[bestbits] Fwd: Is the Internet Really Free of US Control?

Fri Oct 21 18:58:26 EDT 2016

Ayden,

Thanks for your comments on Parminder's article.

Of course Parminder can and no doubt will speak for himself.

I did want to fill in a small bit of the historical record for you, and perhaps this may be helpful to others (and Parminder and others should of course correct my recollections if I have misstated anything):

Some of us did advocate early on for a 'Framework Convention' at international level as a post-WSIS follow on; which could have (after say perhaps a decade) led to a new international treaty instrument defining Internet rights and principles.

Analagous to what was done for Law of the Sea back in the 70s/80s; and more recently for climate change.

That notion went over with many around the the Internet, and ICANN, like the proverbial lead balloon. Meaning: nowhere.

By 2008 @ the Hyderabad IGF, Parminder and I and friends and colleagues merged the nascent dynamic coalition on Internet rights, and dynamic coalition of Internet principles.

Which led to the Charter on Internet Rights and Principles, and fed into subsequent efforts like the NetMundial principles...none of which had the pretense of assuming an international body could take over or internationalize ICANN.

In that period however, the concept of an internationalized ICANN reincorporated perhaps in Switzerland with immunities along the lines of what Parminder suggests, and similar to the arrangements for international organizations like the Red Cross/Red Crescent, and - FIFA - were still being kicked around.

Not too far since there was limited enthusiasm for undertaking such an effort, and practically none from government stakeholders which would have had to front much of the cost/divert significant budget at the UN  to the effort.

Not to mention the private sector basically hating the idea.

Not to mention we would have all been subjected to a decade of scare-mongering headlines about 'the UN taking over the Internet.'

OK, we got those stories anyway, but it could have been way worse.

Anyway, mentioning FIFA shows the real stumbling block: it is one thing to suggest folks that may drive ambulances into war zones should have special protections.

It is another thing to suggest a corner of the Internet where selfless advocates are engaged AND where money sloshes around - should have similar protections.

As evidenced by the long effort to bring the accountability reforms into the ICANN process as the quid pro quo for the IANA transition.

Which is finally done, yay.

So in sum....we could either blame, or credit, Sepp Blatter and cronies excuse me respected senior FIFA football/soccer officials with basically destroying any possible momentum towards that kind of internationalization of ICANN through their proven rampant greed and abuse of their positions.  At least at that time.

And this time.

Lee

________________________________
From: bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net <bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net> on behalf of Ayden Férdeline <ayden at ferdeline.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 18, 2016 12:08 PM
To: Marianne Franklin
Cc: parminder; BestBitsList
Subject: Re: [bestbits] Fwd: Is the Internet Really Free of US Control?

Hi Parminder,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic. I agree that it is appropriate and necessary to critically examine the IANA stewardship transition. I have read a number of articles documenting legitimate criticisms of the transition from different stakeholder groups. Nonetheless, I have not heard anyone say that the better solution would have been for ICANN not to become more accountable, not to let the stewardship of the IANA functions transition from the NTIA to the multistakeholder community.

But let’s leave that aside for a moment. There is something in your article that I wanted to pick up upon, and I think it's important. You mention the delegation of .xxx and say it is being challenged in US courts for “for allegedly violating competition law.” Okay… Can you please explain to me your problem with this? .xxx is operated by ICM Registry, a company incorporated in the United States. If ICM has violated US antitrust laws, it is subject to the US legal system because ICM is incorporated in the United States, not because ICANN is headquartered in the United States. Likewise, for your example of the generic drugs company, if they’re infringing upon someone else’s IP, I’m sure they’ll be sued in whatever jurisdiction the registry for “.genericdrugs” can be located within. It doesn’t stand to reason to me that a dispute between two private parties, one of which is not based in and does not do business in the United States, is going to be resolved in a US court. Let’s inverse the scenario. Say ICANN was headquartered in India. A generic American drugs company operates “.genericdrugs” and is sued by, say, a Spanish competitor. Would they really file the lawsuit in India? Or would they file it in the United States, where the drugs company has its assets?

