Self-evaluation paints picture of Board at odds with itself

A self-appraisal of the ICANN Board has just been posted on the organization’s website.

In it, Board members rate 89 different measures of their own performance according to a seven-measure rating from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Unfortunately, despite plenty of figures in the documents, there is zero analysis of what this all means, so I have gone through them and prepared one.

Overview

What is striking from the self-evaluation is how ill-at-ease the Board is with itself. You can see a spread of all the averages on particular topics in a graph below. The median is 4.6 which comes between “Neither agree nor disagree” (rated 4) and “Somewhat agree” (rated 5).

I would expect a healthy Board, especially one whose main philosophy is to build consensus, to average out around 5.5 – between “somewhat agree” and “agree”.

But this graph only tells half the story – the real problem appears to be that the Board strongly disagrees with itself. If you look at the variation in ratings between different Board members, you see an extremely high level of disagreement.

There is always going to be a variety of views on any given topic, but on a large number of topics the Board disagreement was total i.e. at least one person voted “strongly disagree” and at least one voted “strongly agree”.

In no less that 35 percent of cases, the Board put forward views at opposite ends of the spectrum. And in 44 percent cases, it disagreed heavily. What’s more, there was never clear agreement on any topic. The closest it got was 50 percent agreeing with a given statement.

You would expect a graph of variation of views to adopt the classic median curve – with the bulk of the responses in the middle. But as you can see above, there is a very strong sense of internal disagreement.

So what does the Board agree it is doing well, and it is doing badly?

Looking at the extremes i.e. low average agreement with a statement, what stands out again is that the Board is not forming a very coherent whole – and that it is aware of it.

The lowest rating of 2.8 (just below “somewhat disagree” – and remember, this is the *average* rating) was given to the “Board performance shortfalls” statement: “The board effectively addresses shortfalls in collective and individual director performance.”

Similar low ratings were also given by the Board to the Board’s own behaviour. “The board spends the right amount of time discussing and reviewing strategic issues at meetings” received a 2.9 rating. It beats itself up again with a 3.1 rating for: “The board rigorously evaluates its individual and collective performance at least annually and uses the lessons learned in plans to improve board effectiveness.”

What is the reason for this dissatisfaction? It would appear to come out in other low-rating comments.

“The board regularly discusses and plans succession for the chair and members.” A 3.2 rating. This would appear to be a result of ICANN’s unusual structure where Board members are constantly rotated.

The Board also doesn’t feel as if it is playing a sufficient role in the organization’s strategic direction. “Major board decisions during the year include full discussion of alignment with strategy and explicit consideration of alternatives” – gets a low 3.3 rating.

And the Board appears to feel this is partly the staff’s fault. “The board and management share a well explored, unified vision of the future of the organisation and how to achieve it” – gets a 3.3 rating.

Is there a communication breakdown between staff and Board? Members seem to disagree with the statement: “The board has agreed procedures for communication between directors and management outside board meetings, requiring the knowledge and agreement of the Chief Executive and, where appropriate, the Chair” (3.7).

The Board is not getting information in the right way at the right time: “Papers (agenda, minutes, outstanding actions, reports and recommendations) are concise and received in good time for board members to prepare properly for each meeting.” (3.4).

And its meetings aren’t very good either. “Meeting agendas prioritise important matters and assist balanced discussion of strategic, performance and compliance issues” (3.7); “Meetings are conducted efficiently and to schedule, but provide sufficient time and encouragement for members to discuss issues that they deem important.” (3.7).

So if Board performance, staff communication and strategic discussions are the Board’s self-acknowledged failings, where does it feel it is doing a good job?

The answer appears to clearly be: financially.

Four of the top nine rated statements covered ICANN’s financial reporting:

• The board oversees the receipt of assurance from independent auditors on the effective operation of internal controls and integrity of financial statements
• The board is kept well-informed and regularly updated on the organisation’s current and prospective financial performance and position
• The board is satisfied that the organisation has an effective system of internal control
• The board is kept well-informed and regularly updated on the organisation’s current and prospective financial performance and position

The Board also feels that it is acting “the best interests of the organisation” (6.2 rating – just above “agree” but below “strongly agree”).

And it is happy with the CEO (“The chair has a constructive working relationship with the chief executive” (5.9); “The board trusts and shows confidence in the Chief Executive” (5.8)).

Considering the clear levels of disagreement demonstrated, Board members are happy with the ability they have to raise issues (“All directors are given the opportunity and encouraged to contribute to the board’s decision-making” (5.9)).

So is the problem with staff? Well, the Board appears to feels that it is not to blame. A 5.9 rating for the statement: “The board encourages the Chief Executive and other key management to be candid and constructive in raising issues with the board.”

So, overall, what does this demonstrate?

It demonstrates that the Board is clearly dissatisfied with itself. It doesn’t feel that it is doing a good enough job, and it also feels hampered by staff that it feels aren’t doing a good enough job either, with the exception of finances.

There is a very high level of disagreement within the Board, which could point to disenfranchised members.

