Less than a week after 87 percent of Net experts went out of their way to tell the US government that it needs to internationalise its role as overall authority for the Internet root, another shot has been fired over its boughs by two insiders.

A paper [pdf] put out by Becky Burr and Marilyn Cade pulls no punches when it states that it provides a “concrete pathway for eliminating one of the most sources of contention in the ICANN debate – the United States’ retain, exclusive and unilateral authority over the Internet’s authoritative root”.

In case you don’t know Becky Burr is the woman that originally wrote most of ICANN’s founding Memorandum of Understanding back in 1998 when she was a DoC lawyer. And Marilyn Cade has been a fundamental cog and powerbroker in ICANN since its inception to the extent that she is on Paul Twomey’s exclusive and secretive President’s Strategy Committee.

The paper makes four arguments which it “urges” the US government to follow. I will summarise them below, but do check out the paper itself here.

1. Make a statement saying it will not use its authority to undermine any ICANN decisions, and that it will make VeriSign make changes to the A root in 14 days.
2. Set up an international working group to take over its role which will comprise top-level government officials from across the world (not the existing GAC members, it suggests)and ICANN officials. It then suggests the powers and role this group might have.
3. Restate and provide assistance in getting back to the initial ICANN principles where private ownership is respected and ICANN’s technical role is limited
4. Force some accountability onto ICANN by making it review its procedures and appeals mechanisms

Speaking from a personal perspective, I have to give this paper some serious thought as to where the potential future problems could be, but my gut feeling is that it deals with everyone’s concerns and represents a pragmatic way out of the ever-looming problem of how the USG and ICANN work and interact.

Governments have to have a final-say role – but it has to kept specific and it has to be kept sharp (i.e. have no way to endlessly delay an issue). Something similar to the new model that is being touted for the UN’s Security Council. At the same time, private ownership has to be respected and strengthened because without that, the Internet would quickly descend into power politics and nothing would get done.

But ICANN can only be given this role if it is forced to build decent accountability and appeals processes, as well as allow more representation from everyday Internet users.

We shall see what everyone else makes of this, but I see that the Internet Governance Project is already smiling on it.

I have finally finished my analysis of the 632 comments sent to the NTIA following its Notice of Inquiry over the continued role of ICANN as Internet overseer, and it’s going to come as a shock to the US government.

A remarkable 87.3 percent of comments that discussed the USG’s role said it should transition itself away from complete control to a more international body. ICANN fared little better: 63.4 percent of comments about it varied from critical to downright hostile.

Yes, I have bothered to go through every single comment, read every single word and do an analysis. The only analysis I didn’t do (and which now I cannot summon the energy to do) was to find out what percentage of the comments came from which region (mostly inside the US and outside the US) – so if someone wants to…

What’s the upshot? Everyone wants the USG to hand over control. Many of those in support were clearly from people that didn’t know what they were talking about – the same sort of blind patriotism that we saw during the World Summit. But there is no mistaking that everyone agrees that the USG has to get on with this.

I hope to god that people in the DoC have a masterplan for transition and recognise why they should do it because this topic is going to get out of hand very soon. I understand that governments are going to try to pressure the USG again at the ITU meeting in September – away from the prying eyes of the world’s press. And there is the risk that the IGF will also be sullied if the DoC doesn’t offer the world something.

Spam

Of course alot of the comments were unusable and if anyone is to blame for this, it is me. Of the 632 comments (there were eight repeated emails), 153 were about Net neutrality, and 174 were about, well, I don’t know what some of them were about. Lots of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” style nonsense, lots of “keep the Net free!!!”.

But what was usable was good. Some of it really good. If I had to pick out two to read, it would be the Internet Governance Project’s response and Network Solutions’ response. Every knows Milton Mueller’s views but there is some expansive and innovative thinking in there too – particular his suggestion of adding two principles to ICANN’s basic charter: freedom of expression, and accountability.

