RConversation

China isn't happy with the IGF

On the final day of a four-day meeting, most government representatives expressed support for renewing the Internet Governance Forum's five-year mandate which ends next year. China did not.  Chen Yin, the head of the Chinese delegation to the Internet Governance Forum, said yesterday that the IGF's mandate should not be continued without reforms. Below is the full text of his statement, taken from the official transcript here (PDF). Video (with bad-quality audio in Chinese) can be found on YouTube here. I've added a few links so that the acronyms will make more sense to people who aren't professional Internet governance wonks:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chinese delegation has noted that as mandated by WSIS, IGF has conducted productive and effective activities in promoting dialogue and exchange among the multi-stakeholders, and will conclude its mandate within its five-year life span. We would like to congratulate and appreciate the excellent work done by IGF Secretariat, MAG, and all the hosting countries including Greece, Brazil, India and Egypt. Meanwhile, we would like to point out some of the IGF shortcomings, as described following. 

First of all, the current IGF cannot solve in substance the issue of unilateral control of the critical internet resources.

Secondly, the developing countries are lack of resources for participating in IGF meetings, and the priority of development agenda has been downplayed, which made IGF lacking of broad representation. 

Thirdly, the issues discussed in IGF have duplicated a lot with the work being explored and covered by other UN agencies and international organizations.

Therefore, Chinese delegation think, without reform to the IGF as it is, it is not necessary to give the IGF a five-year extension. In the meantime, we noted that relevant parties, developing countries in particular, hope that internet governance issues could be discussed at the U.N. level. We support the views of Saudi Arabia and other developing countries in their proposal to set up the Enhanced Cooperation mechanism within the U.N. framework.

In our view, if the mechanism of Enhanced Cooperation needs the extension of IGF for the purpose of exchanging views among multi-stakeholders, IGF should carry out reforms in the following ways. 

First, the future IGF should, in accordance with the provision of Tunis Agenda, focus on how to solve the issue of unilateral control of the critical Internet resources. 

Secondly, the representation and voices of the developing countries should be increased in the IGF, and the development issue should be placed as the first priority. 

Thirdly, we should seriously consider the possibility of incorporating IGF financing into the regular U.N. budget, and provide assistance to developing countries for their participation in the IGF meetings. 

Fourthly, we should follow rigidly the Tunis Agenda so that the reformed IGF should not duplicate the work and mandate of the other organizations.

Fifthly, a Bureau should be set up with a balanced membership of various parties and geographical regions, and its term of reference and rules of procedures should be formulated by the United Nation. 

Sixthly, on tenure of the future IGF, we deem it necessary to review the extension of the IGF every two or three years.

In the view of the Chinese delegation, the setting up of a mechanism for Enhanced Cooperation with a reformed IGF will effectively promote the global Internet governance process and facilitate the achievement of Millennium Development Goals.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Muzzled by the United Nations

The Internet Governance Forum is winding down today in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. There have been a lot of very constructive conversations in workshops and panels over the past four days about how to advance security, privacy, child protection, AND human rights and free expression on the Internet. Unfortunately, the biggest headline coming out of the forum so far has been an incident on Sunday in which a poster promoting a book about censorship by the Open Net Initiative was removed by U.N. security. See reports by the BBC, the Associated Press, and the ONI's FAQ on the incident. Also see a YouTube video of the incident, and video of IGF Chairman Markus Kummer explaining the incident.

Kummer said in his briefing that the UN has a "no-poster policy," although various other posters have in fact appeared at various times throughout the conference. One example here.  According to those present during the ONI incident, the reason for the poster's removal given by U.N. security officials at the time was that a U.N. member state had complained about it. Given that the poster mentioned Chinese Internet censorship, we can guess which member state objected.