I think it is useful to remember what the IANA transition was all about. It was about empowering the global, multistakeholder community to oversee the activities carried out by ICANN. It was not about making sure ICANN was not subject to US law.

Finally, maybe it's the realist in me, but I’d like to note that attempting to get “jurisdictional immunities as available to other global governance bodies like those of the UN” (to quote your article) sounds very time consuming and highly resource intensive. I am just trying to think how we might go about that? So we’d need 160+ sovereign states to sign an international treaty? You want established a “special digital bench of the International Court of Justice” and new “international laws”? And we – the multistakeholder community – would write them? Who/what gives us that authority? I have not been following the IANA transition from the very beginning, but I will venture to guess that such an option was never on the table… that said, if I am mistaken and there was a missed opportunity to embark upon such an ambitious project, feel free to set the record straight… ;-)

Thanks again for starting this conversation and sharing your Op-Ed. It's good to be able to have this dialogue.

Ayden Férdeline
linkedin.com/in/ferdeline<http://www.linkedin.com/in/ferdeline>

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [bestbits] Fwd: Is the Internet Really Free of US Control?
Local Time: 17 October 2016 3:54 PM
UTC Time: 17 October 2016 14:54
From: m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk
To: parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>, BestBitsList <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>, governance at lists.igcaucus.org <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org <irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org>

Dear Parminder

Thanks for the thumbs-up regarding the HRI series on openDemocracy<https://opendemocracy.net/hri>. And, indeed, debate and action are not always the same thing. But action and attitudes can be influenced by debates that take internal, expert-driven issues out into the wider world. And as the world is increasingly online, activists (and academics) and policymakers (and designers) cannot any more expect public fora to be ready and waiting for topics that are as arcane as they are deeply political, and politicized.

To that end, talk is not cheap, and actions do speak as loudly as words.

Seeing this issue discussed in a public forum, and not surprisingly I am advocating this particular one given the high-quality contributions from people who are on these lists, and who are re also active in a range of other networks (e.g. scholarly, policy-based, activist), is becoming increasingly needed. Politicians are making decisions based on a lack of access to the nuances of these issues, to put it lightly.

Might I also have that our students in universities are becoming increasingly engaged in the implications of a range of internet governance decisions and interventions by all stakeholders.... they are seldom addressed in these circles even as they constitute the leaders of tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone on this series for committing to bringing these debates out into the open!

best

MF

On 17/10/2016 15:05, parminder wrote:

On Monday 17 October 2016 07:16 PM, Marianne Franklin wrote:

Dear Parminder, Others (am also copying in the IRPC list).

There is clearly still lots to debate,

Yes Marianne, but the political moment of reckoning does not wait for all debates to conclude - debates that has now been happening for more than 10 years. The jurisdiction question is being considered formally "right now" in the transition process, as it is called, In a few months it will be formally declared that the global multi stakeholder community - which is supposed to includes me and you, and all the debators -- have concluded by full or rough consensus that the current jurisdictional status remains the best bet for ICANN. The 'decision' will be touted in our name. IGC 11 years ago took a political position in the middle of debates - political activism requires that. 11 years hence the debates cannot be less mature then they were before - I am just wondering, what happened meanwhile... Well, isnt that too an important question by itself to ask, and explore, for activists and academics alike. Just clarifying what was the accent of my posting. Meanwhile, yes, more debates and articles and comments continue to remain welcome, and shd keep coming. But maybe, civil society's job includes some political role too!

Meanwhile I do recommend to everyone to read this excellent series of IG related articles published in OpenDemocracy and coordinated by Marianne. https://www.opendemocracy.net/hri . Debates, academic exercises, and political action must all go together.

best regards

parminder

on the macro level of past and future ownership and control of the strategically important aspects of the internet's infrastructure (content being another matter altogether). To date the debates about ICANN, positions for/against and all other shades, have occurred on lists with well informed, and committed participants.

