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ANALYSIS FINDINGS

Without a public mandate,
ICANN is illegitimate.

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The question we face is the legitimacy of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as our accepted means of network governance. Supporters like to call ICANN "a system of Internet self governance," but the critics charge that self rule means democracy, not control by one committee.

If legitimacy is based on a government governing with consent by the governed, everyone on earth deserves a fair say in governance decisions affecting everyone on earth. Simple global sense. But ICANN does not represent everyone on earth, only a faction, a clique of the DNS players. While I feel sad having to report the emperor has no clothes, there it is. The logic is emphatic: ICANN is illegitimate.

There's never been any formal vote by "we the people" around the world giving permission for our public Internet to be privatized, and there certainly has never been any ballot measure before voters in the USA or another nation transferring Internet rulership to an elite committee of corporate technocrats called ICANN.

On this fact alone, government without the consent of governed, ICANN can be called an illicit power grab. The U.S. position on the ".com" database upholds my view of the Internet as our public property, owned by "we the people" just as we own the governments we elect. If our governments own the Internet, this means our governments must obtain our mandate before privatizing our Internet. Logic 101.

 

The DNSO Shield

In our modern world where all monarchies are vanishing as democracies arise, ICANN supporters hold up the DNSO as a shield to deflect criticism of ICANN as the committee that would be king. Referencing the U.S. Constitution, ICANN supporters have compared the Names Council and the General Assembly to the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, accounting for the voices of both the gentry and the masses. Yet Americans of every caste vote for Senators and Representatives. Only Internet insiders get to vote on ICANN boards seats.

Go further.

Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress must both advise and consent, its main task after lawmaking. The White House not only must obtain the advice of both the House and Senate, but the President must obtain the consent of Congress before adopting major new policies, like waging a war. Not so in ICANN.

ICANN seems to be a minor league tyranny aspiring to play in the big leagues.

The DNSO has no decision-making authority. The DNSO can advise the Board, but that's not enough to qualify as a democratic process. A true democracy has checks and balances to be sure that government "of the people, by the people, for the people" does not perish from the earth, wiped out like ethnic cleansing by friendly, backslapping, back-stabbing politicians doing their masters' bidding. Free to redefine its own rules at whim, the ICANN Board is like monarchs of old, some would say, a law unto itself. Technocrat Jon Postel wrote the ICANN Bylaws. Did he project his predilections and personality into ICANN?

ICANN apologists reply that the DNSO is very democratic, pointing to the lively debates among constituencies. All the hot passions spent discussing the hot issues before the DNSO, however, serves to distract us from a lack of true democracy. Ongoing infighting in the DNSO or other advisory bodies (gTLD vs. the world) effectively gives the Board a free hand to run matters pretty much as it likes.

Are you at last questioning the "democracy" of the DNSO and ICANN?

Delve deeper.

 

The Illusion of Consensus

Within ICANN, only those the Board recognizes as constituencies enjoy suffrage, voting rights, which so far means only those players already active in the domain name system debates, and especially those who favor adding gTLD names to the root, apparently. The General Assembly supposedly offers a home for us little guys, whom Esther Dyson professes to protect, but as already shown, the GA essentially is a token body without any actual power.

Welcome to the Internet ruled by Dilbert.

ICANN supporters counter allegations of autocracy with a hand waving at the consensus processes in each Advisory Committee and Supporting Organization. Listen to the robust exchange of conflicting views in any AC or SO, they'll say. Debate is encouraged, never repressed. And if consensus is ever reached, the AC or SO can submit proposals to the Board. What's undemocratic about that?

Creating consensus, as a formal "intentional" process, is a new phenomenon for humanity, although we've been doing it informally for ages. Round rules remain undefined, so building a consensus is messy, inefficient and time consuming. Yet the process can yield alignment with a collective vision far better than any other form of community interaction -- when the process actually works.

The main problem with sole reliance on consensus-building for making decisions, (taking decisions), is that there is never a defining moment of cusp, no finite final measure, as with an up or down vote -- so many voting yea, so many voting nay, and so many abstaining. Fixed and on the record, a formal vote is there to be tallied anew by anyone doubting the count. Barring vote fraud, there is no wiggle room. There is no fabricated consensus. Despots despise democracy.

In a well-functioning democratic system, there needs to be discussion and debate toward building a consensus, but critical matters, ultimately, must be put to a vote, settled definitively, so the talk can abate and the work can begin. And for that vote in any democracy to be considered legitimate, everyone who will be affected by a decision must be free to get involved in the deliberations, taking part in whatever vote finally is cast to settle the issue. That's direct democracy.