The Chinese government made it clear earlier this year that they do not want the IGF to continue.  Veteran IGF attendees have pointed out that there has been no Chinese-organized panel or workshop this year, in contrast to previous years. In conversations in the corridors with some participants from Western governments and other organizations, a number of people have expressed concern that China is feeling alienated. Nobody is sure what China's next move will be, and there is worry that the Chinese government may ally itself with some other governments in a move to end the IGF after its initial five-year mandate expires next year.

In a workshop about governance of social networks on Tuesday afternoon, I raised a number of specific examples of how various governments are moving to stifle free expression by their citizens on social networking websites through a variety of censorship and surveillance measures. I also raised other problems that some  human rights activists in specific countries have encountered when using social networks to document human rights violations or organize political movements:  they sometimes get their accounts shut down by company administrators because their images documenting human rights abuses are too violent or the pattern of their political organizing activity is too similar to spamming. Examples included:

• China's system of censoring blogs and social networking services: Overseas services like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogspot, and the like are blocked in China. As a result most people in China use social networks and blogging services run by domestic companies which are held liable for everything their users post on their services. These companies end up having to set up up entire departments of employees whose job it is to monitor and censor all user-generated content on their services. Foreign companies wanting to create localized versions are expected to do the same. MySpace is one company that ended up doing so, though many other companies - including Facebook - have opted for now not to set up censored versions of their services inside China, despite the fact that this denies them access to a large user base, because they are uncomfortable getting so deeply into the censorship game.
• South Korea's real-name registration system, which caused YouTube to disable video uploads and comments on YouTube Korea. Google was concerned that hosting such data domestically inside Korea might cause the company to violate the Global Network Initiative's principles on free expression and privacy, which Google has committed to uphold.
• Egyptian blogger and journalist Wael Abbas used YouTube to document human rights abuse and torture by the Egyptian police, and got his account suspended by YouTube administrators because they thought he had violated Terms of Service banning "gratuitous violence."
• Grassroots political activists in a range of countries from India to the United States have had their Facebook accounts suspended because Facebook's automated systems thought they were spammers.

This afternoon (4pm local time, 9am EST, 9pm Beijing) I will be speaking on a plenary panel about social networks. I and the other panelists have been told very clearly by people in charge that we can't mention specific U.N. member countries, and we're discouraged from "naming and shaming" any other kinds of specific entities as well. It's going to be rather difficult to discuss emerging issues related to social networks without being able to give any specific examples of specific countries and companies. More broadly, it's rather difficult to make progress in global Internet governance without being able to discuss specific cases in the public meetings, or applying any value judgments to what any of the actors are doing. But that's the United Nations for you. Last night I considered whether it even made sense for me to remain on the panel. I decided to stay on it because I hope that I can get a message across - albeit generically - about free expression concerns on social networks, and how the Global Network Initiative is one way to help companies navigate these concerns.

For what it's worth, live video of the session will be here.

ICANN, civil society, and free speech

Gordon Crovitz's Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between ICANN and the future of free speech quotes me a couple of times. An extended excerpt:

Rebecca MacKinnon, a Web researcher writing a book about lessons from China on Internet freedom, praises Icann for being influenced by nongovernmental groups, not just governments. “The U.N. model of Internet governance is highly unsatisfactory from a human-rights and free-expression point of view for obvious reasons,” she told me. “The Chinese and the Iranians and various other authoritarian countries will insist on standards and rules that make dissent more difficult, destroy the possibility of anonymity, and facilitate surveillance.”

Up to now, governments have been largely hands-off. An amusing example is the dispute over the domain www.newzealand.com. The queen of England, “in right of her Government in New Zealand, as Trustee for the Citizens, Organizations and State of New Zealand,” brought an action in 2002 against a Seattle-based company called Virtual Countries Inc. that had registered the Web address. The queen argued that her antipodean country should have control over its own .com name. This may sound reasonable, but she lost. New Zealand had to buy the .com address for $500,000.

Will governments like China’s be as philosophical about Internet domain decisions they don’t like?

