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[ NNSquad ] [IP] Larry Strickling: ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Ro...
----- Forwarded message from David Farber <farber@gmail.com> ----- Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 14:28:33 -0400 From: David Farber <farber@gmail.com> Subject: [IP] Larry Strickling: ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Ro... Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@listbox.com> Begin forwarded message: From: Newmedia@aol.com Subject: Fwd: <nettime> Larry Strickling: ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Ro... Date: March 25, 2014 at 1:50:37 PM EDT To: dave@farber.net For IP (if you like) . . . From: gurstein@gmail.com To: nettime-l@kein.org Sent: 3/24/2014 11:32:39 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time Subj: <nettime> Larry Strickling: ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Road to Sao Paulo, and Beyond ICANN - Singapore Non-Commercial Users Constituency ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Road to Sao Paulo, and Beyond 21 March 2014 KEYNOTE ASSESSMENT BY LARRY STRICKLING, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF COMMISSIONERS, GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES >>BILL DRAKE: So I think probably, Larry, we don't -- I get to say somebody who doesn't need much introduction in this case. Given recent events, I think that I don't have to read your bio. But it is linked off the Web site, if anybody wants to know who Larry Strickling is, the Honorable Assistant Secretary of State, head of the NTIA -- of Commerce, sorry. Commerce. I'm tired. And head of the NTIA. Here is Larry Strickling. >>LARRY STRICKLING: Well, thank you, Bill. And thank you for having us here. I mean, no better way to show a person he's welcome than to have him fly 24 hours and then sit through eight hours of meeting and then react to what he's heard all day. So we'll see how exactly this plays out. But Bill had assured me, you don't have to prepare any comments. Just show up and react to the group. So that's what I'm going to do. But we'll try to cover any of the topics that I'm sure are on your mind, whether -- if I don't touch on them directly, do we have some time for Q&A? We'll try to take a few questions to make sure that we are able to address your issues. But I am extremely pleased to appear here because for 15 years, people said this would never happen. And I want to be able to -- I'm so pleased to be here to be able to say that finally the United States government has done something that Milton Mueller likes. So -- [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] Not that that was our goal. [ Laughter ] But it didn't hurt. So I just have a few points I'd like to emphasize. And again, I did sit through the discussion today with the idea of trying to pick up some of the themes and trying to weave them together into some points that then relate to the action that we did announce last Friday. And I will say that probably the most important take-away for me out of the discussion today is a point that was emphasized right from the beginning by Steve Crocker, right through the end, Marilia emphasized it again, and that's it idea that this IANA issue, the transition of the United States out of its role with the IANA functions, is really only one part of the Internet governance debate we are facing this year. And I would tell you that one of our greatest concerns in the U.S. government about this was the fear that -- well, not fear. The concern that by taking the action we took last week, that somehow we would suck the oxygen out of this larger discussion that I will tell you, in my own mind, is much more important longer term, and that's the question of how do we engage the developing world and build acceptance of the multistakeholder model in countries that haven't had the same level of experience with it as the more developed countries. That, I think, should be the focus of NETmundial. And I'm pleased, from Marilia's comments, that it should be a major topic down there. That's the role of this high-level panel chaired by the President of Estonia to start to think about that. And, frankly, it was a very important part of today's discussion as reflected in the last panel. But that, I think, is the big, big set of issues that we have to be working on. We have to find a way to get the developed world -- developing world engaged in this more than they have been. And part of that requires getting the communities in these countries, civil society, business communities, to be able to organize themselves to then provide the stakeholders that you need to have for a multistakeholder discussion. So it's not just a question of talking and convincing governments of the wisdom of this. It's partly how do you reach out to the economies in these countries that are struggling to get their arms around the Internet economy and how to kind of ride that economic wave that comes with it. But that's what we really have to be focused on. And my deepest hope of what we put into play last week is that it might serve as something of a booster shot to the efforts to focus on this larger question. And if it doesn't turn into that, then we should all say shame on ourselves because that's really what's at stake here, not just the question of who or what replaces the U.S. role in verifying the accuracy of changes to the root zone. So that's kind of my first point. The second one is that we did set out some principles for this transition last Friday. And what I hope and what I heard today is that I think that what we laid out, which were very basic, but I think that they already represent a consensus of the community. And I hope that that gets established in the discussion over the next few days, and, in particular, at the public session on Monday. But the four principles that we used to build the frame around the transition planning is we need to support and happens -- or the transition plan needs to support and enhance the multistakeholder model, it needs to maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Domain Name System, it needs to meet the needs of the global customers and partners of the IANA services, and it needs to maintain the openness of the Internet. I hope those are not controversial. We didn't intend them to be particularly controversial. We thought that these did reflect consensus viewpoints, and I hope that the community is able to affirm that. I read with great interest Milton's and the IGP's proposal, and I think the statement of principles laid out there is very much resonant with some of this. Certainly his comment about governments is one that I think is very much in sync with what we have said, which is that we are saying very clearly that there shouldn't be a government-led solution to this or a solution that is an intergovernmental organization. And just to clarify, because I guess it was a matter of debate this morning, we're not saying governments don't play a role. Governments are part of the stakeholders like everyone else, so they clearly need to be part of the discussion. But I think Milton's paper makes a good point, which is you don't want to replace a single government solution with a multi-government solution. And I think that's common sense, and it's certainly something that I hope the community embraces. But on the question of the multistakeholder involvement for all