Of course, much of this discontent could be put down to the peculiarities of the ICANN Board – the negative impacts of which were pointed out very clearly in the independent review of the Board by the Boston Consulting Group.

There are too many Board members – making coherence extremely difficult, especially when the members come from such a wide range of backgrounds. Meetings with 21 people are also never efficient.

Add to that the fact that the Board members are constantly rotating. And the voluntary, unpaid nature of the job.

And then there’s the fact that the staff continue to lack proper summary and analysis skills, and so everyone from Board to community is swamped with information. (And you need only look at the enormous glut of information released today in time for the Brussels meeting deadline to see that continues to be a major headache.)

There is also a striking absence in all of this self-evaluation. There is no mention or review of the community itself. One of the biggest issues that exists within the ICANN model is that the Board is representative of a broader community but that the community itself frequently feels as if it is shut out of the crucial decisions and discussions.

The fact that the Board doesn’t self-evaluate itself in terms of the community is a worrying gap, and one that it would do well to review for 2010.

Been here before?

But if the Board and the community are to take away one thing from the Board’s own self-evaluation, it should be to re-read the Boston Consulting Group’s review of the Board published in November 2008.

That report (Executive Summary [pdf]) made seven recommendations, all of which would appear to go some way to fixing the issues that the Board itself has now recognised, albeit indirectly. Those recommendations were:

1. Reduce the size of the board (to a maximum of 15)
2. Move to fewer but longer board meetings
3. Consolidate the board committees
4. Broaden the skills of the board
5. Make board membership more sustainable
6. Build ‘high performance’ culture at the board level
7. Strengthen the ’strategic’ focus of the board

If those seven recommendations were implemented then maybe would we see a Board less unhappy with itself and so more able to do the difficult job it has been tasked with.

It may be worth declaring a conflict of interest straight off: I can’t stand David Frost.

As a child, he instilled a strange kind of lonely hatred on Through the Keyhole – a formulaic game show in which the preening host would constantly insert amusing anecdotes about some famous person he had interviewed decades earlier.

And as an adult, embarrassment turned to frustration as politician after politician was given an easy ride on Breakfast with Frost – the BBC Sunday morning current affairs show that was finally booted off air in 2005 (but not before 12 years of instantly forgettable and, in some cases, depressingly bad interviews).

But these shows are minor manifestations of the two things that David Frost has been doing with extraordinary consistency for the past 40 years: interviewing people and annoying people.

It was announced at Peter Cook’s funeral that the comedian had only one regret in life: saving David Frost from drowning in 1963. Monty Python felt similarly and its members spent years ridiculing the man on TV, on radio and in print. In fact, the long list of people who have taken a distinct dislike to David Frost is beaten only by the list of people he had interviewed. It’s as if he is trying to outpace his own personality.

It is entirely consistent then that Frost has also managed to infuriate the screenwriter of Frost/Nixon, a film that portrays what was undeniably the highlight of the Frost’s career: a series of interviews with disgraced former president Richard Nixon in 1977.

Those interviews – or, more accurately, ten minutes in one of four hour-long interviews – entered into television legend when Frost managed to elicit what thousands of lawyers, journalists, politicians and judges had failed to get out of the stonewalling 37th President of the United States: an apology.

Reduced to an anecdote

But it has been 27 years since those interviews. What was once striking seems now out-of-date; what was once daring is now par for the course. The moment in which Nixon confessed that he had let down the American people and the whole system of government has become an historical anecdote, recalled dimly by those that were there, and retold unclearly to those that were not alive or were too young at the time.

Until that was playwright Peter Morgan saw something fresh in the story. Morgan has publicly steered away from comparisons with George W. Bush, but there can be little doubt that the resonance of Frost/Nixon has much to do with the fact that another controversial president is leaving office and that the American people feel somehow cheated and in need of some kind of apology for recent woes.

Morgan wrote a play that open in London in 2006 and which became an instinct success. Shortly after, director Ron Howard (The Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Cocoon) visited and decided he had to make a film version of the play. And that’s exactly what happened, with not only Morgan as screenwriter but the two lead actors in the play – Frank Langells as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost – reprising their roles on the big screen.

The result is very close to the play and so both dramatic and spellbinding. It takes a director of great skill to make himself invisible when adapting a story from one form to another but Howard pulls it off. Nothing too flashy or over-the-top and yet the pace is kept up and the tension – which ultimately makes the film – is skillfully drawn in to the climax and then just as skillfully released.

It helps of course that Peter Morgan managed to make the story of two difficult, egotistical men talking to one another for 12 hours a gripping event. And he did so by telling the backstory, using – in Morgan’s own words – Frost’s “extraordinary self-aggrandizing lopsided version of events,” as published in his book I Gave Them a Sword, as well as a behind-the-scenes account by a key researcher in the original interviews, James Reston, since published as The Conviction of Richard Nixon.

Out of his depth

As such, both play and film put into context Frost’s extraordinary efforts to secure the interviews with Nixon. Here was a British talk show host more at home trading sparky anecdotes with sports stars than trying to secure a lengthy interview with a difficult, defensive and extraordinary intelligent political giant who had recently been pushed out of the most powerful job in the world.

