Legacy of 2012 WCIT Could Negatively Influence Future of Internet Governance, Says McDowell
The ICANN community will need to remain vigilant to avoid having its multistakeholder model replaced by a multilateral system like the ITU, said Internet governance leaders, including ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, at a Hudson Institute panel Friday. It was the culmination of a busy three weeks in Internet governance, kicked off by NTIA’s announcement it will transfer the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to a global multistakeholder body (WID March 17 p1). The initial “gut impressions” from Capitol Hill about the announcement will give way to a better understanding of Internet governance issues over time, said Daniel Sepulveda, deputy assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, at the event. “We're united with our colleagues across the aisle in ensuring the preservation of freedom and the preservation of the multistakeholder system."
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The Internet Stewardship Act (HR-4367) was introduced by Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., Wednesday, seeking to “prohibit” NTIA from transitioning the IANA functions (http://1.usa.gov/1hde9EH). “The Obama administration’s plan to give up U.S. stewardship over vital functions of the Internet is extremely troubling,” said Kelly in a news release (http://1.usa.gov/1mJp7Bm). “The power and reach of the Internet are far too important to liberty to ever be surrendered to forces that could potentially use their power to limit the Internet’s reach and suppress the free flow of ideas.” HR-4367 parallels the DOTCOM Act introduced by Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Todd Rokita, R-Ind., and John Shimkus, R-Ill., which seeks to stop NTIA’s proposed transition (WID March 28 p9).
The Hudson Institute event focused on the degree to which the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in 2012 might predict the future of Internet governance (WID Dec 26/12 p1). There, the ITU “moved away from operating by consensus, towards majority vote,” said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, who described the move as a “revolutionary change.” Before WCIT, “there were proposals for the ITU and at the U.N. for the domain name function to be subsumed by the ITU or a separate U.N. body,” he said. “And we've defeated them all,” said State’s Sepulveda. “But barely,” answered McDowell. WCIT proved the “momentum is going the wrong way,” said McDowell.
The authoritarian regimes are “very small in number” and lack the ability, “by themselves, to effect the kind of change people are worried about and writing editorials about,” said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling. “The key” is showing the developing world that the multistakeholder model can meet their needs, he said. “The trend line is moving very much in our direction,” said Strickling. There are “very powerful countries” with “client states” that have one vote at the ITU, which “can achieve the goals they're looking for,” said McDowell.
The “concerns and alarms” raised by McDowell should keep the ICANN community on “its toes,” said Chehade, who said ICANN didn’t provide “good answers” on the multistakeholder model at WCIT. The multistakeholder model is the “glimmer of the solution and we should support it,” he said. “We shouldn’t lower our guard, because we don’t know what could happen” on other governance models gaining momentum, but the trend toward the multistakeholder model is “starting to turn our way,” said Chehade.
The transition must fall to “a multistakeholder body rooted in the private sector and civil society, preserving the decentralized, nongovernmental approach that has ‘governed’ the Internet from its inception,” said former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Gordon Goldstein, former international security adviser to the U.N. secretary-general, in an op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/1efQf5B). “Otherwise, no deal.” Genachowski works for Carlyle Group and Goldstein works for Silver Lake.
Reiterating a message they shared at the House Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday (WID April 3 p1), Chehade and Strickling said the proposed deadline for the transition, originally set for Sept. 30, 2015, is not binding. NTIA is “a check on the accuracy of changes to the root zone file,” which is “largely a clerical task,” said Strickling. “It’s not as if we're closing up shop.” The transition is “very narrow” and will probably be “addressed by the existing customers of the IANA functions, in terms of whether there even needs to be a replacement for that particular function” performed by NTIA, said Strickling. “Maybe it could be done machine to machine.”