this, we've tried to make it very clear from the outset that this is broader than just ICANN. ICANN is the party with whom we contract for the performance of the IANA functions. ICANN obviously, through these meetings and through its activities, has great experience in terms of running multistakeholder processes and, more importantly, iterative multistakeholder processes where people can work together on an issue over a period of time to reach a consensus decision. So we've asked ICANN to convene, but we've made it very clear that this is something that we expect the Internet society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the RIRs, all of the technical community needs to be participating in this, and we expect that will be reflected in the session on Monday and will be reflected in the process as it's designed and carried out throughout all of this. We think it's essential the process be transparent. I don't know how long it will be it's something where it's just large groups of people continuing to meet on it, but whatever it settles on, whatever the community settles on as the right process, we believe absolutely it's got to be transparent so that people can see exactly how it's playing out. And we certainly aren't interested in seeing a top-down solution. We'd like to see this emerge out of a discussion in the community that then filters up into the proposal that is finally presented to us. A lot of questions with accountability. A lot of discussion about accountability. And one thing I wanted to make clear, I guess people read our statement but maybe they didn't read what we didn't say. But one of the things we didn't say was we didn't put the Affirmation of Commitments into play by this at all. Now, does that mean the community can't talk about it? Not at all. We fully expect that the discussion that will take place among the community is going to fairly quickly segue into these larger questions of accountability and transparency and how well the existing AoC will operate in whatever is designed and whatever the community wants to go forward with. But I want to make it crystal career that we didn't come back and say we think that document is out of touch with the times or is past due, and we're basically saying that can work, and it should still work. And if the community wants to find a way to improve it, go to it. You're welcome to take it on. But in the absence of that the affirmation is still there and will continue to operate as envisioned. I am -- I think Steve made the point, I guess a couple of times today, and I know he has made it in some of his writings. This issue of the fact that when we did the IANA contract in 2012, we had to go out and do it twice because we had to make it clear that first we took input from the international community and we reflected that in the scope of the contract that we wanted parties to compete for, and we had to do it twice to make sure that the winning bidder was actually going to take on the commitments that the international community wanted. I do think the community has to have an important discussion about that as it thinks about what replaces us. As Fiona made very clear, our role today is primarily fairly clerical in terms of what we actually do with the IANA functions. But we certainly understand the symbolism of all this. That's been a source of comfort for a lot of people, but has probably been a source of irritation for just as many if not more, other people. But this whole question -- in no way are we doing this in a way where we're handing the keys to ICANN and walking away from it. We're asking the community to stand up and say is it you want to have in terms of not just replacing the technical role we perform, but how do you replace the sense of confidence that people take out of the idea that somehow we're sitting in the middle. So we do think that's going to be a very important discussion for this community to have. I do want to also talk a little bit about some of the international versus domestic interplay here. Those of you who are from the U.S. and have been watching the press know that already we're starting to see other issues emerge out of all this. And I think people need to be understanding of that. Not that they should be modifying their discussions or their viewpoints about this, but already we're seeing people who are suggesting that the U.S. is abandoning the Internet or that this is somehow going to inevitably lead to the loss of free expression on the Internet. We don't think that's the case, but we are being pushed by some of the political elements to keep emphasizing how conditional our offer was of the transition. The idea that conditions have to be satisfied. And I think the community should simply take that up as a challenge to bring back a well-thought-through, very solid plan to us so that we can push back against some of the political pressure that's starting to emerge on this. In our mind, it's time to do the transition, but the community's got to step up now and really take this on in a way that can reassure policymakers in Washington and other people who simply want to comment on this sort of thing or use it to score political points that the responsible -- that there's a sense of responsibility here in the community to ensure these very important values such as free expression. So my final point to you is as this discussion plays out over the next many months, don't let this become a political football. We've got at least two communities that need to be really, really impressed by the discussion and the debate that's going to be held. The first is where I started. It's the developing world that still isn't certain that the multistakeholder process is going to meet their needs. All right. Well, here, we've been talking about the benefits and the values of this for years and years. Now's the chance, as I think Mikey said, the world is watching. Yeah, they are watching, and they're going to see is this community able to come together quickly? Are they able to approach this in the goal of reaching consensus as quickly as possible? We all know the multistakeholder process is chaotic, and there are going to be people out there looking to pick at it, because the second audience we're dealing with are the people who want to score political points out of this by trying to say it's not working or that it's a mess or that it's chaotic. Well, we know it's going to be that way at the outset, so it's really important for this community to act with a real sense of purpose and get people engaged in this process who are absolutely dedicated to reaching a consensus outcome in a responsible, realistic, maybe creative, hopefully creative, way. We can't let all these extraneous issues kind of take away from the goal we have because there's just too much at stake here. So I hope the community on Monday is able to establish some consensus around the principles we've set for it, and I'm really hoping the community can step up and take responsibility for this as quickly as possible and demonstrate once and for all that this multistakeholder business really works and is the way to move forward with these Internet policy-making issues as we work through these issues over the next many years. So thank you very much, and with that, I'll take some questions. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message ----- --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad