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ICANN's endorsement period for potential At-Large candidates is almost over. Three candidates have clear leads, but there's still time if you haven't endorsed anyone. Lots more below.

(You have read the background, haven't you?)

The total number of At-Large members who have "activated" their PINs in North America is just over 10,000, so since one of the requirements for nomination is 2% of the members must endorse you, the floor for a successful nomination is just over 200 endorsements. Here are the current stats:

• Karl Auerbach - 473
• Barbara Simons - 351
• Emerson Tiller - 324
• Eric Lee - 96
• Subhash Gupta - 61
• Nick Nicholas - 54
• Robin Bandy - 50

You can see the rather large gap between 3rd and 4th place. Since there are only three spots open on the ballot, Auerbach, Simons and Tiller are looking good to be nominated.

Included below is the Cyber-Federalist, a newsletter covering internet governance issues.

Date sent: Wed, 06 Sep 2000 01:20:42 +0200
To: cyber-federalist@cpsr.org
From: Hans Klein
Subject: CYBER-FEDERALIST NO.5: The ICANN Member Nomination Process

Please forward
********************************************************
CYBER-FEDERALIST No. 5 September 6, 2000

THE ICANN MEMBER NOMINATION PROCESS

Civil Society Democracy Project (CivSoc)
of
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)
(CivSoc of CPSR)
http://www.civsoc.org
http://www.internetdemocracyproject.org/
http://www.cyber-federalist.org (archive)
********************************************************
The Member Nominations phase of the ICANN elections ends this Friday (September 8). With just a few days left, we can begin to see some likely nominations and some electoral trends.

The most useful website for following the elections is the ICANNnot site, which summarizes each region's election. That site is located at:
http://www.ICANNnot.org
(Many thanks to Mr. Andrew Bloch for creating that site!)

In what follows, I summarize the present state of each regional election and speculate about the future.

EUROPE
======
Europe has had the highest turnout of any region, with over 32% of all activated members voting (21% of all members in the region.) Europe also has the fewest open positions for member nominations -- only 2 of 7, with the other 5 positions already filled by ICANN's nominees.

The two candidates most likely to win a nomination are Andy Mueller-Maguhn and Jeanette Hofmann, both from Germany and both with strong credentials for representing civil society concerns on the ICANN Board. The clear leader is Mueller-Maguhn, with more than twice the endorsements of any other candidate. Mueller-Maguhn is the Speaker of the Chaos Computer Club (www.CCC.de), an organization that promotes issues like privacy and freedom of information. (My German colleagues have uniformly emphasized that the term "chaos" refers to its philosophy of freedom and non-hierarchical organization.)

Jeanette Hofmann is a university-based social scientist who has done extensive studies of the IETF. She is a founding member of the European chapter of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (www.CPSR.org) and a signatory to the Civil Society Statement (www.civilsocietyinternetforum.org).

Two other leading European candidates are Lutz Donnerhacke and Dmitri Bourkov. Donnerhacke is a co-founder of FITUG (www.FITUG.de), which is a member of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (www.GILC.org). With about 800 endorsements, he is only about 250 votes behind the Jeanette Hoffman at the time of this writing. Bourkov, the only non-German candidate with large numbers of endorsements, has a background in the technical areas of network development in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Election data for Europe is available at:
http://www.icannnot.org/icannel.cgi?s=e&r=EU&l=e
An archived discussion forum for Europe is available at:
http://www.fitug.de/icann-europe/index.html


ASIA/AUSTRALIA/PACIFIC
======================
The region with the greatest contrast to Europe is Asia. There, only about 12% of activated members have voted (less than 5% of all Asia regional members.) Asia has three candidate positions still open, but so far only one member has passed the 2% threshold for nomination.

The leading candidate is Hong Jie Li from China, who has over 1000 votes. He has a business background and expresses concerns about business development. Three other candidates each have between 400 and 500 votes. Kuo-Wei Wu, from Taiwan, has a background in the technical and research community and is active in APNIC. Jon Ho Kim, from Korea, is an expert in intellectual property law.

The fourth candidate is Yukika Matsumoto from Japan. She is the only leading Asian candidate to strongly advocate civil society issues. She has worked with NGO's, most notably JCA-NET, which is the Japanese member of the Association for Progressive Communications (www.APC.org). At the time of this writing she has the third-highest number of votes, but has still not passed the 2% threshold needed to win a nomination.

