ICANN's
Bylaws
provide for four Advisory Committees (AC) to assist,
review and develop recommendations on Internet policy and
structure in their specified areas. The AC is supposed to
"promote the development of Internet policy and encourage
international and diverse participation" in managing the
Internet. The ACs do not elect anyone to the Board. The
advisory committees are:
Advisory Committees lack bite to
back their advice, charge critics. All an AC can do is
make a recommendation to the ICANN Board, and the
Board has plenty
of wiggle room in how they
respond to any AC recommendation. No matter how kindly
the advice is tendered, complain ICANN foes, the Board
can say, "no."
Unlike the U.S. White House, which
must seek both the advice and consent of Congress
plus face testing by an independent judiciary branch, the
ICANN Board, critics complain, has no obligation to
follow any advice from anyone that it does not like. And
if someone is pulling ICANN's strings, as the critics
allege, do ICANN's advisors advise a puppet
regime?
Further, critics lament, all the
hot passions spent discussing the hot issues before these
advisory committees effectively acts to distract the
advisors' attention from the questionable legitimacy of
ICANN itself, embodying a plan that has never been
subjected to any public vote. If ICANN is illegitimate
and must be scrapped, ask critics, why get embroiled in
pointless politics?
(Source: http://www.icann.org/committee.html
)
..
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Advises the ICANN
Board regarding who qualifies to be a member of ICANN.
The MAC works with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet
& Society, conducting a Study
on Representation in Cyberspace.
(http://cyber.harvard.edu/rcs/study.html)
To establish an At-Large Membership structure, the
ICANN Board at the Berlin meeting received the "Final
Report" of the Membership Advisory Committee. At the
meeting, the Board told the staff to review the report
and develop before the August meeting in Santiago, Chile,
appraisals of the "administrative requirements, likely
cost, and logistical details of an election process
responsive to the MAC Commentary." The Board ordered
legal counsel to report before Santiago about "legal
implications of an election process responsive to the MAC
commentary." The Board also directed its staff to
recommend "a process for repopulating the MAC, so that it
can advise the Board on promotion and encouragement of
membership and solicitation of sponsorship for outreach
programs."
See the Santiago staff reports:
http://www.icann.org/Santiago/membership.htm
Analysis:
Innately a discriminatory
body, saying who's in and who's out, this appointed
committee is beset by politics. The MAC has submitted its
recommendations for the general membership, but the Board
reportedly feels elections can't be held until ICANN has
recruited 5,000 members through an unspecified "outreach"
program. Is this a stalling tactic?
.
While the At-Large seats
on the Board stay empty, the "interim" Board that
declared itself an "initial" Board stays in power.
Did the Board
deliberately set membership numbers too high to
attain?
Several attending the Berlin
meetings told me the Board talked about membership
demographics, so one part of the world can't dominate the
membership. But the Board has never precisely defined its
formula, say critics, suggesting that controlling
membership demographics is really a form of
gerrymandering, like redefining the boundaries of
Congressional districts to lock in one ethnic vote and
lock out another, making sure that those in power get to
select their own replacements. It's another reason why
critics claim ICANN is "captured," not genuinely
representative.
The Board repeated concerns
about geographic demographics at the Santiago meeting,
but critics remain skeptical about Board delays in
forming a membership and holding elections as the
un-elected Board continues setting policies limiting the
powers of any new
members.
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An appointed
committee helps guide the Board in operating the root
name servers of the domain name system, the global
network of DNS databases on file server computers,
accessed for routing URL requests and email, the root of
the Internet tree. The RSSAC advises the Board on adding
any new top level domains to the root, (each new TLD
renewing the cyberspace land rush). ICANN has a root
server R&D contract with the U.S. Government.
Analysis:
Beyond debating tough
root server interoperability
problems,
RSSAC is excessively
political.
For instance, The
exclusion of any root server consortium means all the TLD
addresses routed from that server become inaccessible,
invisible to
the Internet, as if
they do not exist. Also, should any one root server
confederation add a new top level domain to their root
zone files, unless that new TLD is shared among the rest
of the root, the move can play havoc with the entire
network addressing system.
There remains many
controversies among all the competing root server
confederations. The chief problem here, contend many
critics, is that the Board has stacked the RSS Advisory
Committee with supporters of the gTLD-MoU
faction that wants to add their seven new TLDs to the
root, yesterday if not sooner. This reflects a similar
effort by the Board, critics charge, to gerrymander
membership in the Domain Name Supporting Organization
(DNSO) so the " gTLD-MoU gang" controls the
show.
Yet suppose the RSSAC, by
some miracle, reaches any consensus not in accord with
the gTLD game plan, what happens then? Probably nothing.
No contrary program may go forward because, if push comes
to shove, does any AC consensus really matter? The Board
has the last word.
.
