The post-JPA phase: towards a future Internet governance model – PL 03 2009

15 September 2009 | 13:30-15:00
Programme overview 2009

Keywords and questions

NTIA-RFC. European recommendation to US DoC about future of ICANN and IANA. What is meant by multistakeholder governance of the internet? What are the respective roles of the different stakeholders? Is the business sector able to take full responsibility of the well-functioning of the Internet? What would be an appropriate form of regulation for the management of the critical internet resources? On what fundamental values and principles should this be based? Is there a “European common view” on this?

Session focus

Plenary focus: NTIA-RFC. European recommendation to US DoC about future of ICANN and IANA. What is meant by multistakeholder governance of the Internet? What are the respective roles of the different stakeholders? Is the business sector able to take fully responsibility of the well-functioning of the Internet? What would be an appropriate form of regulation for the management of the critical Internet resources? On what fundamental values and principles should this be based? Is there a “European common view” on this?

Note: this discussion was before the announcement of the Affirmation of Commitment, which addresses many of the issues identified by EuroDIG.

Messages

The key aim identified in the EuroDIG discussions was that the model of Internet governance should enhance the stability, reliability, resilience and security of the functioning of the Internet. There was consensus that any future Internet Governance model should build on the existing framework as set up in and around ICANN. It was noted by many participants that the ICANN model had broadly proved to be a successful bottom-up experiment in multi-stakeholder governance with private sector leadership.

There was also broad consensus that transparency and accountability were fundamental to any Internet governance structure. It was noted that ICANN had made significant progress in terms of transparency in its policy development and consultation processes and in the provision of ready access to information through its website. It was also noted by several participants that ICANN was at least equally, if not more, transparent than many international and intergovernmental organisations. However, participants warned that providing large quantities of information and documentation did not necessarily enhance transparency. Rather in certain circumstrances, it might well lead to the overburdening of stakeholders who had limited resources to be able to identify information relevant to their interests.

With regard to accountability, it was noted by many participants that ICANN’s corporate and legal accountability was well developed compared to other international organisations. In the fields of public sphere and participating community accountability, some participants noted the achievements have been less convincing. It was also noted that, given its function of managing a resource of a global public interest, ICANN should be accountable to the global Internet community, not just to special interest groups. Many participants were of the view that civil society participation in ICANN was not yet sufficient. The discussions in EuroDIG concluded that structures for civil society participation should be further developed and that there should be more support for more diverse and better organised civil society representation within ICANN. ICANN’s current proposals to improve institutional confidence, including creation of a review mechanism for decisions taken by the ICANN Board, were broadly welcomed.

With regard to the question of whether there should be some oversight of the functioning of ICANN, there was consensus that this should not be a role for a single government or a small group of countries. Rather it was agreed that any future oversight structure should be internationally representative of the global Internet community. Some advocated that the Internet Governance Forum (the IGF) as a multistakeholder platform at the global level could have a role in a future oversight mechanism. However, questions were raised in the EuroDIG discussions as to how such a link to the IGF would work in practice. Furthermore, there was consensus that ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (the GAC) should be strengthened and that the role and competence of governments within the ICANN model needed to be more clearly defined. Participants agreed that the key roles for governments were to defend the public interest, to protect fundamental human rights (which applied equally on the Internet) and to ensure that international law was respected. Whether the advisory function, within ICANN, for governments was sufficient in order to exercise this role was questioned by some participant. It was further proposed that ICANN could consider the setting-up of an external advisory body for human rights and international law.

Participants also agreed that public policy with regard to country code top level domains (ccTLDs) should remain within the sovereign rights of states and be established locally rather than by ICANN, unless it could be shown that a policy issue had a global impact and needed to be resolved within an international framework.

With the expiry of ICANN’s Joint Project Agreement with the US Department of Commerce (the JPA) on 30 September 2009, there was consensus that this should not be considered as the end of the development of the Internet governance model but rather as the beginning of a new period and a new process for widening the framework of accountability within which ICANN would carry out its role. A key question for the participants was how this process and the future discussions should be structured.