Countries such as China, Russia and Iran have long argued that it’s wrong for Icann to report to the U.S. government. Any alternative to the light control exerted by the U.S. government could put the Web on a slippery course toward more control. This is one reason efforts by these countries to politicize Icann have failed in the past.

“I think the question here is not about which governments have the moral right to lead Internet governance over others,” Ms. MacKinnon argues, “but about whether it’s appropriate that Internet governance should be the sole province of governments, many of which do not arguably represent the interests of Internet users in their countries because they were not democratically elected.”

Crovitz emailed me last week when he was researching his column. I was somewhat more critical of ICANN's status quo in our exchange than in the quotes he ended up using. Below are my full answers, emailed to him on Thursday (hyperlinks added for people not familiar with some of the names, events, and terms to which I refer without explanation). If you are not familiar with ICANN acronyms and developments you may want to read this post and this post first.

Q: Why has China re-engaged with ICANN and what are Beijing's main concerns?

A: First of all, the issue of how Taiwan is to be named and treated is now resolved, and given the improvement in cross straits relations, sitting around the same table with the Taiwanese delegation has ceased to be an insurmountable issue. Secondly, ICANN is at a major juncture as it prepares to roll out internationalized TLD's, which means that URLs, completely in Chinese, before and after the dot, will become internationally possible for the first time ever in 2010. There are a bunch of technical issues with the way IDN TLD's get implemented, including whether it will be possible to have less than three characters in IDN gTLDs, etc., etc. (And given that most words in Chinese are 2 characters, that's a big deal which the mainly Western staff has a hard time getting their heads round.) There is also a long list of outstanding, unresolved details regarding the "new applicant guidebook" which will be finalized later this year: requirements for who can apply to run a new TLD, how much they'll be charged, who has the right to object to the use of certain brand names or place names or other names that certain cultures feel they have claim to, etc. The Chinese government and Chinese companies clearly have an interest in the details of how these things get implemented because it will impact how the Chinese language Internet can evolve internationally in the years to come. So Beijing really can't afford to be disengaged from ICANN if it wants to have a role in shaping these things.

Another reason China disengaged from ICANN was that during the WSIS process it and a number of other countries (Iran, Brazil, the EU) were pushing to have internet governance moved out of ICANN to the ITU or some other UN-like or UN body. However at WSIS in 2005 it became clear that there wasn't sufficient international consensus for that to happen, human rights groups (including HRW) were vocal about the free speech implications, and the U.S. insisted on maintaining the status quo. A compromise was the formation of the IGF- a yearly multistakeholder forum where people from all around the world - governments, corporations, and civil society, get together and try to work out what the main issues are on Internet governance and where things shoudl go from here. China has declared the IGF to be a waste of time that should be discontinued. It argues that that Internet governance should be left to governments, who adequately represent the interests of internet users, and that the multistakeholder governance model (which ICANN also uses, but as part of actual decision-making structures unlike the IGF which is only a talk shop) is ineffective and unnecessary.

Q: What concerns should others have about China's re-engagement?

A: China's re-engagement with ICANN is actually a good thing, as long as ICANN maintains its multistakeholder, consensus-based decisionmaking structure, and as long as the Government Advisory Council (which China rejoined) is not given excessive powers disproportionate to other stakeholder groups within ICANN. Chinese registrars and registries have remained engaged throughout ICANN's life, actually. It's just that the government wasn't engaged. The issue is whether China will feel that its interests (many of which are reasonable, like properly serving the linguistic and technical needs of Chinese Internet users and making it possible for Chinese companies to operate on an even playing field with Western ones) are adequately served within the ICANN structure, or whether it ultimately concludes that ICANN can't ultimately serve its interests, in which case they will go back to advocating its total dismantlement - or lead the way in splitting the root, taking the non-English speaking developing world with them.