To date there is little out there for an informed, wider public. This is why comments on the Prakash piece<https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaLiberties/pranesh-prakash/jurisdiction-taboo-topic-at-icann>, or indeed others on this page that may relate to the spectrum of issues that keeps all these lists alive and actively arriving in our in=boxes, would help inform that wider audience.

It is a key reason why I have been working with openDemocracy to present these issues to a wider readership so all comments welcome to the ICANN piece.

Other articles, including a critical analysis of a UK-based initiative for digital rights by Paul Bernal available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/hri.

warm wishes

MF

On 17/10/2016 14:07, parminder wrote:

On Monday 17 October 2016 05:20 PM, Marianne Franklin wrote:

Dear Parminder

Thanks for sending over this piece in a growing literature on ICANN and it future.

Just to note that Pranesh's less than celebratory analysis for the ICANN transition has been published on the openDemocracy series, Human Rights and the Internet, at https://www.opendemocracy.net/digitaLiberties/pranesh-prakash/jurisdiction-taboo-topic-at-icann.

Thanks Marianne,

Yes, absolutely not at all celebratory! I had read it a few months back, and should have had it in my mind when I made that comment. But then, isnt it surprising that when two of the very few CS groups in India consider that not much has happened with the so called 'transition' in terms of loosening of US control over ICANN, there is simply no murmurs in the CS community globally to actually take this issue up - in a political manner, like making a statement and so on. I may repeat what I have said so many tomes earlier - in all the multistakeholder meetings that I saw organised in India in the transition processes it was always concluded that there are two key issues to sort out - an 'external' oversight mechanism, and jurisdiction issue. What we have is an oversight which is hardly external, and the jurisdiction issue is being completely buried. But still it seems that everyone -- more or less --  is just celebrating the 'transition' with no critical take being adopted.

As Pranesh's article points out, seeking a host country agreement or in other words jurisdictional immunity for ICANN from the US was the demand of Internet Governance Caucus in 2005. The all round social- political importance of the domain name system has only greatly enhanced in the last 10 years, and so the US's jurisdictional control over it should be ever less acceptable -- but why is no major civil society group today able to get up and say the same thing which IGC said and asked for in 2005? Especially when a process is actually taking place which is formally examining the jurisdiction question. I sometimes participate in that ICANN WG on jurisdiction, where every effort is on to bury this question - and i finds almost no civil society voice there.

People here may want to ponder this question - has the US stranglehold on the IG discourse actually tightened since then - meaning WSIS in 2005? Or perhaps there could be other reasons, which I did not think of, and others can enlighten me on. (not addressed to you Marianne :), it is general)

Parminder

PS: Excuse me to cc this to IGC list, where a similar discussion is on... Those who respond may exercise discretion whether they want to respond to both elists or one of them.

best

MF

On 15/10/2016 15:48, parminder wrote:

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:
        Is the Internet Really Free of US Control?

Date:
        Sat, 15 Oct 2016 20:11:26 +0530

From:
        parminder <parminder at itforchange.net><mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>

To:
        governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org> <governance at lists.igcaucus.org><mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, &lt <" bestbits\""@lists.bestbits.net>

Hi All

I wrote this commentary piece in the Economic and Political Weekly of India on ICANN's oversight transition. For such an important and multi-faceted event, it is surprising that I have come across no article that is other than absolutely celebratory about it, and catches properly the different nuances that are involved. Such a monochromatic discourse in the global IG space is not a good indication. There is an especial lack of views from a progressive and social justice perspective, and from the geopolitical South, both of which I have tried to catch in this brief article.

Internet Governance: Is the Internet Really Free of US Control?