Considered in comparison to a genuine democratic process, four ailments plague ICANN's consensus-building process:

• First, there's no final voting mechanism within the Advisory Committees or Supporting Organizations, which leaves all recommendations to the Board suspended in murky waters. How do we know if there's really a consensus behind the recommendations, especially if gerrymandering is a factor?
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• Second, submitting a consensus position to ICANN is almost meaningless, because the Board has lots of loopholes for ignoring advice it doesn't like.
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• Third, by design of default, the ICANN Board gains power whenever DNS players are distracted by infighting in the advisory committees or supporting organizations. Is the Board applying a strategy of divide and conquer?
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• Fourth, if there ever is a consensus choice among all constituencies selecting directors to ICANN's Board, even if all Board members decide unanimously on an issue, even if gerrymandering is not stacking the Board, fundamentally, all ICANN votes are illegitimate since billions of people are not represented on the Board. All of the governed do not get a chance to advise or consent. If the have-nots have no voice, that's not democracy.

Analyzing the ICANN consensus process produces the same conclusion reached from analyzing the entire corporation: ICANN is a counterfeit democracy using crafty if not authoritarian tactics to maintain and expand its authority.

Libertarian minds pioneered the decentralized Internet. A spirit of laissez faire freedom puts ICANN's system of centralized network control at odds with the Internet's philosophical roots, especially such libertarian notions about the only proper role of government being to protect us from force or fraud. What can protect us from force or fraud by the government itself, ICANN or another?

 

No Clothes

Developing the Internet is akin to discovering a new continent hundreds of years ago. Just as Europeans and Native Americans had to rethink reality in the face of each others' possession of territory, we too need to make a "paradigm shift" (only trite if we dismiss its truth). The "good news" today is that cyberspace is free land, previously uninhabited. All battles are among the settlers themselves.

Picture what happens as new TLD names are added to the root. Once any bloke with the poke can stake a claim on a brand new domain name, the old west land grab may wind up looking downright tame by comparison. What stops anarchy? ICANN would be town sheriff, which may be OK in my corral were there not so many trail signs suggesting the lawman is beholdin' to the railroad barons. Laying track and stringing telegraphy wires certainly did earn profits and expand empires, but people perished in the process. If ICANN rules, what protects us little guys? What safeguards our aspirations for democracy?

To draw your own deductions about ICANN, why not start with these givens?

• Given all the recognized gTLD supporters in influential positions, lending credence to claims that ICANN has been "captured" by gTLD backers,
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• given the Board delaying elections while gerrymandering constituencies, ensure the gTLD candidates are elected to the Board, not their foes,
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• given the un-elected "initial" ICANN Board deciding issues that rightly should be postponed until there's a truly representative elected Board,
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• given ICANN's perpetual financial difficulties and impostures, with appeals for gifts and loans from the same corporations ICANN would regulate,
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• given ICANN trying to fund itself via "taxation without representation" through levying a fee on every domain name registration and renewal,
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• given the stealth appointment to the chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee of an apparent censorship addict, plus his conduct since,
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• given the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) packing itself with authoritarian types who meet behind closed doors to plan their moves,
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• given the GAC exercising a near veto over Board decisions, a right not enjoyed by any other advisory committee or supporting organization,
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• given that ICANN has abandoned the principle of "one person one vote," central to any genuine democracy, for the At Large Council elections,.
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• given the Board postponing At-Large Board elections until the At-Large Council has 5,000 members, effectively postponing elections indefinitely,
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• given how the Board failed in Berlin and Santiago to duly recognize the non-commercial, individual domain name holders as a constituency,
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• given the Board rubber-stamping a WIPO plan for domain name dispute resolution, leaving the small domain holders without real protection,
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• given the Board's apparent disdain in Berlin and Santiago for online participants without the means to attend the meetings in person,
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• given the Board's perpetual stonewalling of genuine independent review, the latest, a demand to control who sits on this "independent" committee,
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• given the way the "interim" Board curiously became the "initial" board,
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• given the initial Board falsely claiming a consensus to extend its tenure,
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• given the Board amending its Bylaws to legalize breaches after the fact,
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• given ICANN's continuing, primal conflicts with Network Solutions,
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• given the DNS deals disclosed and hints of secret deals suspected,
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• given that ICANN innately favors the interests of Internet insiders,
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• given ICANN presuming powers never granted in its NTIA contract,
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• given that ICANN affects more lives than are counted in its councils,
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• given privatization of our public Internet without a vote is tyrannical,
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• given the billions of people not yet online who may not agree with the decisions made by remote technocrats, and who one day may say so,

. . . given all this and more (as detailed in this analysis), how can anyone with any integrity claim that ICANN passes the tests of genuine democracy? ICANN's behavior calls into question the corporation's right to rule over the Internet , to rule over each of us. At worst, ICANN's claim of legitimacy is a sham, a ruse, a con job, the Big Lie. At best, it's an act of self-deception, especially in the case of Esther Dyson, who refuses to she she's been manipulated and outflanked. We see what we want to see. It's the old folk tale of the oblivious emperor once again.

No clothes.

 

Conclusions

ICANN is the private committee that would be king of the world.

ICANN has earned our distrust the same way as did IAHC and its gTLD-MoU. Acts by the players call into question their right to hold power. Just as mad King George more than 200 years ago incited Thomas Paine to write Common Sense, following his lead, I'm pointing out madness and applying common global sense to running the Internet transforming our lives.

ICANN's cynical despotism reflects an obsessive need for control among the leaders.

Drawing on my graduate research into organizational communication theory, any organizational culture always reflects the founding or central figure. In the case of ICANN, founder Jon Postel was a serious autocrat, from all accounts, and the gTLD leaders who have twice supplanted his vision with their own are not any better, perhaps worse. Participatory management (democracy) works best when the people involved have released their authority addictions enough to practice personal democracy. When we are always compulsively enacting the roles of leader, follower, rebel or hermit to unconsciously satisfy unmet childhood love needs, tyranny is inevitable.

Privatization springs from an unhealthy urge for emotional gratification.

When we feel insecure within ourselves, we tend to seek validation from outside of ourselves. We humans habitually seek this through money, power, fame, or sex. Privatizing our public Internet would permit the leaders behind the move to have more wealth and power in the world. It's not in their mindset to think about the rights of the dispossessed masses. We risk the public good getting lost in the lust for private gain. Privatizing the public Internet is motivated by "codependency," not reason. Because an interactive global sensibility tends to inspire people to exercise self-restraint, so our childhood wounds do not rule our lives, if the folks backing ICANN were healthier, perhaps they wouldn't need so much control?

The people on network earth have never voted about Internet privatization.

We are seeing a lot more ego than global sense from ICANN, more foul play than fair play. We certainly are not seeing due process. Rather, we're seeing censorship and authoritarian thinking. ICANN's imperial streak means this private "nonprofit" corporation will become a virtual tyranny in cyberspace, which juat may encourage more mundane tyrants in the actual world to likewise usurp power -- or at least try. Thwarting the democratizing power of the Internet represents a clear and present danger to society. As a usurper, ICANN needs to be opposed by everyone who values their freedom, who values open democracy. I do not like to be an alarmist, but someone needs to call the fire brigade.

Internet privatization without a public vote violates our natural rights.

Because a private committee is presuming total authority over a pivotal technology in human evolution, trying to become the government without the consent of the governed, ICANN undermines global democracy. Personally, I believe the Internet is a global utility that rightly belongs in the public domain, but whether you agree or not, the point is that humanity has never had any chance to vote about the issue of privatization, let alone vote on whether ICANN should have power over our global Internet and its penetrating cultural impact.

Privatization disenfranchises millions and billions of people on network earth.

ICANN is indeed the committee that would be king, or is that emperor? Today's ICANN Board was appointed, never elected by anyone. Even if the Board's chairs were filled by representatives of DNS constituencies opposing the gTLD plan, the Board still would be a closed club for the players who speak the lingo. Most folks have never heard of ICANN, let alone the battle for network control. They cannot tell a TLD from a hole in the ground. The fact they don't speak like a geek doesn't mean they have no right to a fair say in the critical decisions affecting their lives.

Government without the consent of the governed is a goof.

Expanding the social gap between the haves and have-nots, to be polite, destabilizes society. The needs of the many should never be sacrificed to gratify the wants of a few. Monarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies, all other systems of top-down control are "oldthink," outmoded antiques from before our modern interactive age. The new global sensibility is helping us outgrow our need for kings. One may even assert that ICANN represents the last gasp of the old order. Isn't it time we tried responsible self rule? Why not give democracy a chance?

What makes global sense for network governance? What does your soul say?

 

Personal Note: Since I'd created Media Visions Journal in July 1997 to publish the "Global Sense" essay written in response to the gTLD power grab, apart from loosely tracking listserv debate and sometimes posting notes on the need for network democracy, I've been quiet about DNS policy, perhaps too quiet. I was busy, sure, but mostly I did not know enough about ICANN to remark intelligently. I heeded the Mark Twain wisecrack: It's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

When I finally had a breather from freelancing in early summer to catch up on my reading about ICANN, I had far more questions than answers. I really was not expecting to discover the extent of corruption I've apparently found, or that the the gTLD faction has visibly "captured" ICANN. Frankly. I was not emotionally equipped for a stark realization of the power play in progress.

Once I grasped the situation, and the implication soaked in, I was spooked. Haunted by dark visions of a despotic Internet without any press freedoms, I started visualizing how ICANN's despotic global network government can lead to a despotic world government. These images shook me up deeply. So, bypassing freelance jobs, I've devoted my summer to this analysis. (Those who provided me guidance on the first draft have earned my heartfelt blessing.)

Now with September upon us, I'm going back to making a living. There are articles to write and a book-length manuscript about interactive TV still due before Thanksgiving. Kindly be patient with me regarding updates, therefore, since I'll probably not be posting anything for awhile. Please follow the many links given here to help you get informed and get involved.

That said, thank you for caring about network governance. Too few do. --kf

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