The key in my view is to ensure that Chinese non-governmental civil society interests, and the interests of Chinese speakers not living in the PRC, can be heard and upheld by ICANN as it works out the shape of the global multilingual Internet. Whether or not that happens depends in part on whether non-PRC and Chinese non-governmental groups recognize the importance of engaging with ICANN, and get the financial support they need to engage, attend its meetings, and get involved with GNSO council through which at-large users and non-commercial voices can voice their concerns and seek representation. Right now Chinese civil society voices are absent from ICANN. Nobody's blocking them from being there necessarily - they're just not there. I guess mainly because very few people in the human rights/free expression space are paying any attention to ICANN if they even know it exists..

Q: The planned IDN/gTLD expansions could empower groups that might not be in political favor by giving them their own extensions, etc.. Does the governance structure of ICANN, with ultimate authority resting in the U.S. Dept. of Commerce., create an opportunity for greater rights to free expression? How has ICANN and Commerce been doing with this reponsibility?

A: From everything I have observed, the U.S. government's relationship with ICANN is extremely hands-off. That may be in part because ICANN isn't doing anything that goes against U.S. interests. But ICANN's decisionmaking structure is very complex. It's not like they're taking orders from Gary Locke and his people. They have a board and several layers of councils and constituencies who feed into the board's decision-making process, in addition to a large number of paid staff, and a CEO. The engineers who actually make the DNS work have a lot of power. So do the commercial registrars and registries, and other groups. Then there is an at-large user constituency and a non-commercial user constituency, both of which feed into the GNSO council which then feeds into the board. Etc. I do get the sense that the primary criteria for decision making has to do with what will keep the global internet working smoothly and what will make the domain name system globally inter-operable, rather than what the U.S. government wants.

I can certainly see why everybody except Americans think it's unfair, however, that the U.S. has ultimate power over ICANN. Especially at a time when Americans are no longer the biggest user group on the internet,  we're shrinking fast as a percentage of overall global internet users. Chinese are now the biggest user group and they're only going to get bigger. Whatever I think of the Chinese government, I can understand how the situation looks to non-Americans. Insisting that the U.S. should keep the keys to ICANN is like saying that only white male Protestant land-owners from Virginia deserve the right to have the final say over how the U.S. is run. In the long run insisting on the status quo is a very un-democratic position to hold, if we are actually going to be intellectually honest.

That said, the UN model of internet governance is highly unsatisfactory from a human rights and free expression point of view for obvious reasons: the Chinese and the Iranians and various other authoritarian countries will insist on standards and rules that make dissent more difficult, destroy the possibility of anonymity and facilitate surveillance. No good. So what to do?

Ultimately, I think the question here is not about which governments have the moral right to lead Internet governance over others, but about whether it's appropriate that Internet governance should be the sole province of governments, many of which do not arguably represent the interests of Internet users in their countries because they were not democratically elected. In addition, I don't trust any government or any collection of governments - even if it were restricted to mature democracies - to uphold my freedom of speech and civil liberties. I don't think the U.S. government has been doing such a stellar job lately, and it too is placing increasing priority on security and fighting crime at the expense, I believe, of free speech and privacy. Sure we need security, but I don't think the USG had the balance right under Bush and I think Obama will disappoint the human rights/free speech community as well. Which is one reason why I think that having a multistakeholder model of Internet governance - in which both civil society and a range of private interests are able to have an equal role in decisionmaking alongside government representatives - is extremely important. There are too many constituencies across the global Internet whose interests cannot not be adequately represented, and whose rights cannot be adequately protected, by traditional geopolitical constructs.

So in my ideal scenario, ICANN's agreement with Commerce gets renewed in September but acknowledging the reality that ICANN's governance model has to evolve into something both more international and more multistakeholder-based over the longer term. Because if it doesn't, and if large parts of the world led by China eventually decide they want to create an alternative DNS not governed by ICANN because ICANN's Internet fails to suit their needs, they can and will do that. And that would be much, much worse. ICANN only has any power at all because everybody in the world has agreed to use its DNS. 

