[governance] Statement made in Plenary

[Milton Mueller]

Vittorio:
I had the same conversations with the Iranians. Problem is, everything
the US is doing with sanctions against Iran could be done without ICANN
and its US-based governance arrangements. These are simply extensions of
national power - because so much of the Internet industry is in the US,
if the USG orders US companies to effect sanctions on Iranian Internet
users, it gets a lot of traction. And if it convinces European states
and Japan to follow suit, then 80% or so of the available internet
services could be affected. 

This indicates that we need to be concerned about national power and
geopolitics per se, not just "US" power. 

It also is a clear indication of why I have so strongly advocated open,
nondiscriminatory methods of selecting new top level domain registries,
such as auctions and lotteries. If the structure of the industry becomes
more distributed, and award decisions less subject to discretion of a
few Internet hoi polloi in the US, then it will be harder to subject to
national political fights.

>>> Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu.org> 10/02/05 8:20 AM >>>
Avri Doria ha scritto:
>>>do you think it should not become an international body?
>>
>>I think it is.
> 
> as long as it is subject to all US and California law past and  
> future, i disagree.
> 
> the US government would be well within its national mandate to  
> prohibit companies from associating with certain foreign powers (the 

> so called rogues and evil ones) and to prohibit contractual relations
 
> with entities in those countries.  It is this sort of potential  
> restriction that I believe is inappropriate for ICANN.

I remember one young Iranian guy coming to me at the Cape Town ICANN 
meeting, and telling me the story of their .com domain names being 
suddenly lost as their American registrar refused to make business with

them any more. Also, they tried to get a local ISP accredited by ICANN

as a registrar, but ICANN could not make a contract with an Iranian 
company, and even if it did, Verisign, Thawte etc would refuse to sell

them an SSL certificate necessary for the communication.

I am not sure about to which extent this story is true, but as far as I

know it certainly could be.

I also remember the story of the biggest Macedonian ISP losing their 
customers' domains as the American registrar who they were using
started 
refusing credit cards from Balkan countries to reduce fraud risks (in 
practice, assuming that anyone attempting to pay with a credit card
from 
Balkans is likely to be a fraudster).

Now, one could say that this kind of things falls into the realm of 
private law... but still, if we accept (as per the Tunis declaration) 
that "the Internet is a global facility available to the public", I 
don't think that this kind of things should be allowed to happen any
more.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a]
bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...
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