[governance] Big Porn v. Big Web Ruling Could Spell Trouble for ICANN / was Re: new gTLDs

[David Conrad]

Sala,

On Aug 26, 2012, at 1:55 AM, "Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro" <salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>> [...] Personally, I've always found it somewhat depressing that people in forums such as this focus on stuff like what TLDs will be created or who has the power to deny those TLDs when the _real_ "critical Internet resources" are things like fibers and base stations and electricity and environments that allow folks to interconnect their devices and networks together. None of these are in ICANN's purview, but I guess it is a lot easier for folks to throw rocks at ICANN and/or the USG than deal with the policies and infrastructures in their own countries.
> I respectfully disagree with your comment about people not wanting to deal with policies and infrastructures in their own countries and would rather throw stones at ICANN.

I'm not sure we disagree, rather we're talking about different actors. Having been to a couple of IGFs in the past (Rio and Sharm), numerous ICANN meetings (both as staff and not), and witness to discussion on this list for a couple of months, I've observed lots of discussion about who should allow what strings into the root zone, who permits/forbids what content, etc., but precious little discussion about how to improve the physical infrastructure and regulatory regimes that permit/promote Internet connectivity particularly in lesser served areas.  Since the latter is sort of a pre-requisite for the former to be more than an academic exercise, I have always found this ... confusing.

In my experience, the folks who are actually doing stuff to improve the connectivity situation (either infrastructure or policy) in their countries aren't the ones throwing rocks -- after all, they tend to be pragmatic "how to I get stuff done"-types and are generally too busy doing stuff (:-)).

> The tLD market also affects us in the Pacific.

Out of curiosity, in what way? Specifically, how does the current bottom-up consensus policy approach not work for folks in the Pacific -- I can imagine some challenges, particular related to travel/communications, but I'd be interested in understanding more about the issues from those directly involved.

> I would not be surprised that this is a view commonly held by many as the issues and complexities of small island developing states are not rarely known because it is often seen as insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

I won't bore you with my background, but I suspect I might have a bit more understanding of issues in the Pacific than most. In fact, my knowledge of the difficulties and costs in building infrastructure in the AP region in particular has been one reason I've gotten frustrated at IGFs/etc: the priorities seem skewed to me -- what is the point in arguing about TLDs (etc) when entire countries can't get reliable/affordable connectivity to query those TLDs?

> The recent Pacific Broadband Forum which was facilitated by the ITU gave us the opportunity to hear first hand from countries in the Pacific and this included the Private Sector and Government.

While at ICANN, I was asked to speak at a Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (http://www.pita.org.fj) meeting and found one of the more interesting parts of the meeting to be when various folks from all over the Pacific got up and spoke about the various issues they were having and the ways they got around those issues.  It's nice to know the ITU is facilitating similar meetings although I suspect it'd be nicer for folks travel budgets if the facilitators of the various regional meetings could cooperate in order to coalesce at the same time/place (e.g., it would be cool to get an APRICOT meeting, a PITA meeting, and a PBF meeting co-resident).

> That's exactly why WCIT-12 in Dubai has to deal with some Internet matters. Not all, but it's part.

I'm pleased to hear that basic infrastructure issues for lesser served economies will be a topic for WCIT-12. However, one of the past complaints of those sorts of meetings (at least from Internet folk) is that they have tended to try to reinforce existing policy regimes (or even to rewind the clock to past regimes) instead of looking to see how telecoms infrastructure and policy can be adapted to rapidly changing technology. Perhaps this meeting will be different.

Regards,
-drc



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