Election data for Asia is available at:
http://www.icannnot.org/icannel.cgi?s=e&r=AP&l=e


NORTH AMERICA
=============
The North American region has three clear leading candidates for its three open positions. All three have strongly supported values of civil society.

Karl Auerbach was a co-founder of the Boston Working Group, which played an important role in ICANN's creation, ensuring that there would be an At Large membership. His extensive reform platform for ICANN can be seen at: http://www.cavebear.com/ialc/platform.htm. Barbara Simons is the former President of the Association for Computing Machinery (www.ACM.org) and founded its Internet Governance Project (http://www.acm.org/serving/IG.html), which supported the work of Kathy Kleiman. Simons is also a long-time member of CPSR. Both Auerbach and Simons have endorsed the Civil Society Statement (Auerbach contributed significantly to its creation.) The third candidate who has also passed the 2% threshold is Emerson Tiller, whose platform supports free speech and open democratic governance of ICANN.

Election data for North America is available at:
http://www.icannnot.org/icannel.cgi


LATIN AMERICA/CARIBBEAN
=======================
In this region one candidate has emerged as a clear leader, although a second person may still pass the 2% limit. With the majority of ICANN members located in Brazil, it is not surprising that both candidates are from that country.

Claudio Silva Menezes has over 800 votes out of a total of 924 at this time. He works for the Banco do Brasil in IT management. In a distant second place is Aluisio Nunes, with 60 votes. He is an independent consultant in strategic management and marketing research.

Election data for Latin America are available at:
http://www.icannnot.org/icannel.cgi?s=e&r=LA&l=e


AFRICA
======
Although only 54 votes have been cast so far in this region, the rates of participation are roughly equivalent to North America. Here the threshold to surpass is the fixed limit of 20 voters. Two of the three candidates are still far below that, with 8 and 6 votes.

The leading candidate here is Calvin Browne of South Africa. He is a director of the corporation managing the .co.za domain name space, which is the South African equivalent of .com. He also has years of experience participating in activities of ICANN and the Internet Society.

Election data for Africa is available at:
http://www.icannnot.org/icannel.cgi?s=e&r=AF&l=e


COMMENTARY
==========
These data allow one to speculate on what the future holds.

Clearly nationalism is a strong factor in these regional elections. In each region, the leading candidates are citizens of the countries with the most voters. The big countries are Brazil, Germany, United States, South Africa, and China and Japan.

In two regions -- Europe and North America -- voters have shown a clear preference for candidates expressing concerns for free speech, privacy, and democracy (what I here call "civil society values.") Every single successful candidate in Europe and North America has advocated civil society values.

For the final elections in North America, where Lawrence Lessig is also a candidate, fully 4 of the 7 Board candidates in October will likely be explicit supporters of such values. (This multiplicity of candidates does not risk splitting the vote and causing them all to lose, because the election rules will allow for the aggregation of votes.)

In Europe, only 2 of the 7 likely candidates in October seem to have a strong background in civil society issues. However, they are both from Germany, the country likely to exercise the greatest influence on outcomes. Thus, 2 of the 3 final German candidates will almost certainly be strong supporters of such values.

In Asia, there is still some chance that one civil society candidate may make it on the ballot -- Yukika Matsumoto. Otherwise, that region's electoral choices in October will largely be among candidates from the industry and technology communities.

In Africa and Latin America, the candidates with the clearest civil society orientation will be those nominated by ICANN. Both of ICANN's African nominees endorsed the Civil Society Statement (see: http://www.cpsr.org/internetdemocracy/friends-of-civsoc.html ). One of ICANN's Latin American nominees, Raul Echeberria, also endorsed the Statement and was the recipient of an endorsement from the Association for Progressive Communications (www.APC.org).

Between now and Friday's election deadline, a few questions remain. The biggest question is whether Asia voters will nominate Yukika Matsumoto, the only advocate of privacy, speech, and the public interest who has a chance to get on the ballot. In Europe, Jeanette Hoffman could still lose her position to Lutz Donnerhacke, although support for Hoffman seems to be increasing as the deadline approaches.

