WSIS 10-Year Review Called Possible Threat to IANA, Multistakeholder Model
LOS ANGELES -- The transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) could be harmed if the U.N.’s 10-year review on implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) moves in an intergovernmental direction, said ICANN stakeholders on a panel Wednesday. The threat of the Internet governance debate imploding during next week’s ITU Plenipotentiary or the WSIS review is unlikely, said At-Large Advisory Committee Chairman Olivier Crepin Leblond. The WSIS review will begin next year.
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“Everyone knows” the next ITU secretary general will be ITU Deputy Secretary General Houlin Zhao of China, said Raúl Echeberría, Internet Society executive director of the Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean. Echeberría said he was speculating, because the ITU won’t vote on the position until the plenipotentiary. He said he hoped Zhao would strengthen relations between the ITU and Internet organizations.
There are “two tracks for threats and opportunities” for the WSIS review’s effect on ICANN, said Bertrand de la Chapelle, Internet & Jurisdiction Project director. If ICANN manages the IANA transition properly, a “remarkable international problem” will potentially be resolved, he said. The IANA functions have carried with it significant symbolism in international political debates, he said.
There is a “major danger” if the IANA transition is handled poorly, said Chapelle. If certain governments refuse to engage in the IANA transition, they might refuse to recognize the outcome, he said. Even those governments that are “reluctant” need to participate in the transition, said Chapelle. The WSIS review runs the risk of eroding its own multistakeholder process, he said. The “worst-case scenario” for the WSIS review would be if it accomplished “nothing” and simply rehashed old documents, said Chapelle.
Chapelle’s worst-case scenario “ignores some really obvious dangers that the WSIS process poses to the multistakeholder model,” said Doug Barton, BlueCat Networks migration architect, an ex-ICANN employee speaking on his own behalf. The U.N. and individual governments could take “significant actions” that would be “extremely damaging” to the WSIS review, he said. Political “gridlock” can sometimes benefit the parties governments claim to represent, said Barton.
Chapelle said he didn’t “fundamentally disagree” with Barton but said that he didn’t think there was “any possibility” of governments agreeing to subvert the multistakeholder model. Disagreement on that model is much more likely, said Chapelle.
Nongovernmental stakeholders involved in WSIS no longer have the “institutional apparatus” that was developed in 2005, said Bill Drake, University of Zurich mass communication and media research international fellow and longtime ICANN stakeholder. “We’re not prepared for this.” Stakeholders are “maxed-out” with “serial meetings” concerning WSIS, which governments can track with more ease than civil society members, said Drake. He suggested a “NETmundial-like process” to document WSIS progress for nongovernmental groups, referring to a past Internet governance conference.
Is there “really a threat of countries cutting themselves off from the Internet,” asked ALAC’s Leblond. The Internet “community” never “imposed” the Internet, Domain Name System or the multistakeholder model on “anyone” in the 1990’s, he said. Yet consumers used those tools because they worked, said Leblond. “When I hear there are threats” stemming from different international Internet governance meetings, “I always wonder whether these threats are actually real or not,” he said. The few nations that don’t use the Internet “aren’t exactly the flourishing countries,” said Leblond. “Don’t be worried about the worst-case scenario."