Network Solutions’ response is a very thorough piece, almost academic. It concerns itself slightly too much with the VeriSign dotcom contract issue for obvious reasons, but it is still a very useful document, particularly because it attaches Becky Burr’s testimony the other day to Congress as an exhibit. (It also includes Michael Roberts’, which caused me to think: where is Mike Roberts these days?)

There are lots of other interesting responses too. I started making a list but when the list got past 20, I decided I would highlight only two.

Support? What support?

What is noticeable however is that support for ICANN and for the USG is not easy to find. There are some words of support pointing out especially the e-IANA decision and the ccNSO rules changes – but these are very, very recent changes and it really smacks of BBC charter renewal time.

[Quick background: the BBC has a charter with the UK government which is renewed every 10 years. Every 10 years, when it is up for renewal, the BBC is suddenly very nice to the government, it always announces a restructure and across-the-board cost-cutting and makes lots of noise about what a great service it provides. Then, as soon as the charter is renewed, it bloats out again and starts criticising the government.]

Items of interest:

• Syria’s plan for a new Internet governance structure – anyone want to take a bet on this?
• Karl Auerbach is always a good read
• Danny Younger goes into some depth about Internet issues and ICANN
• A mildly bizarre suggestion to use sea laws for international Internet problems
• George Sadowsky gives a broad-scope perspective

Apart from that, here are my stats in case anyone wants to take issue with my methodology.

Basically, I split comments into:

• Pro-ICANN (supportive)
• Anti-ICANN (critical)
• Pro-USG (should stay in charge)
• Anti-USG (should not stay in charge)
• Anti-USG (from the IGP boilerplate)
• Net neutrality
• Random (unusable in this inquiry’s context)
• Whois
• Domain names
• .xxx

I noted down what each comment’s primary point was and if there was a strong secondary point. As such here are the figures according to my calculations, with the secondary points in brackets:

• Pro-ICANN: 24 (6)
• Anti-ICANN: 44 (8)
• Pro-USG: 26 (4)
• Anti-USG: 98 (9)
• Anti-USG (IGP): 99
• Net neutrality: 153
• Random: 174
• Whois: 4
• Domain names: 8
• .xxx: 2

This means that 51.7 percent of comments were not relevant to the inquiry. That 2.2 percent of comments were about specific issues. That 67.7 percent of all relevant comments, and 87.3 percent of comments that mentioned the USG role were against the USG maintaining control. That 8.9 percent of all relevant comments, and 12.7 percent of comments that mentioned the USG role were for the USG maintaining control.

That 15.1 percent of all relevant comments, and 63.4 percent of all comments that mentioned ICANN’s role were critical or not supportive of ICANN. And finally that 8.3 percent of all relevant comments, and 36.6 percent of all comments that mentioned ICANN’s role were supportive of ICANN.

Any questions, queries or comments, please comment below.

I have been determinedly trying not to write any news stories so I can get on with writing the Sex.com book but I got a phonecall very early this morning from the spokesman for ICANN explaining that late last night the Board had approved the new contract for the dotcom registry.

“Were there any changes made to it?” I asked.
“Ummm, no,” he replied.

So that's how I first heard of ICANN's impending death.

In fact, before I even go into the contract and what is means, I think it's worth pointing out that I also sent a series of emails to a number of ICANN Board members exactly a month ago. In each I explained that I was “putting the questions to you which, through past experience of these things, I will be asking anyway in a month's time”.

The basic email was the same each time:

• There have been not one but two public comment periods, demonstrating ICANN's transparency and bottom-up process
• That VeriSign has made it very clear that it will not move back any further
• That ICANN’s hands are tied because of the DoC’s role in negotiations, that the DoC believes VeriSign has offered a fair settlement
• That time is running out (time is always running out in these situations for one reason or other)
• That it may not be ideal but ICANN has to approve the deal because the VeriSign lawsuits make it impossible to breathe and because the MoU is coming up

You will then be asked to vote on the agreement.
 