"The recent decision of the United States government to cede its control over the internet’s naming and addressing system to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a US-based international non-profit body, is heralded as a significant step towards the globalisation of internet’s core infrastructure. But with ICANN having no special jurisdictional immunity and subject to the whims of the judicial and legislative branches of the US government as well as many of its executive agencies, the decision seems more symbolic than meaningful."

http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/42/web-exclusives/internet-governance.html

Comments are welcome.
parminder

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Marianne Franklin, PhD
Professor of Global Media and Politics
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Goldsmiths (University of London)
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Tel: +44 207 9197072
<m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk><mailto:m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk>
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Steering Committee/Former Co-Chair Internet Rights & Principles Coalition )
www.internetrightsandprinciples.org<http://www.internetrightsandprinciples.org>
@netrights

Special Series Editor, Human Rights and the Internet
https://www.opendemocracy.net/hri

Digital Dilemmas: Power, Resistance and the Internet (Oxford University Press)
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-dilemmas-9780199982707?cc=nl&lang=en&q=Digital%20dilemmas&tab=reviews#

Championing Human Rights on the Internet (I-VI)
https://www.opendemocracy.net/marianne-franklin/championing-human-rights-on-internet-part-six-summing-up-too-much-or-not-enough

“What does (the Study of) World Politics Sound Like?”
co-authored with Matt Davies in World Politics and Popular Culture: Theories, Methods, Pedagogies
http://www.e-ir.info/2015/04/22/edited-collection-popular-culture-and-world-politics/

--
Marianne Franklin, PhD
Professor of Global Media and Politics
Convener: Global Media & Transnational Communications Program
Goldsmiths (University of London)
Department of Media & Communications
New Cross, London SE14 6NW
Tel: +44 207 9197072
<m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk><mailto:m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk>
@GloComm
http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/franklin/
Chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet)
Steering Committee/Former Co-Chair Internet Rights & Principles Coalition )
www.internetrightsandprinciples.org<http://www.internetrightsandprinciples.org>
@netrights

Special Series Editor, Human Rights and the Internet
https://www.opendemocracy.net/hri

Digital Dilemmas: Power, Resistance and the Internet (Oxford University Press)
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-dilemmas-9780199982707?cc=nl&lang=en&q=Digital%20dilemmas&tab=reviews#

Championing Human Rights on the Internet (I-VI)
https://www.opendemocracy.net/marianne-franklin/championing-human-rights-on-internet-part-six-summing-up-too-much-or-not-enough

“What does (the Study of) World Politics Sound Like?”
co-authored with Matt Davies in World Politics and Popular Culture: Theories, Methods, Pedagogies
http://www.e-ir.info/2015/04/22/edited-collection-popular-culture-and-world-politics/

--
Marianne Franklin, PhD
Professor of Global Media and Politics
Convener: Global Media & Transnational Communications Program
Goldsmiths (University of London)
Department of Media & Communications
New Cross, London SE14 6NW
Tel: +44 207 9197072
<m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk><mailto:m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk>
@GloComm
http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-communications/staff/franklin/
Chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet)
Steering Committee/Former Co-Chair Internet Rights & Principles Coalition )
www.internetrightsandprinciples.org<http://www.internetrightsandprinciples.org>
@netrights

Special Series Editor, Human Rights and the Internet
https://www.opendemocracy.net/hri

Digital Dilemmas: Power, Resistance and the Internet (Oxford University Press)
http://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-dilemmas-9780199982707?cc=nl&lang=en&q=Digital%20dilemmas&tab=reviews#

Championing Human Rights on the Internet (I-VI)
https://www.opendemocracy.net/marianne-franklin/championing-human-rights-on-internet-part-six-summing-up-too-much-or-not-enough

“What does (the Study of) World Politics Sound Like?”
co-authored with Matt Davies in World Politics and Popular Culture: Theories, Methods, Pedagogies
http://www.e-ir.info/2015/04/22/edited-collection-popular-culture-and-world-politics/

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