Meanwhile efforts need to be made to help non-governmental civil society constituencies from Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the former Soviet Bloc, and Africa gain a stronger foothold and voice within ICANN's multistakeholder structure. So that when the inevitable happens and the U.S. moves over to share power with other governments, as is only reasonable as Americans become a shrinking minority of Internet users, there will be plenty of other stakeholders involved with the process making sure that the governments who weren't elected and who would prefer to suppress dissent are not able to hijack the Internet's future as they've hijacked certain UN bodies.

***

So ends the e-mail exchange. One thing I did not get into with Crovitz are my concerns about whether ICANN's multi-stakeholder model is truly effective, and whether it is currently doing enough to listen to the needs of Internet users in the developing world and people who stand to benefit most from the forthcoming expansion of IDN gTLD's. Right now, I don't think ICANN is doing an adequate job at incorporating the concerns of non-commercial, civil society interests into its decision-making process.

If ICANN is serious about serving the needs and interests of all of the world's Internet users - not just the rich Western ones - they need to find a way to strengthen, support, and empower ICANN's non-commercial users. As the Internet expands to become a largely non-English place, the concerns of non-English speakers, people from the developing world, and people who are not represented by democratic governments become much more important.  ICANN needs to find a way to make sure these people's concerns are heard and rights are protected. Right now, it's a fact that the ICANN community is not adequately seeking out or incorporating the views of the people who are fast becoming the majority of Internet users on the planet.

What does the proposed New Applicant Guidebook mean for Iranian dissidents? For Tibetans and Uighurs? For native speakers of Urdu, Bangla, and Malagasy? How might the recommendations proposed in the IRT report on trademark protection play out for potential domain registries and registrants in the developing world? I have seen no evidence when I was at Sydney that these questions have been seriously explored. If ICANN is serious about its stated mission, shouldn't they be?

The board hasn't made nearly enough effort to seek answers to these questions as they prepare to expand the gTLD space and roll out IDNs - assuming they really do care about the answers, which frankly I think they have failed to prove. On the other hand, in my humble opinion, the Non-Commercial User Constituency (NCUC) hasn't done nearly enough to play the role it could be playing.

The NCUC is currently struggling with ICANN staff over their governance charter. NCUC members had engaged in a consensus process to create a charter that they felt would best enable them to represent the interests of non-commercial Internet  users around the world. ICANN staff has rejected that charter and is instead asking them to adopt a top-down governance structure, through which they would only be able to directly elect three out of the six NCUC representatives on the GNSO council. I won't get into all the details but you can read the discussion of the issue here and here, among other places.

Based on what various people at ICANN have told me, there appear to be concerns amongst some members of the ICANN board that the NCUC is dominated by a certain group of American lawyers and academics, who for some reason they don't like. There are a lot of personal animosities in both directions that seem to go way back to when ICANN was founded. Who gives a flying fart about those fights beyond the people involved? Everybody involved with ICANN needs to put the past behind them and figure out how to prove to the world that it can indeed be an effective, truly multi-stakeholder organization that represents the interests of the world's Internet users.

Until recently, the NCUC (which in my observation has in fact until now been run mainly by American and European academics and lawyers), has not had the depth of expertise and experience among its membership - and leadership - to be truly helpful on matters of greatest concern to the developing and non-English speaking world. Nor has the At-Large constituency - the other potential vehicle for individual user interests seemed to be very useful in that regard. But the NCUC has in the past few months undergone a big recruitment drive and has brought in a lot of new members from around the world. I'm optimistic that with its new bottom-up structure (if ICANN allows it) the concerns of a new, more diverse membership will be able to drive the constituency's work at ICANN in the future. I'm also optimistic that if members of civil society groups around the world view the NCUC as an effective way to engage with ICANN, they will make greater effort to participate. It's time for ICANN to prove that its multi-stakeholder bottom-up process, which new CEO Rod Beckstrom has been bragging about, is not a sham.

