[bestbits] Sacrificing the ICANN Will Not Be Enough for the US to Restore Its Internet Ethics

[parminder]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeanchristophe-nothias/sacrificing-the-icann-wil_b_4259217.html


  Sacrificing the ICANN Will Not Be Enough for the US to Restore Its
  Internet Ethics

Jean-Christophe Nothias 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeanchristophe-nothias>

We were only a few among media to realize, back in 2012, how arrogant 
and powerful was the US over its dominance of the Internet, and not just 
its control over the root servers and the domain name management. Policy 
making was at stake! Since December 2012, we know it as the US 
120-member delegation to the World Conference on International 
Telecommunication (WCIT) left the room where over 190 nation states were 
convene to discuss terms of progress over agreement in international 
telecommunication connectivity. Its major reason was: "We do not want to 
see the word 'Internet' appearing in an updated telecommunication 
intergovernmental treaty. If the US accepts this, freedom of expression 
over Internet will be at stake." Everyone remembers how a large UN 
bashing campaign was orchestrated hand in hand by US officials (State 
Department, Department of Trade, Congress....) and the US Internet 
robber barons of our time, under the leadership of Google and the 
support of the subsidized heroic 'Internet Freedom Fighters', a naming 
closer to a talibanesque approach than of a human rights defender's view.

Today, after Snowden brought evidence to the world, citizens have learnt 
their lesson: we are all terrorist, not to forget the German Chancellor, 
the Brazilian President, you and me as well. Who can now trust the US on 
respecting simple rules over neutrality, privacy, and honesty? Is this 
part of the 9/11 legacy and the Bush administration ethics? Indeed, had 
all nation states signed an international telecommunication treaty, the 
US Democracy would have either ruined its own diplomatic signature or 
stopped its global spying. So far no international treaty is protecting 
global citizens from such abuse, maybe a reason to understand why Edward 
Snowden decided to spoke truth to power. The citizens of the United 
States have had a few or no reaction, hesitating between a "I have 
nothing to hide" and a "I don't care if they look into my data; anyway I 
like to exhibit myself in social networks." Maybe they underestimate the 
price to pay for their authorities' choice and conduct.

The reality to be considered has an obvious economic origin and bias, on 
behalf on which the US is using its 'digital sovereignty' over foreign 
players. This 'sovereignty' is expected to help grab precious points of 
future growth and tens of thousands of jobs over the next decades. 
Already the mighty power of the Internet is putting the industry big 
players in a state of permanent stress as they battle to hide their 
profits worldwide starting with the UK, France, Germany, and all 
relevant markets. The gold Internet pipeline is bringing indecent power 
to companies like Google, Verizon, Apple... showing a poor CSR ranking, 
thanks to their ability to avoid paying due tax around the world. Public 
US authorities have also their own trade or debt challenges ahead. All 
of them whether private or public, bet that Internet will bring what 
they need most: profit and tax. If the US has organized its own market 
under the patronage of a few monopolies so precisely described by Susan 
Crawford in her Captive Audience book, many of the international telecom 
competitors are very unpleased with the same arrogant dominancy outside 
the US. Add global spying and abuse of power and you have the perfect 
Molotov cocktail for an international uproar.

This is not to mention the gift made to all dictators around the world 
now celebrating the last US digital tread, a global affront, a present 
that nourishes the villainies the US soldiers are supposedly fighting at 
a heavy cost around the world. Democracy is the 'blond' in dictators' 
favorite jokes. All of this comes with a heavy price to all democrats. 
Any principle that a country pushes to the no-value zone is a very 
expensive asset to conquer back. Indeed, Internet is now part of our 
common geography and politics, and a mirror to any ethical failure.

Even though I am not a fervent Marxist, I would define Internet 
governance more as the superstructure where, beyond national policies, 
are established internationally, public policy, connectivity agreements, 
competition fairness, and digital ethics (first pack goes first...), by 
opposition to the base where corporations and technicians enjoy setting 
things by force of common technological and commercial sense. Both of 
them are not so concerned about public good. Their game is to enjoy the 
most effective code to maximize profits. The fact is that in order to be 
left alone 'ruling' the code, and the digital space revenue, they are 
keen to explain that Internet is a pure decentralized world that hates 
nothing more than to be governed. Jungle and Far-West are always more 
fun for the ones with the guns. "How to govern such a decentralized 
wildness?" ask the defenders of the status quo. In this world of 
'Digital Freedom Fighters' of all kind, the 'enemy' is governance and 
regulation. "Regulation kills innovation." According to these bright 
minds - some of them paid by the Internet robber barons to protect and 
enlarge their baronies - Internet could not be governed except by the 
successful corporations.