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Advises on ICANN's
relations with national governments around the globe. The
exact role of the GAC is unclear. In February 1999, the
Board surprised critics and friends alike by announcing
the appointment of "Australian Internet leader" Dr. Paul
Twomey as chair of the GAC. Critics accused the Board of
making a "stealth appointment" because Twomey was not
mentioned in advance.
Warning!
Twomey's appointment has
generated international protests in response to his
apparently obsessive, insatiable craving to censor
Internet content on the pretext of protecting children
from what he thinks is evil.
Illustrating the sort of ego
projections we might be dealing with, I'm told that at
the Berlin meetings, Twomey arbitrarily excluded certain
attendees from "his" GAC meeting, eliminating
"undesirable" participants. Such an action was
specifically against the Bylaws. And then the ICANN Board
sanctioned his deed after the fact, ex post facto,
changing its Bylaws. Again in Santiago, therefore, Twomey
conducted private meetings.
Resulting Bylaws changes
included a provision that the ICANN Board will make no
decisions until the GAC has a chance to advise the Board.
Contrary to all of the rhetoric glorifying ICANN's
process of consensus building (ICANN's favorite argument
for retaining its nonprofit status), critics charge such
favoritism raises the spectre that the GAC is the real
power behind ICANN, that Twomey may be a front man with
ambitions.
Analysis:
The GAC is supposed to make findings on ICANN's legal
obligations. Assuming the GAC findings are valid, to stay
legal, the Board must follow GAC's findings. Further, the
Board has committed itself to consult the GAC before
making any major policy decisions
Essentially, the Governmental
Advisory Committee is pure politics.
s
Given the vested interests of national governments in
ICANN policies, given that ICANN agreements with national
and global governmental bodies have the effective power
of international treaties, given that any intelligent
government would be a fool not to at least try to control
the Government Affairs Committee charting a future course
for the Internet, seems a small wonder that the GAC would
be a hotbed of intrigue.
Unclear at this moment is
whether the advice from the Governmental Advisory
Committee is optional or mandatory. In the case of the
other advisory committees and supporting organizations,
critics note, ICANN has lots of loopholes for ignoring
advice it does not like. But the Board agreed to consult
GAC before promulgating any new policies, so, is the
ICANN Board required to obey the GAC recommendations,
too?
Equally unclear, what
qualifies as a quorum at GAC meetings? When GAC submits a
recommendation, how do we know how many people comprised
the "consensus" position submitted to the Board? Could
Twomey sit alone in a room and declare himself a quorum
of one?
Suppose that delegates from
all 30 or 40 governments supposedly represented in the
GAC would attend a meeting generating advice submitted to
the Board. What about the other 150+ countries on the
planet who are not represented, for whatever reason?
These nations, predominantly the undeveloped and
developing lands, have no voice. Once again, we see ICANN
disenfranchising the unwashed masses, effectively making
sure they stay illiterate and bound by poverty. The
Board, apparently, feels no obligation to consult with
governments choosing not to participate in the GAC.
Sounds like a clique to me.
Given Twomey's disposition,
critics warn, it's feasible for the GAC to recommend that
all DNS registrants be required to obey a law like that
adopted in Australia, where, as a precondition for
registering a domain name, the registrant agrees to
accept severe limitations on what may be published, all
in the name of protecting children from bad influences.
Such censorship comes from
the same land down under where Twomey's political enemy,
network pioneer Adam Todd, had his infant taken away by
the state because his wife was breast feeding, this in
the same week that ICANN was incorporated. Breast feeding
is viewed as unhealthy in the "Aussie" culture, the same
thinking prevalent in the United States during the
Fifties (contradicted by modern studies that mammals need
mother's milk for immunization). No matter how much one
may respect the peoples of Australia, say critics,
outmoded outback attitudes embodied in Australian
censorship laws did result in the country being called
the "global
village idiot" by
the president of the ACLU. If such Australian-style
repression of press freedoms is imposed on the Internet,
this will severely harm worldwide democracy
initiatives.
If it's true that Twomey
supports antiquated and misinformed values, critics
reason, because the GAC's membership is drawn from the
most reactionary and authoritarian ministries and
agencies in each nation represented on the GAC, those who
love media freedom, who love the democratizing power of
the Internet, may be understandably
worried.
Most troubling of all are the
GAC meetings behind closed doors. What private deals are
being signed in these secret councils? Whose freedom will
be sacrificed next on the pretext of saving our souls
from sin? The GAC's questionable conduct, I'd assert,
demands an open investigation into its dealings. The GAC
is another committee that would be king.
Observation:
An earmark of the Santiago meeting was the GAC asserting
greater control of ICANN policies. Making pronouncements
about what's legal for ICANN, the GAC declared that the
Internet Name and Address System is a public asset
("public asset" = owned by the
government).
Because all elected
governments are owned by the peoples electing them, the
GAC's proclamation reinforces my key contention that the
Internet is our public property, that privatizing our
Internet without any public vote violated our natural
rights, which means ICANN is illegitimate, because its
authority is presumed, not mandated by we the
people.
....Review
.
Understanding
Network
Democracy