Unsurprisingly, no one took Frost seriously, least of all Nixon. In the end, it was pure greed that led to the interviews going ahead: Frost offered $600,000 for a series of four interviews, and Nixon felt it would be easy money. As the film makes clear, however, Frost struggled to meet even the $200,000 signing fee, particularly after all the main US networks refused to take the interviews – leading Frost to have to broker dozens of different deals in order to pull in the money.

Frost also had to put together a team of people that could make the most of his multi-million dollar gamble (in total, the enterprise cost $2 million, or around $7 million today). That wasn’t without its own problems – personalities clashed as the team argued about the best way to attack the problem. And then there were Nixon’s people: defensive, suspicious, used to being in charge. The film covers this backstory brilliantly – focusing on aspects that move the narrative forward without getting sidetracked on the multitude of interesting stories along the way.

The film doesn’t shy away from the fact that the interviews themselves were nearly a flop either. Apart from an interesting start on day one, Nixon controlled the floor as Frost floundered. This caused tension in Frost’s team, leading to one dramatic scene where Frost them that if they didn’t think the whole enterprise was going to be a success they should leave immediately. He then invites them to a grand birthday party in his honour.

There are light-hearted moments that give depth to the characters: Frost picking up of an attractive woman on a flight into Los Angeles; Nixon trying to knock Frost off-track by asking him left-field questions about his shoes and his sex life; Reston’s limp capitulation to shaking Nixon’s hand when he first meets him; Nixon getting a cheque made out into his name.

These moments, and the general hubbub that surrounds the filming of a big interview, all help focus attention and so build up tension when they are stripped away for the climax of the film – the moment that Nixon confronts his lies and his stonewalling and the appalling abuses of the power that was provided to him as president of his nation.

Where fiction meets reality

In an entirely fictional but powerful scene, Nixon calls Frost the night before the final interview and tries to relate to the man interrogating him. The real Frost/Nixon interviews in 1977 never managed to get into Nixon’s head and so the film does it for us – providing a glimpse of the world through the eyes of a man who rose from nothing to become president but who on the way was blown horribly off-course.

Langells – who looks nothing like Nixon – starts to become the man as he struggles with conflicting thoughts and feelings. Sheen, likewise, plays Frost with tremendous sympathy: a determined yet very human interviewer who recognizes he is probably out of his depth but finds the courage to plough on. And this tension from the last-night phonecall is carried into the final day of filming, when Frost expertly prods Nixon into his famous confession.

In the moments before the audience is given its release – as Frost sits pregnant on the edge of his seat; Nixon rolls words and phrases around in his head; and popcorn hovers over hundreds of people’s mouths – for a moment it is possible to look back nearly 30 years and understand what it must have been like for a nation torn apart by Vietnam and Watergate to have their former president finally confront his culpability on screen and in close-up.

For that reason alone, Frost/Nixon is a remarkable and valuable film. It brings something important alive and keeps this moment in history in people’s minds for another generation.

It is not without its flaws however. As ever with such a persuasive medium as cinema, the artistic licenses taken with the story (carried over from the play) will soon be fixed as fact in many people’s minds. The late-night phonecall never happened; the dramatic break when Nixon was about to confess was created by Frost, not Nixon’s chief of staff; the “last-minute” Watergate revelations had been uncovered eight months earlier by Reston; the interviews actually continued for another two days after the Watergate session.

Confession

These are all dramatic devices and probably harmless. What is less harmless is the confession itself. Far from the sharp, concise, tense confession Nixon provides in the film, the reality – as watched by millions of Americans – was a very much longer answer, circular with a number of explanations and threads, and ending with Nixon blaming his mistakes on listening to his heart rather than his head. By boiling down this real-world answer to a short clip, almost soundbite, history is rewritten in the worst sort of way: the past is redrawn to fit in with the present.

Also, as brilliantly written, filmed and acted as the film is, it will never become a great film for the simple reason that the subject matter offers no hope and the interview itself had no great or lasting impact. There are no lessons to learn here. As it is, Frost/Nixon is an entertaining and insightful record of a dirty job well done. Watch it once, be glad it happened, and move along.

[7/10]

Kevin Murphy, a British IT journo based in the US, has done a review of my Sex.com book on his blog.

He likes it. Which is nice since he is one of roughly three journalists in the world who understand the domain name system and its history. You can read it all here.

I like the opening line: “This is easily the funnest tech industry book I’ve read in a long time.”

I’m still don’t know where things are at with the US publisher, or this bloke in New York was interested in making a screenplay out of the book, or if I’m ever going to make any money from the book. Still, what does it matter in the wider scheme of things? I managed to write a book and people seem to enjoy it.

This has to be good – I note that Amazon.com is now selling my book – Sex.com.

Unfortunately there is still a four to six-week delivery date on it, which leads me to conclude that my publishers have yet to strike a deal with a US publisher. I also note on a quick perusal of the Net that the Sydney Morning Herald and ran a whole extract in its edition today – Chapter 3, I believe. And I’m pleased to see that Techworld – where I was news ed – ran an extract last week. Alot has happened since I’ve been away.