Today, foreign countries realize that the US needs to be grounded. The 
big lie about the ungovernable digital space has come to an end, as 
national laws prevail and are about to conflict each other, as more 
investment is required for higher speed and connectivity, as digital 
inequalities between regions and continents are stretching - Google's 
pocket money put into balloons won't fill the Internet holes in Africa, 
when the fortune it is putting in fiber will reinforce Google's power 
over the US market, or emerging countries where Google, Facebook and 
other grab public digital space for little efforts. As any other common 
good, Internet public regulation is needed all over the world. 
International law is not the enemy. Vested interests are the enemy of 
the Netizens. This is getting clearer to many minds, including the ones 
who de facto control the digital world and its industry.

The White House and the US Internet Barons have now two major issues: 
how to calm down their very upset partners and/or competitors, and how 
to avoid a major digital spring that would ruin the current status-quo 
over their domination within the Internet governance - supposedly for 
our own good.

A first idea came regarding the economic issue and it went quite 
un-noticed after the last September G-20 meeting in Saint Petersburg. 
Published as the /Tax/ /Annex/ 
<http://www.g20.org/news/20130906/782776427.html> /to the Saint 
Petersburg G20 Leaders Declaration/, this document claims that:

    "International tax rules, which date back to the 1920's, have not
    kept pace with the changing business environment, including the
    growing importance of intangibles and the digital economy. (...)...
    Issues to be examined include, but are not limited to, the ability
    of a company to have a significant digital presence in the economy
    of another country without being liable to taxation due to the lack
    of nexus under current international rules, the attribution of value
    created from the generation of marketable location-relevant data
    through the use of digital products and services, the
    characterization of income derived from new business models, the
    application of related source rules, and how to ensure the effective
    collection of VAT/GST with respect to the cross-border supply of
    digital goods and services."

Or to put it simply, when a Turkish or Mexican netizen links to a Google 
ad, then the data related to that ad revenue will be taxed by the 
national fiscal authorities. Same idea would therefore applied in all 
G20 countries, as all of them signed for this to be implemented, 
including the US. This is quite a change, and indeed, France has been 
pushing hard on this idea, following the report published in January 
2013 by Pierre Colin and Nicolas Collin for both the /Ministère de 
l'Economie et des Finances/ and the /Ministère du redressement 
productif/ headed by the vocal Arnaud Montebourg. Weeks ago, French 
digital economy minister, Fleur Pellerin argued in an interview given to 
the FT that:

    "The time has come to be more proactive on the European level, not
    to regulate the Internet but to regulate some platforms that have
    gained dominant positions and now use those dominant positions to
    make it impossible for smaller actors to develop and to challenge
    their positions. That's a problem."

Ms Pellerin has been pushing the issue on the European agenda since 
then, with some success and aims at linking the tax base to the place 
where the profits are made, and proposing a revised EU value added tax 
by spring 2014. For the White House and the State department, it sounds 
like a minor blow, as the project targets mainly US corporations, and 
wealthy ones. Some new tax revenues might soften political wills around 
the digital planet. Dries Lesage, professor of globalization and global 
governance, at Ghent Institute for International Studies, at Ghent 
University brings a clear understanding of what is at stake in a paper 
published in the Saint Petersburg G20 preparatory documentation:

    "The transnational observation should give way to an entirely new
    regime, one that is based on unitary taxation. This means that
    multinationals' global profits are allocated and taxed per country,
    according to a formula that looks into real economic activity. The
    current regime, in contrast, allows multinational groups to engage
    in artificial cross-border transactions among their own
    subsidiaries, in order to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions and
    tax havens."

