per representative. Okay, we are set. Begin.

No, stop. Malaysia doesn’t have a ballot paper. That must be why the Japanese had two. Hang on while we give a piece of paper to Malaysia. Malaysia, do you have the special pen? Yes? Okay, everyone vote. No, no, wait, hold on, Denmark has done a tick instead of a cross (the pressure must be terrible). Everyone stop. Get Denmark a new ballot paper. Denmark, do you have the special pen? Yes? Ok, everyone vote.

Well this is finally done, all the votes are then put inside the transparent voting box. The transparent box is actually new: it used to be a wooden box flown in especially from Geneva and sarcastically nicknamed the Ark of the Covenant by world-weary delegates. Hang on! France! France! What are you doing? You have folded the voting paper the wrong way. Yes, friends, there are specific instructions about how to fold the ballot slip.

Behold the box for containing paper! (Copyright: ITU)

Once all this is finally done, the names of all the countries are read out *again* in full and in French. The box is taken off to a special Green Room for counting and the empty box is paraded around the room in a depressing effort at showmanship. Look at the see-through box, all the papers have gone. We are now counting them. In the Green Room.

After counting, the election procession comes back in and after a bit more pomp and ceremony the results are announced. If no one reaches the required majority – typically 79 – the process is repeated all over again. Sometimes the next morning if it’s getting late by this time.

This process is repeated five times for each of the five available seats. But here’s the real crunch: three of the five posts only had one person standing.

So 200 government reps spent two days locked in a room to hear that 96 percent of them had voted for Hamadoun Toure as SG; 99 percent had voted for Houlin Zhao as Deputy SG; and 97 percent had voted for Malcolm Johnson as ITU-T head. No one is quite sure what would have happened if they hadn’t all voted in favour.

So let’s get this in context: the ITU is the organisation that develops and decides the standard for, among things, satellite communications, television and cable, DSL, telephones, digital video and many, many other cutting-edge tools of the modern world.

Surely someone in the organisation must have come across ELECTRONIC VOTING KEYPADS in the past 145 years? If they can do it for Who wants to be a Millionaire, then surely they can do it for a $350 million intergovernmental organisation that decides space law!

The truth is that this could all change extremely quickly if there was the political will and if there wasn’t huge cultural inertia to getting rid of these worthless symbols of the past.

Turnaround

But what makes it all the most incredible that such a pointless and time-consuming ceremony is incorporated into the ITU’s make-up is that in other respects, the organisation is at the cutting edge.

It puts out roughly one new standard a day every day, every year. It recently decided on the latest video codec H.264 – used in the iPad and a lot of the new software applications. It also approved a universal mobile phone charger, which is gradually coming in effect. And these are just the ones that get attention. Many more are allowing the modern world to zoom along completely oblivious.

Administratively the ITU is extraordinary – turning around dozens of documents every day, translating them into five languages and getting them out again within 24 hours. Dozens of meetings are coordinated swiftly and efficiently, and ad hoc groups are given extraordinary freedom to create new groups and have them pulled into the overall schedule at a moment’s notice.

The conference itself is extremely well organised and run (although the Mexican government and the state of Jalisco did supply the resources). The staff and other organisers are professional, accessible and helpful. A huge number of ideas are raised, discussed, edited, re-edited, put out for discussion, revolved and approved in tight timeframes and with a general sense of calm.

So, why are people so annoyed with the ITU? And why, in the Internet community at least, is the organisation a byword for malicious intent? Well, to understand that you need to meet the representative from Syria, a Mr Nabil Kisrawi.

But more later about Mr Kiswari, self-defeating ITU discussion rules, the “Big Boys” and their units, and young women in leather mini-skirts at the steak restaurant. It is Sunday afternoon which means of course people are still meeting. After all, you’ve only got three weeks.

I have avoided the meetings of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) into ICANN for a few months because it was so incredibly frustrating to listen to 60 minutes of people organising hotel rooms in different parts of the world while the ICANN Board and staff ran rings around them.

But the meeting popped up while I was in front of my computer this afternoon so I decided to listen in. The 90-minute scheduled meeting lasted just over 30, and nothing was discussed except for organising its next trip – to Boston this time – and what sort of meeting the ATRT would have with the Board when the review team is on the final leg of its international tour of pointlessness in Cartagena in December.

While this was going on I noted a new document had appeared called CA-Corp-Law. It’s a PDF so I downloaded it and read it and it comes from ICANN Board/General Counsel. You can download it here [pdf]. And it states that ICANN is *legally* obliged to never allow a process that forces the Board to act. I then spent the next 15 minutes trying, and failing, to get the review team to discuss the fact that its entire work product had no weight whatsoever in ICANN’s eyes.

I thought the ATRT was dead in the water before this point. But now that the team won’t even discuss the fact that it is wasting its time, I think it’s pretty certain that the fearless wolf of review has been beaten, neutered and house-trained and that being forced to recognise that it is also toothless was too much for it to bear.

The ATRT is a dud. ICANN’s accountability problems will remain. Next time this issue explodes, it may take ICANN down with it.