I’ve also got a lovely review on Amazon.com. Although this doesn’t appeared to have helped my ranking much – it’s still way down at book no 186,461. Anyway, the review:

Review

Don’t enter the world of Intellectual Property without this book, June 6, 2007

By Jonglier

Forget the lubricious or lascivious, there’s little if any of that in Kieren McCarthy’s business-thriller/page-turner. Its essential subject matter is on the face of it dry as a bone: trademarks, internet domain names or URLs, intellectual property rights, and the civil legal system that arbitrates on all of the above.

Yet McCarthy makes the topic alive, fraught, fascinating and above all important: to you and me as media users, to would-bet net entrepreneurs, to anyone to whom ideas – and their protection and promotion – is important… But oh how close, in the dying days of the saga, victory looked like turning to the sourest possible defeat!

Rush to your credit card wallet and buy this book now. Buy two: you’re sure to know a net fiend who’ll find it instructive and enthralling.”

Now ain’t that nice. I wonder if I’ll get any money for all this.

There was a review in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, so I did something I’ve only done once before in my life and bought it.

I knew it didn’t bode well when they managed to misspell my name not once but twice in the piece (in fact it’s not spelt right anywhere). Once of the first rules of journalism is to make absolutely sure you get the correct spelling of someone’s name, because it’s the one thing that most irritates people – that and their age being wrong. So despite the book having “Kieren McCarthy” in bold letters on the front of the book, it turns out that the Sunday Telegraph believes one “Kieran McCarthy” wrote it, while the reviewer is convinced someone called “Keiren McCarthy” was behind it.

What’s more, the Telegraph website is down at the moment so I can’t link to the review. Perhaps divine justice.

Issues

Interestingly, the review does something that I have noticed with all the other reviews – it covers only one facet of the entire battle. In this case, the online porn angle. Perhaps this is the price for having called the book simply “Sex.com”. People open it expecting it be a sordid tale about sex and the Internet. My original title was “The Brutal Battle for Sex.com” – this may have given a better balance. Anyway, if you do read the book expecting online sex stories, you are going to be disappointed. And I suspect this is what the reviewer was.

Something else that has crossed my mind while in the course of promoting the book for the past week – how many people have actually read the book? And how thoroughly have they read it? The radio shows appear to fall clearly into two categories: those that haven’t read a word, and those that have read it all the way through. I’m not sure Anita Anand on Radio Five Live hadn’t even seen a copy of the book lying about, let alone read it. With her show featuring 10 people a night, you can hardly blame her, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the interview was the most scrappy and unfocussed of those I’ve done. James O’Brien on LBC on Saturday morning was a nice bloke and he admitted to me quite openly he hadn’t read it but then he did a good job of asking questions and following up the answers.

What was interesting was an interview I did with New Zealand radio which surprised me in that it was about domain names – and in some depth. It would appear I’m not the only freak to find these things interesting. And then the BBC Radio Wales guy was really into it and that was a pleasure to be a part of.

Newspapers

So that’s radio – as for newsprint. Well, I’m pretty certain that all the reviewers merely skim the book. I suppose this is inevitable if you have to review x number of books every week, especially if the review is going to be the smallest of the ones you’re writing that week. But even so, it feels like a bit of a cheat to me. The reviews – even the ones that have been complimentary – strike me as very one-dimensional. And often following the same formula: start with one precise point; cover the overall story; pull in one or two quotes from the book; add the most interesting fact you happen to come across; and then in the last paragraph cover whether the author did a good job.

It makes for quite dull reading (I’ve read a number of the other book reviews each time) and this is highlighted by the fact that you can really tell when a book reviewer has gone to the trouble of reading the whole book and then reflected on it. The quality reviews stand out a mile. Anyway, my reason for believing the mechanics of book reviewer for newspapers is to skim the book, dip in and out, maybe keep reading if your attention is grabbed is because each review has gone down a single thread and largely ignored the other parts of the book.

So it’s either the porn angle, or the con-man angle, or the domain name angle, or the legal battle angle. I wonder how people decide on the angle. I suspect it is a combination of the title, a read of the press release, then either the preface or the opening chapter, following by opening the book at various random spots and reading a few pages. I don’t know though, maybe I’m wrong.

Online

The best reviews to my mind have been those online. People have read the book, reflected on it and written a review. Mind you, most of the reviews online have been by tech sites and the book is about the Net, so I’m not sure it’s the best control sample. Still, the criticism in these cases has made far more sense to me – I can see where they’re coming from. And I like that. I don’t quite understand why people said they don’t read their reviews – why on earth not? Maybe people are so thin-skinned they can’t handle a critical review, or maybe – and this seems much more plausible to me than it did a week ago – they get irritated and disappointed in equal measure that someone hasn’t actually read the book but feels comfortable enough to review it with assumed authority.

Anyway, back to the Telegraph review – it followed the same formula and the actual review was in the last para. “It’s an interesting story which includes almost every kind of dirty-dealing you could want – apart from sex, oddly enough. But McCarthy has made awfully heavy weather of his exposition. He’s dauntingly solid on the facts, but less good at marshalling them into comprehensible order, or animating his two main characters. The result is like a prolonged battle of the ciphers that eventually left this reader itching to boot them both into cyberspace.”

