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Stories and comments across the archive that link to internetdemocracyproject.org.

Stories · 6

  1. ICANN Meetings

    Yro · Internet · · posted by michael · from the keep-an-eye-on-'em dept. · 43 comments
    ICANN's next meeting will be Nov. 13-16, 2000, in Marina del Rey, CA. The Internet Democracy Project is conducting a meeting of At Large members on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 12, same location, so you don't have work as an excuse to miss it! The new At Large directors will be speaking at the meeting. Following that, the Berkman Center will have its own meeting examining intellectual property and the proposed new TLDs, and they've helpfully provided a set of background materials if you're not quite current with the issues. Note that ICANN "updated" their bylaws to prevent the newly elected directors from actually taking part in the ICANN Board meeting next week - they won't take office until just after all the new decisions about TLDs, etc., which will be made by the unelected directors, so it is very, very important to have some public participation since there aren't any public advocates on the board.

  2. Vote Early, Vote Often

    News · News · · posted by michael · from the if-you-can-vote-at-all dept. · 58 comments
    ICANN's At-Large Elections are now underway. If you were lucky enough to be able to get through during the registration process, and then lucky enough to actually receive your PIN in the mail, congratulations, you can vote. Click through for your FREE Slashdot voter's guide... :)

    There is actually a great deal of information available about these elections and the candidates - it puts the U.S. presidential elections to shame, quite frankly.

    Where to Vote: ICANN's online voting site

    When to Vote: Now until midnight (GMT), Oct. 10.

    Who to Vote For: That's a little less straightforward. Here's some resources to help you decide.

    The groups above recommend a voting slate of Lessig first, followed by Simons, followed by Auerbach, for the North American seat (you get to rank all seven candidates in order of your preference). Here's my recommendation, slightly different from the above:

    1. Auerbach - Auerbach understands DNS, and he understands the civil liberty issues, and he has paid a LOT of attention to ICANN, and he understands - right now - how to fix its main problems. The other recommended candidates (Simons and Lessig) have the potential to understand ICANN as well as he does, but he has already put in the study time! I picked Auerbach as my first choice.
    2. Simons - Simons understands the civil liberty issues, and has spent a lot of time in this sort of political environment, and has the potential to understand ICANN inside and out, but she hasn't put the time in yet. I picked her second.
    3. Lessig - Lessig is a smart guy. I don't think he comes with as solid a commitment to civil liberties as the others, and I don't think he has any special understanding of DNS issues. Of course he's bright enough to understand anything he puts his mind to, but why distract him from the 20 other things he's undertaking (such as joining EFF as a board member recently). Lessig gets my third choice.
    4. Tiller - Tiller is sort of a wildcard. From what he says, he would be a civil-liberties oriented candidate, but I had never heard of him before the elections, so he's a bit of a dark horse to me. Still, he beats the remaining candidates hands-down.
    5. Langenberg - Langenberg seems like he would be a fairly ineffective candidate, no civil liberties focus, not (obviously) captured by IP interests or anything else. But we don't need an ineffective candidate.
    6. Chapin - Chapin earns the second-to-last spot. He works for Verizon and can be expected to promote policies that would benefit the major telcos, as if they didn't have enough representation already.
    7. Miller - Miller is dead last. President of the ITAA, he represents all that is wrong with ICANN right now, and states flat out that he thinks they've done a great job to date and he would continue the path taken so far. If you think ICANN is right on track, vote for Miller. Bleh.

    Vote!

  3. Vote Early, Vote Often

    News · News · · posted by michael · from the if-you-can-vote-at-all dept. · 58 comments
    ICANN's At-Large Elections are now underway. If you were lucky enough to be able to get through during the registration process, and then lucky enough to actually receive your PIN in the mail, congratulations, you can vote. Click through for your FREE Slashdot voter's guide... :)

    There is actually a great deal of information available about these elections and the candidates - it puts the U.S. presidential elections to shame, quite frankly.

    Where to Vote: ICANN's online voting site

    When to Vote: Now until midnight (GMT), Oct. 10.

    Who to Vote For: That's a little less straightforward. Here's some resources to help you decide.

    The groups above recommend a voting slate of Lessig first, followed by Simons, followed by Auerbach, for the North American seat (you get to rank all seven candidates in order of your preference). Here's my recommendation, slightly different from the above:

    1. Auerbach - Auerbach understands DNS, and he understands the civil liberty issues, and he has paid a LOT of attention to ICANN, and he understands - right now - how to fix its main problems. The other recommended candidates (Simons and Lessig) have the potential to understand ICANN as well as he does, but he has already put in the study time! I picked Auerbach as my first choice.
    2. Simons - Simons understands the civil liberty issues, and has spent a lot of time in this sort of political environment, and has the potential to understand ICANN inside and out, but she hasn't put the time in yet. I picked her second.
    3. Lessig - Lessig is a smart guy. I don't think he comes with as solid a commitment to civil liberties as the others, and I don't think he has any special understanding of DNS issues. Of course he's bright enough to understand anything he puts his mind to, but why distract him from the 20 other things he's undertaking (such as joining EFF as a board member recently). Lessig gets my third choice.
    4. Tiller - Tiller is sort of a wildcard. From what he says, he would be a civil-liberties oriented candidate, but I had never heard of him before the elections, so he's a bit of a dark horse to me. Still, he beats the remaining candidates hands-down.
    5. Langenberg - Langenberg seems like he would be a fairly ineffective candidate, no civil liberties focus, not (obviously) captured by IP interests or anything else. But we don't need an ineffective candidate.
    6. Chapin - Chapin earns the second-to-last spot. He works for Verizon and can be expected to promote policies that would benefit the major telcos, as if they didn't have enough representation already.
    7. Miller - Miller is dead last. President of the ITAA, he represents all that is wrong with ICANN right now, and states flat out that he thinks they've done a great job to date and he would continue the path taken so far. If you think ICANN is right on track, vote for Miller. Bleh.

