ICANN on center stage
Scott Granneman,
http://www.securityfocus.com/print/columnists/362
Hawaii is an island paradise, and the smallest of those islands - one that
most people have never heard of - is Niihau. Located about seventeen miles
west of Kauai, Niihau is home to about 200 people. Although it's part of the
United States, the governance of Niihau is rather unusual. For about 150
years, the island has been privately owned by the Robinson family, who
bought it in 1863 from King Kamehameha IV for about $10,000. The Robinsons
are strict Scottish Calvinists, and citizens of Niihau must obey a litany of
social rules if they wish to abide there. No smoking. No drinking. No
adultery.
But it goes further than that. The Robinsons don't allow outsiders to visit
the island unless the family members give permission first, giving rise to
Niihau's more famous name: The Forbidden Island. For most of my readers, I'm
willing to bet that Niihau sounds more like Paradise Spoiled. An almost
pathological isolation is just too much.
Back on the mainland, life continues. People work and play, businesses make
money, and governments do whatever it is they do. In United Nations business
- not exactly something to which a lot of people pay attention - we see that
the second meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is
scheduled to take place on 16-18 November in Tunisia. At that conference,
events may unfold that will permanently change the Internet as we know it -
and not into shapes that many would find beneficial.
To understand what may happen, we need to recall a bit of recent history.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was set up
by the US Department of Commerce (DoC) in 1998 to oversee the IP addresses
and DNS that makes the Net usable. The understanding in place was that the
DoC would allow ICANN to operate independently of the government agency
beginning in September 2006. In June of this year, however, the Bush
administration reneged on that promise. Michael D. Gallagher, assistant
secretary at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA), explained the government's position:
"The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability
of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the
Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the
underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United
States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to
adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will
therefore maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications
to the authoritative root zone file."
Things didn't quite work out the way that the Bush administration hoped.
Much of the rest of the world began to complain - vociferously - that they
wanted more control of the IP and DNS process. Leading the charge were
China, Iran, Brazil, Ghana, Cuba, and others. The United States' only
backer? The European Union. Good old Europe. The US could always count on
its most staunch allies, thank goodness.
That changed on 28 September, when David Hendon, the European Union's
representative, announced that the EU was now agreeing that unilateral
control of the Net by the US would have to change: "It is unreasonable to
leave in the hands of the U.S. the power to decide what happens with the
Internet in other countries." America is now essentially isolated on this
issue, the only body left supporting what Paul Vixie (the primary author and
architect of BIND, and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, which hosts
one of the 13 root nameservers) calls "the US-DoC/ICANN/VeriSign trinity".
It seems that the Bush administration's stubborn refusal to even consider
changes to the way ICANN works - coupled with the unilateralist attitude and
actions of the past five years - has now backfired completely.
It's somewhat understandable that many countries would be nervous that the
United States, in essence, controls the Internet. Like it or not, the Bush
administration has chosen to act alone over and over again, in both war and
peace. The decision to essentially go it alone in the Iraq War is but one
sign of this attitude. Now the decision to retain what is essentially
dominance of the DNS root servers is another. As long as that control
remains, governments and citizens around the world can't be sure that US
foreign or domestic policy won't affect the Internet.
Sound ludicrous? Think that the US government wouldn't interfere with
ICANN's work? Keep in mind that ICANN approved the creation of a ".xxx" TLD
in June 2005; by August, after receiving complaints from religious
conservatives, the Bush administration was expressing its displeasure at the
new TLD and leaned on the DoC and ICANN in an effort to place it on hold.
Such an action cannot play well with other countries, even those that are
themselves opposed to the creation of an .xxx TLD.
So what if the US flat-out says "Nope. DNS is ours, and we're keeping it."?
What then? That's the big unknown. It's possible, though exceedingly
unlikely, that the countries pushing for a change will grit their teeth,
stamp their feet, kick and scream, and end up doing nothing. The status quo
will continue, and the US will retain control of DNS. This is highly
doubtful. The US is perceived around much of the world as an arrogant bully,
and many countries are looking for a chance to take it down a peg. Couple
that with the constantly increasing importance of the Net to economic life,
and I can't see the US winning this.
The worst case scenario: a fragmented Internet. DNS server admins around the
globe point to ICANN's root servers because they want to, not because they
have to. If another set of DNS root servers appeared, and enough admins
decided to use them instead, we'd find ourselves in one mell of a hess, as
my Mom sometimes says.
If ICANN isn't overseeing IP addressing and DNS, then who will? The nations
pushing for change want to create, or rely on, an "Inter-Governmental
Council for global public policy and oversight of Internet governance". Many
think that the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will be the
body that takes on that role. The notion of UN control over the world's IP
addressing and DNS isn't exactly reassuring, not least because such a UN
Council wouldn't include anyone from the private sector in the
decision-making process. But there are actually much more worrisome reasons
than that.
It's bad enough now that Google Earth describes Taiwan as "a province of
China". It's outrageous and unconscionable that Yahoo! betrayed a Chinese
journalist to the Chinese authorities, resulting in a 10-year sentence in
jail for the hapless reporter. And don't forget that China doesn't allow its
citizens to access many common web sites, including The Learning Channel,
Amnesty International USA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or NPR.
Of course, China isn't the only offender. The September 2005 issue of Wired
(pages 46-47) profiled several countries and the sites they block from their
citizens, including the following:
* Saudi Arabia: United States Army, GayEgypt, Marijuana.Com, and Sex.com
(as well as virtually 100% of all porn sites)
* Uzbekistan: United States Navy, Gmail, and AllSearchEngines (as well
as 82% of porn sites)
* Myanmar: Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and The Internet Movie Database
The examples in the last three paragraphs may seem unrelated, but they all
sing the same song: world politics being the contentious mess that it is,
and many countries possessing autocratic (or worse) governments bent on
controlling what their citizens see, read, and think. The specter of DNS
control moving to a UN-controlled or international body should give us all
pause. Do you really want China having an important say in what domains are
allowed on the Net? Should Saudi Arabia be able to decree that all
quote-unquote adult sites (whatever the heck that means) must use an .xxx
TLD ... or not even be allowed on the Web at all? Do you like the idea of
being forced to work with a company sanctioned by Uzbekistan to renew your
.com when it's up for renewal? Do you trust Iran - which currently blocks
over 10,000 so-called "immoral" web sites and has repeatedly jailed
journalists and bloggers - to respect the idea of free speech on the Net?
Milton Mueller provides an excellent summary of what we've seen happen,
actions that undoubtedly will continue into the future:
As we have learned from the past two years, most governments have little
interest in solving the real problems of the Internet. They prefer to play
political games: asserting "national sovereignty" over a global
communication medium, censoring inconvenient sources of information,
thinking of ways to protect national telecom monopolies from internet-driven
competition, grabbing control of country names in the domain name space,
excluding Taiwan, and so on.
Now we find ourselves in a real pickle. Bad decisions and arrogance on the
part of the US are coming back to haunt us. If America had lived up to its
original agreement to give ICANN independence, or had tried to work out an
international compromise when countries began to complain about US dominance
of the Net, we could have averted a damaging showdown. Either choice would
have been better than where we find ourselves now, when the options have
been reduced to "the US controls the Internet!" and "the UN - which means
who knows what countries - controls the Internet!" My recommendation? Pay
close attention to what happens in Tunisia on 16-18 November ... and
remember that willful isolation can turn even an island paradise into a kind
of living hell.
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