Hidden meaning

This is what I see in that. “Heavy weather” – reviewer not wanting or expecting details of the legal battle; “dauntingly solid on the facts” – reviewer doesn’t know or care about the Internet’s domain name system or the politics behind it; “animating his two main characters” – reviewer has skimmed the book; “prolonged battle of ciphers” – I have no idea what this means. But the most interesting part was “less good at marshalling them into comprehensible order” – I can’t decide whether this is again an example of the reviewer skimming the book and being surprised and confused by the fact that different topics keep jumping into the story; or whether he has a point and I have crammed too much in too small a space and so it feels a bit too much.

Whenever I have time I will re-read the book and see if it possesses a coherent thread through it. I was pretty sure it did, but it might be worth a second look. I hope to learn some lessons about books so the next one I write is better.

Apparently I got a good review in Zoo. Now I’ve bought the Sunday Telegraph, I suppose there’s no shame in my buying the weekly tits-and-footy title. I am worried that the Daily Mail may review Sex.com though. I may have to send someone else out to buy that one.

The Times has done a review of Sex.com. Short and sweet:

“Sex.com
By Kieren McCarthy
Reviewed by Iain Finlayson

Civil law, not unreasonably regarded as a dry subject, is often rendered relevant by colourful cases. There is no more dramatic cause of dispute than money, unless it is sex — so the battle for the domain name sex.com had it all. The registered owner, Gary Kremen, alleged that Stephen Cohen, a conman and pornographer, had stolen this prime piece of internet real estate from him. McCarthy gives a fast-footed account of the trial and its upshot. “

I’ve just seen that a review of my Sex.com book has popped up on the New Statesman.

It’s not very long and it’s taken a tack which I was surprised by, but I didn’t think the New Statesman would cover it as it tends to prefer more weighty and political books. Nonetheless, I think I would be intrigued by the review and even consider buying it -so that has to be good. I understand as well that The Times and The Sunday Telegraph will review it this week. And The Register and Techworld should also do reviews soon. And I have a range of interviews lined up next week. Should be fun.

The New Statesman review runs quickly through the story and then this is the opinion of the book: “McCarthy’s account of the court battle for ownership of sex.com is as much a biography of a twisted genius. He paints Cohen as a grotesque bottom-feeder of an individual, who thrives on sex and stolen power. It is hard not to enjoy the story of his downfall, and yet Kremen’s eventual victory is underpinned by the tragedy of Cohen’s mental breakdown.”

So that’s Kieren’s book — “hard not to enjoy” :-)

You can read it here; full review below:

Just for clicks
Henrietta Clancy

Sex.com
Kieren McCarthy
Quercus, 288pp, £12.99
ISBN 1905204663

Taking place against the backdrop of the dotcom boom, the fight for the million-dollar-making domain name sex.com was a battle between two masters of technology, one a scholar and one a conman, which would endure countless lawsuits, appeals and a decade of conflict.

Gary Kremen was the quintessential geek, an entrepreneur who was working with the internet back in the days when it was a tool reserved for governments and universities. He predicted the need for an anti-virus market before the first virus was born; he set up the dating service match.com (now the leader in an enormous international online dating market); and until it was stolen from right under his nose by conman Stephen Cohen, he owned sex.com. The ensuing battle over rights to the domain name became an epic and exhausting fight for justice conducted in the previously unknown legal territory of the online world.

McCarthy’s account of the court battle for ownership of sex.com is as much a biography of a twisted genius. He paints Cohen as a grotesque bottom-feeder of an individual, who thrives on sex and stolen power. It is hard not to enjoy the story of his downfall, and yet Kremen’s eventual victory is underpinned by the tragedy of Cohen’s mental breakdown.

I have consistently failed to actually post on *my own blog* that the book I’ve spent three years on is finally done, printed and actually available to buy from all good bookstores.

But it is.

And I’ve just seen the first review of it that hasn’t come from my biased family and friends, and that’s from Gavin Brown – who is a rare breed of man who has such technical ability that you can imagine him *seeing* the Internet in the same way that Keanu Reeves sees the Matrix, but is also a friendly and chatty bloke. Gavin told me he’d written a review and I really had no idea whether he would like it or loathe it.

I’m delighted to say he liked it and has written a great review of it on Circle ID.

That pleases me enormously because one of the main aims of the book was to provide some understanding of how the domain name system works that was understandable by normal people (not just us Net freaks) but which also pasts muster with the Internet community. To hear that it is “the best book about the Domain Name system that I’ve ever read” is therefore enormously gratifying.

I’m also very pleased on a different level that the fact that I’d tried to make the book as fair and real as possible was noticed. Yes, it was very easy to make Cohen the bad guy, and Kremen the good guy, but the fact is that the world isn’t that black and white and I don’t see why I should pretend it is just to make a book easier to digest. I know that Stephen Cohen won’t agree though – at least not outside his own head – because anything that accuses him of being anything but an upstanding citizen (with perhaps a blemished record), irks him.