The election rules do allow members to switch endorsements. Yukika Matsumoto could still benefit from a last-minute wave of switched endorsements, particularly of other candidates with no prospect of success declare their support for her. That may allow her to pass the 2% threshold.

In October the big question will be whether voter behavior in this phase will be repeated in the October election. Today's voter behavior has been characterized by considerable support for candidates supporting civil society values. If the October elections look like the Member Nomination phase, then new Directors may be elected who will supplement ICANN's current concern with property rights with a concern for speech, privacy, and consumer rights.

The Civil Society Statement is available at:
http://www.CivilSocietyInternetForum.org/


###

Candidates and readers are welcome to comment on this analysis. Comments on the previous Cyber-Federalist, No.4, have been offered by: Vint Cerf, Christoph Weber-Fahr, Carl Malamud, Hans Klein, and David Reed. See: http://www.cyber-federalist.org

=========================================================

CYBER-FEDERALIST is a regularly-published series of analyses and commentaries on Internet governance and ICANN elections. It is produced as part of the Internet Democracy Project. See:
http://www.civsoc.org
http://www.internetdemocracyproject.org/
http://www.cyber-federalist.org

Subscribe to the CYBER-FEDERALIST!
send an Email to: cyber-federalist-subscribe@cpsr.org

=========================================================

Blocking software can work on any category of material. Here in the States we try to block sex. But in Germany, they're going to use censorware to go after MP3s. Its "Rights Protection System" is rumored to already be in testing - and the rights that get protected are those of Mariah Carey and her label, needless to say, not yours or mine. What does this mean for our German readers, and others? More thoughts below...

If you only read one link, read Fitug's fact sheet (in English). It summarizes the situation pretty well. See Declan McCullagh's Politech for some more links.

Basically, the German recording industry is selling the idea that they should have carte blanche to block any incoming packets they see fit, at the router. As Lawrence Lessig and others have warned, the large ISPs are the weak link, subject to easy regulation. And as Fitug's paper says, only the large service providers need be forced to use this system: small providers get their feeds from the large ones, auto-censored for their pleasure.

Think for a moment about how this system will work in practice. Pirate websites, by definition, operate under the radar: they are hard to find. They are often up only briefly, or require a password to access. They aren't linked to search engines. Sharing copyrighted material is illegal is every major Western country, so these sites aren't going to list themselves on Yahoo.

But it's already been shown that censorware can't even block what's on Yahoo. That's not an exaggeration. I work with the Censorware Project, and we did a report on Bess in 1999. The software didn't just fail to block a lot of hardcore sex. It failed to block hardcoresex.com - and hundreds of other porn sites listed on Yahoo.

This new "Rights Protection System" is going to use the same technologies as existing censorware and have about the same results:

"Im Prinzip funktioniert das 'Right Protection System' also ähnlich wie das Programm Cyberpatrol..."

"So in principle, the 'Rights Protection System' will work like the program Cyber Patrol..."

Someone has to maintain this "Rights Protection System," just like someone has to maintain Cyber Patrol. What chance does it have to find even a fraction of the napster servers, hotline servers, IRC channels, and, yes, even websites where pirate MP3s are being traded?

And when a pirate site is found, the rock'n'roll will be blocked the same way existing censorware blocks sex or drugs. Let's say a directory full of copyrighted MP3s is at

http://BigUniversity.edu/users/joepirate/secret/

The RPS staffers have no way of knowing whether "joepirate" is going to have friends who share MP3s, is going to change user IDs, or is going to put his songs into some other directory. The block will be made not on the /secret/ directory. If the university is lucky, there will be a block on the /users/ directory.

But since the "filtering" takes place at the router, it is much more likely that the entire webserver will be blocked. Big University probably won't be getting many exchange students from Germany next year.

And on what basis is the country going to ask its service providers to put this extra software on their routers? According to a spokesperson for the German branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI):

"The packet forwarding process in the router is not a passive forwarding of the incoming signals. The packet is processed and manipulated by the router before it is transmitted onwards. So the [service providers] that purchase and install these routers have a heavy participatory role in the operation of the Internet."

In other words, since the hardware is already routing ("manipulating") packets from one network to another, it's really no different to add a blacklist that forbids certain URLs or IP numbers.

