Countdown on for global Internet governance transition

OTTAWA — When people think about the Internet, they often associate it with applications, social networks, streamed video, megabits per second or data caps, without realizing that the structure that lies underneath is overseen by the United States government. The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an organization that manages website addresses and dispenses the IP addresses that get assigned to devices that connect to the Internet. It has representation from governments, businesses, technology experts and users from around the world. Yet, since 1998, it has done what it does under contract with the U.S. Commerce Department. Last year, the U.S. government kick-started efforts to sever its direct relationship with ICANN. The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration said in a press release on March 14, 2014, that it asked ICANN to start the process of transitioning its functions "to the global multi-stakeholder community." “We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan,” Lawrence Strickling, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, said in the release. Christopher Mondini, ICANN's vice-president of stakeholder engagement for North America and global business, was in Ottawa this week to discuss the issue with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) and others. In a sit-down interview with The Wire Report, Mondini described the arrangement between ICANN and the U.S. government as "symbolic." "It was always intended that once the organization was, quote-unquote, up on its feet, that it would lapse, that it would expire," Mondini said. "And every United States administration has had that as its stated policy." The structure has worked well so far, Mondini said, as it helped the Internet expand to three billion users around the world and become a bigger part of people's lives and the global economy. "Nothing really needs to happen in terms of reinventing or changing or linking to other organizations," Mondini said. "It's really just a vote of confidence that this multi-stakeholder model can stand up on its own." The U.S. government has never interfered with ICANN's decision-making, he said. However, there is unease in many parts of the world about the relationship between the U.S. government and such a central authority of Internet governance, Mondini said, adding that concern is among the main reasons a transition to an independent international organization is necessary. " feel that there's some U.S. influence over the Internet and how the Internet is run," he said. "U.S.-based global Internet companies that are trying to cut deals and do trade around the world get pushback from governments that say, 'You're an American company. The Internet's controlled by the Americans. What's going on there?' " There has been talk about a potential "fragmentation" of the Internet should some countries' fears about U.S. control of the Internet not be addressed. This essentially refers to scenarios where countries establish their own Internets, separate from the rest of the world. Mondini said countries generally considered to be the most likely to take such action include China and Iran. He said this would be detrimental to those nations and to countries in the West, like Canada and the U.S. "Think about Canada's trade, its interconnections in both services and goods, and how trade is in fact is enabled by the Internet," said Mondini, who noted that China alone has 660 million Internet users. CIRA chief executive Byron Holland said in a phone interview that India, Brazil and Russia are also among the countries that have been vocal in their apprehension over perceived control of the Internet by the U.S. Addressing the implications of some countries carving out their own separate Internets, Holland said: "The minute you start pulling pieces out of it, it exponentially diminishes the value and potential of the Internet, and I would certainly argue that's against everybody's interest." Holland said that some countries, such as China, already impose a high degree of control over what content gets into its borders through the Internet. He said the severing of ties between the U.S. and ICANN might convince some countries to ease up on their censorship of web content. While there has been lively debate over the last year-and-a-half between over how the new governance model should be structured, Mondini said it is more than 95 per cent completed and it should be done by next summer. One of challenges and points of debate, he said, has been how to ensure there is accountability within an organization that won’t be overseen by a government authority anymore. "For 17 years, we've had the U.S. government as kind of the adult in the corner of the room," he said. "They've never changed any ICANN policy ... but they've always been there, and it was sort of a perceived backstop where people felt, 'Oh, there's still a little measure of answerability or accountability there.' " Conditions the U.S. has set on ceding control of ICANN's functions, Mondini said, include ensuring that the new structure can "keep the security, stability and resiliency of this domain-name addressing system, keep an open and accessible Internet, and not have any governments in charge." Holland said the U.S. government's role as "the big dog in the yard" needs to be "filled in some way, shape or form." "How much has to be based on the ability to seek legal redress if things go wrong versus some level of trust-based cooperative agreement within the community?" is an example of the kinds of issues being hashed out, Holland said. Mondini said Internet governance restructuring is expected to be one of the most-discussed issues when ICANN stakeholders meet in Dublin later this month for one of the three major conferences it holds around the world each year. That will take place from Oct. 18 to 22 and can be streamed online. — With reporting by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

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