Anyway, I shall be buying Gavin Brown a beer at the book launch on 29 May. If anyone else is in London and wants to come, just email me.

Review below:

Book Review: Sex.com by Kieren McCarthy
Gavin Brown

On the face of it, Kieren McCarthy’s Sex.com was a book that could have written itself: a notorious, well-publicised feud over the most valuable domain name in existence, between two charismatic men—one a serial entrepreneur with a weakness for hard drugs (Gary Kremen), the other a gifted con-man with delusions of grandeur (Stephen Cohen). It’s a story replete with vicious acrimony, multi-million dollar lawsuits, and rumours of gunfights between bounty hunters in the streets of Tijuana.

Thankfully, McCarthy wasn’t content to just bundle together all the articles he’s written about Sex.com over the years and slap a cover on the front: the level of detail in his book, and the range of people interviewed, demonstrate that a great deal of painstaking research went into its writing. The result is that Sex.com is the best book on the subject of “internet history” (for that is surely what this story will become) since Where Wizards Stay Up Late, and certainly the best book about the Domain Name system that I’ve ever read. The narrative is compelling, well-informed and highly readable.

McCarthy is not afraid to tackle the quasi-political implications of the Sex.com story, in particular the stranglehold that the old Network Solutions (now VeriSign) had – and continues to have—over the domain name system, and how some of its then employees treated the suspected hijacking of Sex.com with pure contempt—allegedly, even up to the point of threatening physical violence against an expert witness. We’re probably lucky that this book was actually written last year—given his current occupation (as ICANN’s general manager of public participation) it seems unlikely that McCarthy would have produced such a no-holds-barred version of events as he has, had it been written during his current employment.

Apart from all the legal to-and-fro, ultimately this is a story about two men—both intelligent, ruthless and driven – and McCarthy does an engaging job of telling this story from both points of view. Ultimately, Cohen is the villain of the piece, but he’s no cookie-cutter bad guy, and Kremen is by no means an innocent. This book could easily have been a hatchet-job on Cohen, but McCarthy doesn’t make that mistake, and the book is better for it.

A couple of remarkable coincidences are worth mentioning: first, Stephen Cohen attended the Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles at around the same time as Internet pioneers Jon Postel, Vint Cerf and Steve Crocker. Second, one of the reasons that Cohen was sucessful in hijacking Sex.com was that Gary Kremen’s registered e-mail address had been broken into by Kevin Mitnick, the notorious hacker who has himself been the subject of several books.

One final remark: Gary Kremen recently sold Sex.com for twelve million dollars, the largest sum ever paid for a domain name. And what are the current owners doing with it? It’s parked on a PPC ad page.

With my book out the way, I now have lots more time to, er, read books. And one of those near the top of the pile was Who controls the Internet? by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu. The book has frequently cropped up in conversations with various Net people since it was published in March, and so I have been itching to read it.

I finished it this morning. And my gut feeling is that this is a very important book. Not only does it cover a big hole in knowledge and understanding of the Internet, but it is also well written, easy to understand, concise, coherent and thoughtful. I strongly suspect it will be ones of those books that informs opinion and so has a lasting, global influence far beyond what you could expect from 226 pages of text.

Being a journalist and knowing a thing or two about the subject though, I also have a number of criticisms. It has a dangerous US bias despite its avowed international outlook, it completely misses a fundamental plank of Internet governance, namely ICANN, and it has missed recent changes that will come back to haunt it.

But first of all, let me say that I think this book should be read by everyone that has an interest in Internet matters. In fact, I would argue it should be a text for students not only of the Internet but also international law, relations and politics and perhaps even the more pragmatic end of philosophy.

Buy it from Amazon.co.uk, or Amazon.com or if you’re like me, pop into the Oxford University Press shop on Oxford High Street to get it.

Rundown

Why the big sell? Because it tells the story of the Internet in a simple, interesting and relevant way. Obviously not the full Internet story. But what it does manage is not to get bogged down, and – something that books from the academic community consistently fail to do – uses real-people examples to make wider points accessible and understandable. In fact, the book is journalistic in its style – something that the authors could very likely view as criticism but is fervently meant as praise.

What immediately struck me was how far the authors – Jack Goldsmith, professor of law at Harvard and a former high-ranking government lawyer, and Tim Wu, professor of law at Columbia Law School – had dived into the extraordinarily deep well of Internet experience.

I struggle to think of one important, precedent-setting example of how the Internet has affected society that has been missed by Goldsmith and Wu. I was immediately impressed that they had discovered and researched A Rape in Cyberspace, a 1993 article in Village Voice by Julian Dibbell. The article was I think probably the first that opened up alot of people’s minds to what this Internet thing might become, why it was so different to what had gone before. It was the rallying text for a hippie style of thought over cyberspace – one that was unique but has largely fallen under the feet of a pragmatic human race, much as the hippy philosophy did in the 60s. As soon as A Rape in Cyberspace turned up in this book, however, it was obvious that the authors had grasped some of the more intangible, and less legal, elements of the Internet.

Telling it how it is

It gave the Yahoo Nazi case (where Yahoo was forced to block access to Nazi memorabilia on its US website for French Internet users) the focus and importance it deserves. Even though it didn’t dig into the cases themselves, by mentioning Barcelona.com and JK Rowling (two remarkable examples of disputes over ownership of particular domains), it was clear that Goldsmith and Wu had researched far beyond what appears in the book. And this research has lent an indefinable weight to the book which in turns encourages trust in the threads it draws and the conclusions it reaches.

What are those conclusions?

Very broadly, the main argument is that the Internet is a medium like any other and as a result, national governments and national laws *will* have their way with it. And the lesson to learn is that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

This of course flies in the face of the majority of Internet culture and thinking up to this point, but it comes at an absolutely crucial point in the history of the Internet – a point where the lines of future government control and influence are being drawing up through the United Nations. By pointing out the big lies (that were always there) about governments not being able to control content or interaction over the Internet, and by doing it in a non-aggressive or preachy way, this book could well be the appeasing text between government and technologists that helps both sides understand why the other has a point.

It puts an end to the lie that it is only China or Saudi Arabia that are evil filterers of Internet content by pointing out that Google constantly filters information within the United States. It shows the full range of greys in freedom of speech, albeit with China in the dark grey area. It makes entirely commonsense arguments about people’s sovereignty and cultures, but arguments that nonetheless aren’t heard or understood in the West, leading to the peculiarly American Internet fantasy that the Internet will somehow bring US-style freedom and democracy to the rest of world simply by existing. It won’t, it was never going to, get over it, is what the book effectively says, although in far more diplomatic and fair language.

America, America

And here of course I have strayed into the great dangerous America issue. It is particularly unfortunate for the Internet that the United States of America has embarked on an extraordinary and frequently baffling period of confused nationalism at a time where it still retains control of the Internet in so many ways.

In fact, while Goldsmith and Wu never answer the question that is the title of the book – who controls the Internet – the answer is written right through the book. The answer is America.

Despite a brilliant summary of different scenarios across the world, and despite its avowed international perspective, the book comes with a very strong US bias, and that invariably means big business. The examples are all how changes in the Internet have affected US interests. The French government/courts decides against Yahoo; the Australian government/courts decides against the Wall Street Journal; the Indian government/courts decides against eBay.

The book tackles the social conceits and fantasies borne through the early US-centric view of the Internet but it doesn’t stretch beyond that to look back the other way, to see what the rest of the world is doing with the Internet. The one exception to this is a brilliant and perceptive rundown of China’s approach to the Internet. Yes, China has built an enormous and highly sophisticated fltering mechanism for its Internet, but that hasn’t stopped an explosion in its use – and its uses. Many Chinese now have a everyday grasp of technology that puts everyone else – including the West – to shame. But even though the book still views China through the eyes of someone longing for American values, it recognises that different systems have different advantages and disadvantages.

Of course, in some senses it is an unfair criticism of the book to say it is too US-centric because it is that very approach that makes the book so powerful. America is in control of the Internet right now, and it has to be persuaded to slowly take its hands off the reins to prevent the rest of the world going their own direction. As such, a book like this, which intelligently and carefully points out the realities of the Net to Americans could be a vital tool in expanding understanding and knowledge in an increasingly polarised society. That is why Who controls the Internet? could well become an historic and defining text.

ICANN

But this US perspective, and its academic roots, does result in one glaring and ironic omission. And that is the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN.

There is a strange cabal of US academic thinking at the moment that ICANN is not relevant to what goes on on the Internet. Despite being a not-for-profit US company based in California that oversees the Internet’s main directory and decides policy for domain names, and a company that is ultimately owned and run by the US government, American academics – with the exception of Milton Mueller – have effectively given up on ICANN.

The theory is that ICANN is no more than a symbol of power – the king’s golden crown – which governments fight over while failing to realise that the real influence of the Internet is what goes on over the Internet. You don’t get excited about who runs the telephone system, so while ICANN is currently in the midst of an international power struggle, it will eventually just become an exchange system and so is not worth concentrating on.

I think this is startlingly short-sighted and academia will come to regret it. Despite covering every other element of Internet control, possibly the most significant and certainly the most controversial area of it is given only four pages in Who controls the Internet? It is so concise, it reads like a Wikipedia article.

It is extraordinary that so many intelligent and imaginative minds cannot see why this organisation will become fundamental to the future of the Internet. There are frequent high-flying essays at the moment over how the domain name system (DNS) will become increasingly irrelevant. For one, programs like Bittorrent ride on the Internet, rather than use the DNS per se. And secondly, search engines like Google mean that domain names themselves aren’t important – what’s important is content.

Failing to learn the lessons

When I hear this I hear overpowering echoes of the earlier philosophies that this book does so much to dispel. The Internet was going to override all governments and laws, the cyberspace pioneers predicted. Rubbish, says this book. The Internet will make it impossible to restrict free expression, was the argument. Sorry, already happening, the book points out.