The executives speaking in favor of this proposal make it sound like it's going to benefit the little musician, the one struggling to make it. The IFPI points out magnanimously that it invests some of its profits in unknown artists (duh):

"Jede dritte Mark, die mit den Hits der Megastars erwirtschaftet wird, fließt heute in die Förderung junger Künstler."

"Today, every third Mark made by the megastars' hits goes toward the promotion of young artists."

Isn't that nice. But what about the "young artists" who haven't been signed with a label yet?

If I'm trying to make a name for myself by giving away my own music, and the RPS staffers spot a directory full of my MP3s, are they really going to compare each of my files' titles against their libraries? Are they going to listen to each MP3 they find? More likely, they will assume that files named "my_heart_will_go_on.mp3" and "song-001.mp3" are songs copyrighted by someone else, and not my own original work.

Simple solution: block my whole directory. Or my whole server. If there's a little collateral damage - well, less competition for their own artists.

And they won't bother to tell me about it, of course; so my music is now blocked from eighty million potential listeners - customers - and I will never know.

This doesn't help "young artists" - unless you think enslaving them to the existing labels is helping them. The IFPI chooses to ignore that giving away MP3s can help a struggling artist, not hurt.

Meanwhile, executives for the German Authors' Rights Society (GEMA) redefine arrogance. My German is rusty and Babelfish is almost no help, so bear with me. First, they count their money:

"Erfolgreiche Jahresbilanz. Zunächst aber habe ich die Ehre, Ihnen den Geschäftsbericht 1998 vorzulegen. Er dokumentiert mit seinem Gesamtertrag von DM 1,465 Mrd. und einer Verteilsumme von DM 1,263 Mrd. die wirtschaftliche Ertragskraft unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft..."

"Successful Annual Balance. But first I have the honor to submit the business report for 1998. It documents total proceeds of 1.465 billion Marks and a distribution total of 1.263 billion Marks for our commercial music corporation..."

(Incidentally, Babelfish translates "unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft" as "our musical exploitation corporation" - which may be accurate but probably isn't what was intended.)

Then, two sentences later:

"...auch die den kreativen Schöpfer bedrohenden Kräfte, die sich hinter Schlagworten wie 'arbeitsplatzschaffende Kommunikationsgesellschaft' oder 'Digitalisierung der Welt' verstecken, nicht aus den Augen verloren werden dürfen. Hier drohen uns - allerdings zu bewältigende - Gefahren. Und in der Tat, sie werden auch nicht eine Sekunde aus den Augen verloren, diese Gefahren. So wird denn die GEMA nicht müde, die globalisierungssüchtigen Verfechter absoluter Kommunikationsfreiheit und damit Verächter von Kultur und geistigem Eigentum immer wieder in die Schranken zu verweisen."

"...and we should not lose track of those powers who threaten creative people*, who hide themselves behind slogans like 'job-creating communications company' or 'digitalization of the world.' We are threatened by these dangers - which nevertheless can be overcome. Indeed, these dangers will not for one second be lost from our eyes. GEMA will never, ever tire of putting these globalization-addicted advocates of absolute freedom of communication - the depisers of culture and intellectual property - in their place."

Boy. How serious are these guys?

But of course they're serious. After all, negative billions are at stake.

Finally, consider what will happen once the German music industry, or any other, manages to install content-based blocking at the routers of the entire country.

Pirated music isn't the only illegal content in Germany. And once the software's in place, no politician will be able to resist adding one more type of content to block.

What will be the next category they enable on their nationwide blacklist? You might think sex. I'm betting it's Holocaust-denial. The denial of the Holocaust is something I've been working against for eight years (wearing one of my other "activist hats"). And for eight years I've been repeating that the most effective way to repudiate this dishonest political ideology is to expose it to the light of day.

Let people read the junk. And let them read refutations of the junk. That's the best way for people to recognize that deniers are liars: give them access to what everyone says, and let them make up their own minds.

But the German government disagrees. Unfortunately, they don't realize that the best way to convince a confused citizen that Holocaust-deniers are saying something valuable is to have the government ban it. "After all," goes the logic, "they wouldn't ban it if it weren't dangerous - and what could be more dangerous than the truth?"