My question is: Do you believe that such a momentous decision should be delayed for a few weeks so it can be properly and publicly thrashed out in Wellington?
 
If so, will you raise the issue at such a Board meeting, will you ask for it to be put on the public record, and will you vote against the agreement rather than just abstain in order to register your opposition?

And that is exactly what has happened. Nine for; five against; one abstention. The Board has held no less than four special meetings on the VeriSign contract, two in the past week. The decision has been pushed through to avoid the New Zealand public meeting, and the entire Internet community – which ICANN claims to serve in a “bottom-up decision-making process” – has been completely ignored because it is in ICANN's interests to approve the deal.

The deal condenses everything that is wrong with how the Internet is currently run in one tiny document. How vital decisions about the global Internet are made by one of three bodies – ICANN, VeriSign and the US Department of Commerce – and how their complicated and difficult relationships consistently produce decisions and agreement and settlements that are a million miles from what they should be, and could be if the globalness of the Internet was actually pulled in.

ICANN thinks it has got the best deal because ICANN continues to inhabit a tiny world of its own making where VeriSign and the DoC loom large and everyone else is a distraction. What ICANN really honestly hasn't realised is that its authority is hanging by a thread.

I knew that a special meeting of the Board would be called prior to Wellington, and I knew what would be said and what would happen, because that is the method by which ICANN always pushes through things that shouldn't be approved.The fact that there were several special meetings demonstrates at least that some Board members have started fighting against their expected rubber-stamp role.

But the fact remains that ICANN retains the same culture where ageing chairman Vint Cerf continues to push his personal and out-dated views and undermines anyone that argues with him, and CEO Paul Twomey continues to cut any secret deal he can that will give him control of a more powerful organisation.

Underneath them come all the people that are willing them to succeed so they can take over a government of the Internet in five years' time.

[You can find out what individual Board members felt about the deal in the statements made on the record and released two days later by ICANN.]

While all this empire building and secret deal making is going on, those involved have completely lost track of what they are actually deciding.

Should VeriSign be given permanent control of the dotcom registry? The answer is startlingly obvious: No, it shouldn't. It is in no-one's interests except VeriSign's.

Should VeriSign be allowed to raise prices? No, of course not. The prices of domains are going down. Why on earth is ICANN pulling itself into a contract that rips people off? How stupid does it have to be? Why not restructure the contract to let market forces decide? Then VeriSign can raise its prices anyway and we can stop pretending that the dotcom registry isn't a special case.

Should VeriSign be given rights over expiring domains? No, no way. And not because the idea of a registry owning expiring domains is a bad one. In fact, the current system – where a dozen companies constantly bombard name servers with renewal requests is absolutely ridiculous and cannot be allowed to continue. But should VeriSign be given it? No, because of SiteFinder. There is no reason why another company can't be given all rights to expiring domains, then that company can be set up in such a way that it is entirely equitable.

ICANN has simply signed off on VeriSign's top-three wishlist because it is absolutely desperate to stop VeriSign's lawsuits and because it thinks that if it can just get VeriSign to accept it as an authority, it is over the hill and safe.

The problem with getting used to cutting dodgy deals is that, after a while, the human being becomes incapable of recognising when they should just say No. The individual loses that vital bit of wider clarity which marks great men from powerful men.

I would argue, on a tangent, that that is exactly what happened in the UK when prime minister Tony Blair decided to go to war in Iraq with the United States. There is no doubt that Blair knew that the war was a fallacy but he went with it because he thought he was tight with enough powerful people that it would never unravel.

Having cut dozens of deals and come out the other end gleaming, he failed to recognise that this one was different. That no leader should ever cut a deal over a war.

ICANN may well have cut a similar deal with the new dotcom contract. This one was different. It was for the dotcom registry. ICANN has been through a hell of a lot in the past decade but just when it thinks it is the most powerful and stable it has ever been, the irony is that it has never been weaker.