Here’s a copy of the chatroom for the meeting. You may be able to sense my frustration:

Alice Jansen 2: Good evening James!
James Bladel: Hello. joining the bridge now.
James Bladel: lovely hold music….
Alice Jansen 2: :)
CLO: Hi all
CLO: James you still on hold?
James Bladel: No, I’m on mute
CLO: ahh
Erick Iriarte: hi
Kieren McCarthy: I saw that the second document basically says that the ICANN Board is legally obliged not to listen to you
Kieren McCarthy: Yes, I am being facetious but you would think that the Board would have mentioned the fact it doesn’t feel obliged to listen to ATRT recommendations before now
Louie Lee: I think the group understands that the final recommendations would not be legally binding.
Louie Lee: But since the review teams have the backing of a contract, the recommendations would have some weight behind them
Kieren McCarthy: A little unusual that ICANN feels the need to point this out to the review team in the middle of its work
Kieren McCarthy: Also unusual that earlier the ICANN Board felt that the review team didn’t understand the AoC
Kieren McCarthy: And unusual that ICANN staff lobbied the review team to drop its choice of independent reviewer
Kieren McCarthy: A little unusual that the Board withheld a budget for the review team’s work
Kieren McCarthy: Certainly unusual that a member of the ATRT team was removed
Kieren McCarthy: Is the Independent review team into ICANN’s accountability and transparency going to mention all these unusual events? I really hope you find the confidence to do so
Louie Lee: Put together these signs seem to point to something, yeah. :) But we did ask for legal clarification since we were last chatting about the Independent Review and the ombudsman role.
Louie Lee: WG#4
Kieren McCarthy: I am assuming that the legal document provided that says no matter what process ICANN creates it will never have legal weight was produced by ICANN’s own lawyers?
Kieren McCarthy: Would it not make sense to have an independent party review whether that legal opinion?
Kieren McCarthy: Seems like a pretty huge accountability review issue to me
Louie Lee: (brb)
Erick Iriarte: alice a problem with the conexion?
Erick Iriarte: i lost the sound
CLO: SOund was / is very low for me too especially from Brian
Kieren McCarthy: It’s probably worthwhile pointing out that during the .xxx IRP, iCANN made several arguments based on California law that were subsequently dismissed by the eminent panellists
Alice Jansen 2: I ll inform the operator – apologies for the inconvenience
Erick Iriarte: fine now
Kieren McCarthy: Rather than discuss the style of meeting at an ICANN meeting, maybe the Review Team’s limited time would be better spent discussing whether it’s entire work product will be given sufficient respect and review
CLO: We will be producing a product that we expect to be jusged and respected on its merit Keiren our work product will need to stand up to several tests and reviews from community and the Board but wondering ‘if, what & maybe” I doubt is actually a productive use of our time here rather we’ll put out a product we are happy and willing to stand by for all of its intended audience(s)
Kieren McCarthy: But you have been given a document in the middle of your process that says the Board feels it has a legal right to ignore anything you recommend. *Surely* that is a huge accountability issue?
James Bladel: Why wouldn’t that be expectd during the comment period?
Kieren McCarthy: You are relying on the community to do your work

[ends]

Missed this last week: the Internet Society (ISOC) has handed out its annual Postel Award, which honours those who have made outstanding contributions to, broadly, the Internet.

The winner this year – awarded at the IETF meeting in Maastricht on Wed 28 Jul – was Chinese technologist Dr Jianping Wu (left). Dr Wu received the award for “the pioneering role he has played in advancing Internet technology, deployment, and education in China and Asia Pacific over the last twenty years”.

Dr Wu developed the China Education and Research Network (CERNET), the first Internet backbone network in China. It has since become the world’s largest national academic network. He has also been building a large-scale native IPv6 backbone in China. IPv6 is a crucial but complex expansion of the current Internet system and it is large-scale rollouts that are making it possible to shift the Internet onto these new networks.

ISOC President Lynn St. Amour had this to say: “Jianping Wu has dedicated his career in China to developing a broadly accessible Internet that brings people together. Twenty years ago, Dr. Wu recognized the importance and future impact of the Internet and the pivotal role it would play in terms of its impact on social reform, technology advancement and economic growth for China. He has worked tirelessly to bring his vision to life. As a result, the networks that resulted from his determination and hard work have played an important role in driving Internet development in China and have had a significant impact on the Internet worldwide.”

Dr Wu recorded an acceptance video for ISOC, which it has stuck on YouTube and I’ve embedded below (note: the sound is very low and not great).

The Postel Award is named after Jon Postel – one of the key figures in the Internet’s development who died in 1998. The award was started in 1999 and has been awarded to the biggest names in the Internet infrastructure world, although very few people outside that world will have heard of them, they have all been crucial members of a loose community of engineers, policy-wonks and assorted others who work to make sure that the Internet works in an open way.

If you win, apart from having done the world a service, you get a presentation crystal and $20,000. You can find out more at: http://www.isoc.org/postel/.