ICANN and Free Speech

Upon being appointed as ICANN's new CEO in Sydney, Rod Beckstrom gave a rousing speech in which he stressed the vital importance of free expression on the Internet:

I believe in a world where every human being has the ability to communicate with other human beings openly and freely.

He then evoked recent events in Iran:

... what more poignant event do we need than what we've seen in the last few weeks, when people have sought to share their sides of a story -- both sides of a story, without taking a position -- in what's going on in Iran around a democratic election, as people have tweeted, Facebooked, YouTubed and shared their content to organize and participate in what they seek, and the government has organized and participated and taken steps in its nature. It shows how critically vital this platform is, that you have created.

That many people will literally fight and die for.

Many ordinary, powerless people are indeed willing to fight and die. But is ICANN going to help them? Or at very least make sure that their decisions won't help those who want to muzzle them?

As Beckstrom and ICANN's board grapple with competing visions of how ICANN should evolve, will the right of ordinary citizens around the world to express themselves - sometimes in ways that companies and governments don't like - be adequately considered? It's hard to tell.

Do ICANN's recent actions and immediate plans reflect the same respect for free expression that the new CEO claims is worth fighting and dying for? I wish I could say "yes" but many people are concerned that the answer is currently leaning more in the direction of "no."

ICANN is about to implement a massive expansion of Internet real estate, most likely starting next year unless the commercial interests opposing the plan succeed in stalling the process. New "general Top Level Domains" (gTLDs) will allow anybody with the resources to apply to run a new "top level domain" registry (the part of your Internet address that goes after the dot, e.g.: .com, .net, .asia, .mobi, etc.). At the same time, ICANN also plans to implement "internationalized domain names" (IDNs). That means it will be possible for people to set up TLD registries in any language or script - including Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Thai, Bangla, you name it. A concrete example: after some people (yet to be determined: more about that later) have set up some IDN gTLD registries in various non-English scripts,  the citizen media community I co-founded, Global Voices, will be able to set up a range of domain names in those scripts for our "Lingua" websites in a range of different languages. In Chinese it might be: 全球之声.组织 ...and so forth.

For the first time, web addresses will be truly multilingual. This represents a huge step forward toward realizing the dream of a truly multicultural, multilingual Internet that is fully accessible to people all around the world. The next several hundred million Internet users on the planet will not be English speakers, and many won't have any education in languages that use anything resembling the Latin alphabet. The next hundred million people who will join the Internet are going to be largely from developing nations, will be increasingly rural, and are going to have much lower levels of education - meaning they're a lot less likely to be the kind of educated elites who are going to feel comfortable typing English-language URL's into browsers.

Let's return to Beckstrom's Iran example. Right now, the Internet is largely the province of Iran's elites. There are a number of economic and political reasons for this. But right now there remain serious linguistic barriers to a rural Iranian with a primary school education seeking information - let alone expressing him or herself - online. With IDN gTLDs, it will for the first time become possible to interact with the Internet 100% in Farsi. Language is not the only barrier to connecting ordinary, less wealthy or educated Iranians living outside Tehran to a global community of Farsi-speakers. But I also think that English-speakers tend to gravely underestimate just how great the language barrier really is to non-college educated people who speak languages not written in Roman scripts.

It's in the interest of global free expression for IDN gTLD's to be implemented as soon as all the basic issues of technical interoperability and basic security can be worked out. However many large trademark owners (mainly companies) are concerned that new gTLD plan will increase their costs and lead to cybersquatting. If new gTLDs are to be implemented, many companies are arguing, there need to be ample safeguards in place for trademark holders. In response ICANN commissioned its intellectual property constituency to formulate a set of recommendations. The Implementation Recommendation Team's final report recommends a number of measures including a global IP Clearing House to mediate trademark disputes, a Globally Protected Marks list and a "Thick Whois" which means that registries will have to retain more consolidated information about domain name owners.  Click here for a critiques and concerns submitted by a range of organizations and individuals. Privacy advocates are concerned about the concentration of data and whether this will increase the chances of registries contributing to more Shi Tao cases. Free speech advocates have long been concerned about the use of intellectual property and trademark claims to stifle legitimate free speech. These concerns abound in spades as regards the IRT report.