I say the same to those who argue that the DNS is going to be irrelevant. It is foggy thinking. While you are using Google to undermine the DNS – where do you go? Google.com. How do you find bittorrent files? You go to a website – located by its DNS – to find links to them. There simply isn’t another self-reliant system that run on the Internet outside the DNS.

But more than that – what do people will think will happen when more and more top-level domains are introduced (as they are going to be)? People point to the poor take-up of new top-level domains such as .info or .biz but this is again ludicrously shortsighted. New top-level domains will give people the opportunity to devise new ways of using the Internet **run over a TLD**. For example, the mobile phone companies now own .mobi. They now have their own chunk of the domain name system that they can run entirely differently to what we are used to. They could, for example, write new code that links directly with the next generation of mobile phones: no need to use the browser system we have grown used to. It could well become the mobile Internet because with your own entry into the DNS, you don’t have to follow the same philosophies as defined by the dotcom model.

The huge growth at the moment is in sites like MySpace (note: found at myspace.com). But it isn’t your space, is it? It’s space that a company at MySpace.com gives you because people don’t know who to set up their own websites. Is it possible to give everyone their own actual space? Theoretically yes – but only through the DNS.

And who decides not only who runs these top-level domains, but also how the DNS is used and what new top-level domains are allowed to exist? ICANN.

The other glaring area of importance is IP addresses. Even if you assume that the DNS will become only one of many Internet uses, I have yet to hear anyone argue that they can do without IP addresses. And who is in charge of allocating IP addresses? Who defines the policy surrounding IP addresses? ICANN.

Choke-point

ICANN is stood right in the middle of the future possibilities of the Internet and yet most of the people telling grand tales of barbie dolls and new ways of communicating have failed to see what is right in front of their face. The control point – and potential choke-point – that is ICANN.

There is another very important element of ICANN as well that is frequently missed by Internet commentators. The idea is that ICANN is just something for governments to squabble over. And yet, if Who controls the Internet? tells us anything it is that, no matter how much you believe you don’t want to mix with governments, you do not have a choice. Governments *will* define how the Internet works in future whether you like it or not.

So, rather than ignore the one organisation that everyone is fighting over, it should be obvious that this is the organisation that needs to be focussed on, because whatever happens to it will have far-reaching effects across the world and billowing into the future.

What I see as the failure of Goldsmith and Wu to properly research this area – led, I am certain, because of a deliberate decision by the US academic community reviewing the Internet to give ICANN a miss – has also led to them missing a fundamental change in the control not only of the Internet but also of a wider power shift in society itself.

What has come out of the ICANN model and the numerous battles fought, and continuing to be fought, has been a new model of power-sharing and decision-making that could well change society as a whole. Anyone that has been following Internet Governance issues will immediately recognise it in the endlessly repeated phrase “multi-stakeholder”.

The future of control?

Put simply, governments have realised that business and civil society are vitally important as almost-equal partners in dealing with the Internet. Governments have learnt very slowly through the course of the World Summit on the Information Society process that not only do they not have the answers to many of the problems they wish to solve but that unless they listen to business and civil society their solutions will not be effective. In short, governments needs other people to be able to do what they want. Legislation is often too slow and ineffective in a highly flexible Net environment.

It is a remarkable change that led to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan himself pointing out that the Tunisia World Summit was the first to ever welcome in non-governments as almost-equal partners. The United Nations men most at the heart of the Internet Governance issue, Markus Kummer and Nitin Desai have frequently commented on how different the government interaction is over the Internet. And the Internet Governance Forum, given no more than a sentence in Goldsmith and Wu’s book, is an experiment that, if it works, could see the philosophy of multi-stakeholder meetings take root right across government, right across the world.

The lasting legacy of the Internet could be that societal control – something that this book so clearly demonstrates cannot be removed or wished away (nor should it be) – becomes the territory of not solely government, but a blend of government, business and civil society, with government given the casting vote.

Now, this is very unsettled waters and of course it is my philosophy at a time when the IGF hasn’t even been held, so you can hardly blame Goldsmith and Wu for not loosening up their taut, concise and persuasive approach to include the very wishy-washy spaced-out philosophy that they do so much to pull apart, but I do believe the failure to properly review ICANN in this book is its Achilles Heel, and hope it is corrected in what I’m sure will be future editions to make this a classic text.

That said, it is by far my favourite book about the Internet (exempting my Sex.com book which is tastier in parts, but isn’t published yet), and I implore everyone to buy it and read it. It gives great clarity in what is frequently a confusing and emotive sphere of modern life.

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Update (18 Sep): I’ve been looking for other reviews of the book and have eventually stumbled over two good ones, following a series of poor ones. Both come from Syracuse University, one from Milton Mueller, an Internet governance expert, and the other from John Mathiason, the university international relations professor.

I’d say that Mueller and I are broadly of the same mind, although he makes some stronger critical points [pdf] about the presumption that national governments as is will take control of the Net. His is also a more scholarly review.

Mathiason provides a much more knowledgeable version [pdf] of my complaint about the book’s US centricity, pointing out basically that Goldsmith and Wu don’t seem to understand how the rest of the world works. I only have the reviews as pdfs I’m afraid.

Buy Who controls the Internet? — UK | US