    Vote!

  4. Vote Early, Vote Often

    News · News · · posted by michael · from the if-you-can-vote-at-all dept. · 58 comments
    ICANN's At-Large Elections are now underway. If you were lucky enough to be able to get through during the registration process, and then lucky enough to actually receive your PIN in the mail, congratulations, you can vote. Click through for your FREE Slashdot voter's guide... :)

    There is actually a great deal of information available about these elections and the candidates - it puts the U.S. presidential elections to shame, quite frankly.

    Where to Vote: ICANN's online voting site

    When to Vote: Now until midnight (GMT), Oct. 10.

    Who to Vote For: That's a little less straightforward. Here's some resources to help you decide.

    The groups above recommend a voting slate of Lessig first, followed by Simons, followed by Auerbach, for the North American seat (you get to rank all seven candidates in order of your preference). Here's my recommendation, slightly different from the above:

    1. Auerbach - Auerbach understands DNS, and he understands the civil liberty issues, and he has paid a LOT of attention to ICANN, and he understands - right now - how to fix its main problems. The other recommended candidates (Simons and Lessig) have the potential to understand ICANN as well as he does, but he has already put in the study time! I picked Auerbach as my first choice.
    2. Simons - Simons understands the civil liberty issues, and has spent a lot of time in this sort of political environment, and has the potential to understand ICANN inside and out, but she hasn't put the time in yet. I picked her second.
    3. Lessig - Lessig is a smart guy. I don't think he comes with as solid a commitment to civil liberties as the others, and I don't think he has any special understanding of DNS issues. Of course he's bright enough to understand anything he puts his mind to, but why distract him from the 20 other things he's undertaking (such as joining EFF as a board member recently). Lessig gets my third choice.
    4. Tiller - Tiller is sort of a wildcard. From what he says, he would be a civil-liberties oriented candidate, but I had never heard of him before the elections, so he's a bit of a dark horse to me. Still, he beats the remaining candidates hands-down.
    5. Langenberg - Langenberg seems like he would be a fairly ineffective candidate, no civil liberties focus, not (obviously) captured by IP interests or anything else. But we don't need an ineffective candidate.
    6. Chapin - Chapin earns the second-to-last spot. He works for Verizon and can be expected to promote policies that would benefit the major telcos, as if they didn't have enough representation already.
    7. Miller - Miller is dead last. President of the ITAA, he represents all that is wrong with ICANN right now, and states flat out that he thinks they've done a great job to date and he would continue the path taken so far. If you think ICANN is right on track, vote for Miller. Bleh.

    Vote!

  5. ICANN Endorsements; Cyber-Federalist

    Yro · News · · posted by michael · from the it's-your-internet dept. · 28 comments
    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

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

  6. ICANN & Internet Democracy

    Yro · Internet · · posted by michael · from the hammering-on-the-square-peg dept. · 97 comments
    ICANN is meeting once again, this time in Yokohama, Japan. And once again, No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. Slashdot takes a look at ICANN and at the various attempts to beat some semblance of democracy and representation into the organization.

    Before we even get into this, I'm going to recommend again that everyone sign up for ICANN's At-Large membership. The deadline is July 31 - if you haven't signed up by then, you've missed your chance to be one of a few thousand voters who will affect the course of the internet's development. U.S. registration is way below that of other internet-savvy nations on a percentage-of-internet-users basis, because the media in those countries has been running extensive registration campaigns. Slashdot will be covering the election process - register to vote! (Note: if you're planning to self-nominate yourself for one of the open board seats, even if it's not the North America seat, please email me - I'd like to talk to you.) We'll also take this opportunity to plug an unofficial site for the At-Large community created by a slashdot reader, www.applyatlarge.com. It's just getting started, but the At-Large community could use some non-ICANN methods of communication.

    Jett writes "TomPaine.com has an interesting article discussing the upcoming ICANN elections. The article gives a lot of good info on how ICANN is set up as well as some analysis on some of the problems they are facing to ensure fair and democratic elections."

    There's some information about the actual on-going meeting available in near-real-time, supposedly even a web-based chat though I haven't seen it in operation, sponsored by the Berkman Center. Keep in mind that Japan is ~14 hours ahead of the U.S., so the Saturday meetings will be occuring Friday night in the U.S.

    Probably the most important news at this meeting is not the wrangling over new .TLDs, even though that is the only aspect of the ICANN meeting getting any press coverage. Though the vote hasn't happened yet, I'm willing to wager that the restrictive NSI proposals will win out - a few new .TLDs will be started, NSI will be running at least one of them (way to diversify!), with massive trademark protections so that most "good" domains will be unregistrable. That battle isn't going to be won any time soon. Note that every single problem associated with domain names - every single one, from squatting to scalping to companies hijacking domains from individuals - is caused by artificial scarcity of names. Eliminate the two sources of artificial scarcity (limited TLDs and trademark law) and all domain name problems vanish.

    But the most important initiative at this meeting is the ambitiously-named Internet Democracy Project, started by the American Civil Liberties Union, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The site is already a great collection of links on ICANN, and promises more content in the future; it's a good place to start if you're new to this whole thing. They've articulated a civil society perspective on the ICANN elections process, ICANN itself, and the domain name system - excellent reading, excellent goals, I support them entirely. It remains to be seen what will come of this, but I hope that these organizations continue to do their utmost to push their views. Imagine a world where DNS was structured as they envision.