|
ICANN: the Secret Government of the
Internet?
By Steven Hill
As our increasingly globalized world tiptoes towards experiments
in globalized governance, the World Trade Organization is not the
only newborn institution raising concern. In particular, commercial
interests are beginning to pull at the hem of Internet governance,
and the ramifications may be profound.
How many people have ever heard of ICANN, The Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers? Depending on whose
description you read, ICANN is either an innocuous non-profit with a
narrow technical mandate, or the first step in corralling the
Internet for commercial and other purposes. And right now, March
7-10, ICANN is holding its international meeting in Cairo where
important decisions regarding Internet governance are being
made.
Here are a few facts: ICANN is a nonprofit corporation that was
chartered by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce in November 1999 to oversee
a select set of Internet technical management functions previously
managed by the U.S. Government. These functions include fostering
competition in the domain name registration market (i.e. the selling
of .COM, .NET and .ORG suffixes) and settling disputes over "cyber
squatting" (the intentional buying of domain names like
McDonalds.com for later re-sale at exorbitant prices to the
corporation).
That all sounds fairly bureaucratic and benign, but there's more
to the picture than first meets the eye. And it's really got some
watchdogs like the Center for Democracy and Technology and Common
Cause worked up.
To understand the suspicion it's necessary to understand a bit
about what is called the "root server", and the critical role ICANN
plays in overseeing it. Servers are high-powered computers that
function as the crossroads of the Internet, kind of like the neurons
of our central nervous system, through which all email messages and
requests to view Web pages get routed.
Whomever controls the "root" server can decide which other
servers all Internet users worldwide will be directed to when they
try to view any Web site address in the .COM, .NET and .ORG domains.
Since ICANN controls the root server, it is technically feasible for
this nearly anonymous organization to exercise a kind of
life-or-death power over the global network, because presence in (or
absence from) this chain of interlocking servers and databases is a
matter of cyberspace life or death. If your domain name (xyz.com,
for instance) and Web page address cannot be found on the root
server or its mirror servers, you simply do not exist.
This raises important policy questions that have the potential to
go far beyond ICANN's narrow technical mandate. Take the following
test, and see how you would resolve the following:
- One anti-abortion Web site listed the
names of doctors performing abortions and crossed them off as
they were assassinated. Another Web site published the names
of alleged British intelligence agents and put their lives
and, potentially, British national security, at risk. ICANN
now has the power to wipe out these Web sites, should it do
so? And who should decide? How should ICANN balance anonymity
on the Web - a key element of political freedom - with the
right to know who is lurking behind a domain name?
- There's a Web site called
MartinLutherKing.org, and guess what? The authors of that Web
site and the owners of that domain name specialize in
slandering the slain civil rights leader. Is that free speech,
or is that a violation of the "trademark," not to mention the
legacy, of Martin Luther King?
 |
Should ICANN have acted in the case of
B92, the courageous and respected independent radio station in
Belgrade that had its online identity - b92.net - taken over
and used by Slobodan Milosevic and was left with no avenue for
recourse?
In many instances, acting or not acting will have equal
implications. ICANN must decide what falls within their scope of
jurisdiction.
Bizarre as it may seem for a decentralized global network that
supposedly "exists nowhere and everywhere," the root server and the
various domain servers to which it points constitute the very heart
of the Internet.
Anyone interested in controlling the rules under which activities
on the Internet take place -- and many commercial interests, who now
realize the huge economic stakes in the Internet, and many
governments too, find that they are indeed quite interested -- is
likely to find the existence of a single controlling point awfully
tempting for imposing its will. Indeed, according to the New York
Times, ICANN's policy-making process so far has been dominated
largely by commercial and technical interests.
Not surprisingly, watchdog groups have proposed that, unlike the
secretive World Trade Organization, ICANN's international board of
directors should be publicly elected, and subject to public meetings
and disclosure. Some within ICANN are embracing this call for
elected representation and accountability, while others are
resisting.
Don't let the global anti-democrats have their way. Find out more
information by visiting the Web sites of Common Cause, the Center for Democracy and
Technology or ICANN
Watch. Any Internet user can become a member of ICANN for free
and vote in a future election by registering at www.icann.org. Also, ICANN has
created an Internet forum where people can post their opinions
at
www.icann.org/cairo2000/atlarge-topic.htm.
Let
them know what you think.
Here's hoping that ICANN makes a clean break from secretive
unelected global organizations like the World Trade
Organization.
Steven Hill is the western regional director of the Center for
Voting and Democracy. He is the co-author of Reflecting All of
Us (Beacon Press 1999).
For more information, write to: PO Box 22411, San Francisco, CA
94122. |
|