Then, finally, after they make free-speech martyrs out of neo-Nazis, will come the effort to block sexual content. All of these blocking efforts - music, Holocaust-denial, sex - will work approximately as well as censorware has worked anywhere else. And will do approximately as much collateral damage.

This approach to censoring an entire country - block content at the incoming routers - has not yet been tried on a large scale in any Western country. Many Asian countries (notably excepting Japan) and most if not all fundamentalist Islam countries have adopted nationwide blocking. We'll see if this is the first step toward bringing the technology to the West.

If anyone has information about who will be creating and maintaining the blacklists used by the "Rights Protection System," please post a comment here or email me.

Blocking software can work on any category of material. Here in the States we try to block sex. But in Germany, they're going to use censorware to go after MP3s. Its "Rights Protection System" is rumored to already be in testing - and the rights that get protected are those of Mariah Carey and her label, needless to say, not yours or mine. What does this mean for our German readers, and others? More thoughts below...

If you only read one link, read Fitug's fact sheet (in English). It summarizes the situation pretty well. See Declan McCullagh's Politech for some more links.

Basically, the German recording industry is selling the idea that they should have carte blanche to block any incoming packets they see fit, at the router. As Lawrence Lessig and others have warned, the large ISPs are the weak link, subject to easy regulation. And as Fitug's paper says, only the large service providers need be forced to use this system: small providers get their feeds from the large ones, auto-censored for their pleasure.

Think for a moment about how this system will work in practice. Pirate websites, by definition, operate under the radar: they are hard to find. They are often up only briefly, or require a password to access. They aren't linked to search engines. Sharing copyrighted material is illegal is every major Western country, so these sites aren't going to list themselves on Yahoo.

But it's already been shown that censorware can't even block what's on Yahoo. That's not an exaggeration. I work with the Censorware Project, and we did a report on Bess in 1999. The software didn't just fail to block a lot of hardcore sex. It failed to block hardcoresex.com - and hundreds of other porn sites listed on Yahoo.

This new "Rights Protection System" is going to use the same technologies as existing censorware and have about the same results:

"Im Prinzip funktioniert das 'Right Protection System' also ähnlich wie das Programm Cyberpatrol..."

"So in principle, the 'Rights Protection System' will work like the program Cyber Patrol..."

Someone has to maintain this "Rights Protection System," just like someone has to maintain Cyber Patrol. What chance does it have to find even a fraction of the napster servers, hotline servers, IRC channels, and, yes, even websites where pirate MP3s are being traded?

And when a pirate site is found, the rock'n'roll will be blocked the same way existing censorware blocks sex or drugs. Let's say a directory full of copyrighted MP3s is at

http://BigUniversity.edu/users/joepirate/secret/

The RPS staffers have no way of knowing whether "joepirate" is going to have friends who share MP3s, is going to change user IDs, or is going to put his songs into some other directory. The block will be made not on the /secret/ directory. If the university is lucky, there will be a block on the /users/ directory.

But since the "filtering" takes place at the router, it is much more likely that the entire webserver will be blocked. Big University probably won't be getting many exchange students from Germany next year.

And on what basis is the country going to ask its service providers to put this extra software on their routers? According to a spokesperson for the German branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI):

"The packet forwarding process in the router is not a passive forwarding of the incoming signals. The packet is processed and manipulated by the router before it is transmitted onwards. So the [service providers] that purchase and install these routers have a heavy participatory role in the operation of the Internet."

In other words, since the hardware is already routing ("manipulating") packets from one network to another, it's really no different to add a blacklist that forbids certain URLs or IP numbers.

The executives speaking in favor of this proposal make it sound like it's going to benefit the little musician, the one struggling to make it. The IFPI points out magnanimously that it invests some of its profits in unknown artists (duh):

"Jede dritte Mark, die mit den Hits der Megastars erwirtschaftet wird, fließt heute in die Förderung junger Künstler."

"Today, every third Mark made by the megastars' hits goes toward the promotion of young artists."

Isn't that nice. But what about the "young artists" who haven't been signed with a label yet?