Regarding the Internet governance itself, a US idea has emerged in order 
to create a double-win situation. "/Let's give away the ICANN to the 
rest of the world/." From DC to London, Paris, Geneva, Istanbul, Rio, 
Bali, the idea is getting more popular according to sources at the IGF 
and other stakeholders who declined to be identified at this stage. 
What's the plan? The ICANN would become an international body, away from 
US control. Officially. Of course, it is hard to imagine that this would 
affect the 13 global Internet 'root-servers' run by entities based in 
the US (Verisign, USC-ISI, Cogent, Maryland University, Nasa, Internet 
Systems Consortium, Defense Information Systems Agency, United States 
Army, ICANN), one in the UK (RIPE NCC), one in Japan (WIDE Project), and 
one in Sweden (Autonomica). For the plan to work to 'sacrifice' the 
ICANN and impose a multi-stakeholder neoliberal model, the US needs to 
give the ICANN an international shine, still not a UN one. There enters 
an unexpected player: the Swiss who have been suffering much of the US 
tax blame, and lost their banking secrecy under its twist, have now a 
possibility to calm the fiscal US storm by giving to a future ICANN a 
nest, which would be "neutral" and "international". It would look 
UN-style without being UN. It would also reinforce the multi-stakeholder 
shine of the criticized ICANN. A clear definition of what means the 
later model is still unclear, and this vagueness might be its most 
enjoyable advantage. Such an institutional animal would have much room 
for improvisation and special arrangements - as ICANN did for 15 years 
so far. There is a danger that corporations' voice would equal if not 
overpass all governmental voices. Civil society would also participate 
but as their funding often comes from Corporations, they might not be so 
independent. Of course, the Brazilians whose president has turned this 
into a personal matter would have an easy reward to collect, as they 
could claim they have obtained a major change in Internet Governance. 
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff has announced during her NY speech at 
the UN that her country will submit a resolution in order to change the 
course of the Internet governance before December 16, 2013, when the UN 
General assembly will take a break for 13 weeks. As the US would 
certainly appreciate this resolution never to surface, the president of 
ICANN, Fadi Chéhade visited Brazil on October 7. Chéhade met Brazilian 
Communication minister, Paulo Bernardo, and they agreed that Brazil 
would host a meeting in April 2014 in Rio de Janeiro.

    "I understand that the Internet, as a new feature, requires active
    participation by governments, their respective agencies within the
    United Nations, but also users, civil society, and technicians, who
    after all make the Internet work"

Chehadé defended, adding that corporations and academics should also 
participate to the debate.

    "We must not allow economic, political and religious interests to
    interfere in the free circulation of ideas"

Bernardo commented. This is why these days, there is growing excitement 
in order to announce that the ICANN might move away from a Californian 
non profit to a more international, multi-stakeholder model, still 
keeping the governments and ITU at bay in a renewed Governmental 
Advisory Committee already existing in the current ICANN. Last week, 
during a UN Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (on Internet related 
public issues), an AT&T employee and representative of an Indian 
business chamber said:

    "Business believes that stakeholders at the future table need to be
    on a equal footing to make decisions related to Internet policy."

According to one participant to the meeting, a lot of the present 
working group members from private sector and civil society supported 
this view enthusiastically. Ultimately, such a idea would lead 
corporations and governments to establish together the future of 
Internet policy making.

On December 6, in Bern, a forum will gather a group of Swiss authorities 
and US stakeholders such as Internet Society and ICANN representatives. 
They will talk about the "Institutionalization of Global Internet 
Governance, Multistakeholderism, Multilateralism and Beyond". Frédéric 
Riehl, vice-director of the Swiss Federal Office of Communications will 
explain the new positioning of Switzerland in the Internet Governance 
landscape. The participants will also assess the multilateral model such 
as the ones from ITU, WTO and WIPO, during a debate moderated by Tarek 
Kamel, senior advisor to the ICANN President for governmental 
engagement. Probably the best person to do so if one considers the 
objective of the meeting. Everything seems to go in the right direction 
for the new ICANN that might join soon the Internet Society, already 
headquartered in Geneva.

Giving away the ICANN might please a few; the Swiss, the Brazilians, and 
the usual faithful digital US allies such as the Swedish and British, 
but what's about the Germans, the French and other Europeans, not to 
mention the Africans and Asians. As the single market for Telecom in 
Europe is at stake these days, the Europeans might have a serious talk.

By the way, what are the media telling us on this huge battle and 
challenge? They might buy the 'internationalization' of the ICANN as a 
good step forward (!?). Many among foreign governments might not go for 
it. The first Internet political war is going to last until we get a 
fair and open debate.

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