IP: CDT and Common Cause on ICANN Reform Plan Falls Short

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ari Schwartz <ari () cdt org>
Reply-To: Ari Schwartz <ari () cdt org>
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 13:16:12 -0400
To: update () cdt org
Subject: ICANN Reform Plan Falls Short


ICANN Reform Plan Falls Short
Despite improvements, blueprint remains fatally flawed in critical
areas.

Joint Statement of the Center for Democracy & Technology and
Common Cause

JUNE 28, 2002 – Today, as expected, the Directors of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved its
"Blueprint for Reform" without amendment in Bucharest, Romania.
While an improvement on earlier drafts, the current blueprint fails in a
number of key areas and is unlikely to promote broader trust in
ICANN.
 
The reform plan approved today would firmly entrench the
policy-making authority of ICANN’s board over critical Internet naming
and numbering functions of great importance to Internet users. In
doing so it risks creating a global regulator with increased powers,
reduced public accountability, and a sharply diminished voice for the
public’s interests.

The blueprint makes modest improvements over previous proposals
that would have vested massive control over the organization in the
hands of its board, created an inappropriate role for government
control, and eliminated almost all user participation. Yet the current
plan remains critically flawed in crucial areas:

* No Meaningful Checks on ICANN’s Power. There are no meaningful
institutional limitations, checks, or balances on future expansion of
ICANN’s powers by the board. Vague wording in ICANN’s mission
documents leave the potential for almost unbounded future
expansions of power. A lack of implementation detail leaves a great
deal of ambiguity about even ICANN’s current activities.

* Diminished Accountability. The reform plan contains no mechanism
for meaningful outside review of ICANN’s actions, a baseline
requirement of ICANN’s original agreements. The Blueprint
abandons the Independent Review Panel (relying instead on a weak
internal ombudsman and non-binding arbitration proceeding), vests
more power in the hands of its board and less in its bottom-up
consensus processes, and adopts "streamlined processes" that
could diminish transparency even further, thus worsening an
increasingly serious problem with how ICANN functions.

* A Pale Shadow of Promised User Representation. The original
promise that half of ICANN’s board would be selected by the user
community has been abandoned, and users will have no direct
representation on the ICANN board. Instead, a powerful
nineteen-member Nominating Committee may include up to six
non-commercial or "public interest" members to select a part of the
board – but those members will be picked by that same board, and
operate through processes that remain poorly defined and lack
transparency. 

CDT and Common Cause believe improvements in these critical
areas should be a condition of the global Internet community's trust
in ICANN and should specifically be part of the U.S. government’s
next MoU agreement with ICANN. We look forward to working with the
international community, as well as the U.S. Department of
Commerce and the U.S. Congress, to make ICANN a better steward
of the public trust which it has been given.

CONTACTS:

Alan Davidson                                      Rob Courtney
Associate Director, CDT                  Policy Analyst, CDT
adavidson () cdt org                          rob () cdt org
202-637-9800, x110                         202-637-9800, x317


Don Simon
Counsel, Common Cause
dsimon () sinosky com
202-682-0240    

----------------------------------
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E-mail questions, comments, or requests to subscribe or unsubscribe
to ari () cdt org or call (202) 637-9800.

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at http://www.cdt.org/

-----------------------------------
Ari Schwartz
Center for Democracy and Technology
1634 Eye Street NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
202 637 9800
fax 202 637 0968
ari () cdt org
http://www.cdt.org
-----------------------------------


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