If I'm trying to make a name for myself by giving away my own music, and the RPS staffers spot a directory full of my MP3s, are they really going to compare each of my files' titles against their libraries? Are they going to listen to each MP3 they find? More likely, they will assume that files named "my_heart_will_go_on.mp3" and "song-001.mp3" are songs copyrighted by someone else, and not my own original work.

Simple solution: block my whole directory. Or my whole server. If there's a little collateral damage - well, less competition for their own artists.

And they won't bother to tell me about it, of course; so my music is now blocked from eighty million potential listeners - customers - and I will never know.

This doesn't help "young artists" - unless you think enslaving them to the existing labels is helping them. The IFPI chooses to ignore that giving away MP3s can help a struggling artist, not hurt.

Meanwhile, executives for the German Authors' Rights Society (GEMA) redefine arrogance. My German is rusty and Babelfish is almost no help, so bear with me. First, they count their money:

"Erfolgreiche Jahresbilanz. Zunächst aber habe ich die Ehre, Ihnen den Geschäftsbericht 1998 vorzulegen. Er dokumentiert mit seinem Gesamtertrag von DM 1,465 Mrd. und einer Verteilsumme von DM 1,263 Mrd. die wirtschaftliche Ertragskraft unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft..."

"Successful Annual Balance. But first I have the honor to submit the business report for 1998. It documents total proceeds of 1.465 billion Marks and a distribution total of 1.263 billion Marks for our commercial music corporation..."

(Incidentally, Babelfish translates "unserer musikalischen Verwertungsgesellschaft" as "our musical exploitation corporation" - which may be accurate but probably isn't what was intended.)

Then, two sentences later:

"...auch die den kreativen Schöpfer bedrohenden Kräfte, die sich hinter Schlagworten wie 'arbeitsplatzschaffende Kommunikationsgesellschaft' oder 'Digitalisierung der Welt' verstecken, nicht aus den Augen verloren werden dürfen. Hier drohen uns - allerdings zu bewältigende - Gefahren. Und in der Tat, sie werden auch nicht eine Sekunde aus den Augen verloren, diese Gefahren. So wird denn die GEMA nicht müde, die globalisierungssüchtigen Verfechter absoluter Kommunikationsfreiheit und damit Verächter von Kultur und geistigem Eigentum immer wieder in die Schranken zu verweisen."

"...and we should not lose track of those powers who threaten creative people*, who hide themselves behind slogans like 'job-creating communications company' or 'digitalization of the world.' We are threatened by these dangers - which nevertheless can be overcome. Indeed, these dangers will not for one second be lost from our eyes. GEMA will never, ever tire of putting these globalization-addicted advocates of absolute freedom of communication - the depisers of culture and intellectual property - in their place."

Boy. How serious are these guys?

But of course they're serious. After all, negative billions are at stake.

Finally, consider what will happen once the German music industry, or any other, manages to install content-based blocking at the routers of the entire country.

Pirated music isn't the only illegal content in Germany. And once the software's in place, no politician will be able to resist adding one more type of content to block.

What will be the next category they enable on their nationwide blacklist? You might think sex. I'm betting it's Holocaust-denial. The denial of the Holocaust is something I've been working against for eight years (wearing one of my other "activist hats"). And for eight years I've been repeating that the most effective way to repudiate this dishonest political ideology is to expose it to the light of day.

Let people read the junk. And let them read refutations of the junk. That's the best way for people to recognize that deniers are liars: give them access to what everyone says, and let them make up their own minds.

But the German government disagrees. Unfortunately, they don't realize that the best way to convince a confused citizen that Holocaust-deniers are saying something valuable is to have the government ban it. "After all," goes the logic, "they wouldn't ban it if it weren't dangerous - and what could be more dangerous than the truth?"

Then, finally, after they make free-speech martyrs out of neo-Nazis, will come the effort to block sexual content. All of these blocking efforts - music, Holocaust-denial, sex - will work approximately as well as censorware has worked anywhere else. And will do approximately as much collateral damage.

This approach to censoring an entire country - block content at the incoming routers - has not yet been tried on a large scale in any Western country. Many Asian countries (notably excepting Japan) and most if not all fundamentalist Islam countries have adopted nationwide blocking. We'll see if this is the first step toward bringing the technology to the West.

If anyone has information about who will be creating and maintaining the blacklists used by the "Rights Protection System," please post a comment here or email me.