In keeping with this post's Iran theme, one of my favorite recent free speech critiques of the IRT is titled Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and the Globally Protected Marks List, by Graham Chynoweth. I quote at length:

At first blush, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Globally Protected Marks List (GPML) do not seem to have anything in common. The first is a politician of debated repute that is seeking to quell disputes over the legitimacy of his election. The second is a recommendation that seeks to protect trademark owners and consumers from an explosion of infringement and source confusion that could be wrought by the introduction of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). However, upon a closer analysis, they do share one common flaw: both have arguably failed to appropriately prioritize the right to free speech.

In Iran, Ahmadinejad, according to major new organizations, leads a government that has placed restrictions on what the press can cover and publish and what people may say in public. Clearly, some, and certainly Ahmadinejad, would argue that these restrictions on speech are necessary to protect the orderly occurrence of commercial and social intercourse in Iran. However, equally clearly, many would argue that these dictates violate at least one traditional, admittedly American, norm regarding speech—the prohibition on its 'prior restraint.' In order words, it isn't 'fair' or 'right' that the Ahmadinejad government has stopped people from reporting or speaking before it is known whether what they intend to say or publish will actually cause unrest.

In the IRT Final Draft Report, a recommended new mechanism, the GPML, is proposed, which will:

I. prevent individuals from applying to create a new TLD that is identical or confusingly similar to certain 'globally protected marks' until the party interested in running the TLD has gone through a not insignificant administrative process and proven "that the applied-for TLD is not sufficiently similar (visually, aurally, and in commercial impression) as to be likely, as a matter of probability and not mere possibility, to deceive or cause confusion or that it otherwise has legitimate rights to use the applied-for TLD", IRT Final Draft Report, p 19., and

II. prevent individuals from registering domain names in a new TLD that are identical to certain 'globally protected marks' until they prove that the "registration would be consistent with generally accepted trademark laws; namely, that its use of the domain name would not infringe the legal rights of the GPM owner." IRT Final Draft Report, p 19.Or more explicitly stated, in such cases, "[t]o overcome the block, the applicant must show that it has a right or legitimate interest in the initially blocked name." Id.

Just as in the Ahmadinejad case, some would argue that these restrictions are necessary to protect the orderly occurrence of commercial and social intercourse on the Internet. However, also as in the case above, many would argue that these rules violate the traditional American and Internet norm that prohibits 'prior restraints.' In other words, it isn't 'fair' or 'right' for ICANN to stop people from creating TLDs or registering domain names before it is known whether the use of a word in the TLD or domain name, in fact, infringe upon the rights of a trademark holder.

Given the centrality of the idea of 'prior restraint' to this post, it seems important to outline the concept more definitively. Thus, more specifically, 'prior restraint' is the creation of any mechanism that effectively prevents or retards an individual from speaking or publishing material until they can prove the truthfulness or legitimacy of words they intend to speak or the material they intend to publish. See Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931). In the Ahmadinejad case we see a 'prior restraint' on speech until the speaker or publisher can show the Iranian government that the speech (broadly construed) will not to cause unrest in the population. In the GPML case, we see a proposed 'prior restraint' on the publishing of a TLD or domain name into the DNS until the publisher can prove that they have a 'legitimate' interest in the word or words at issue.

Later he writes:

Given the importance of the importance of the concept of 'prior restraint' in the context of the American legal tradition, not to mention in the context of the Internet's cultural tradition, it is difficult to imagine how the bestowing the right of 'prior restraint' on the owners of 'globally protected marks' meets this test. More specifically with regard to the latter issue, given the centrality and strength of the prohibition on 'prior restraints' in United States constitutional jurisprudence and that ICANN is inextricably linked and/or given authority by a federal agency of the United States government, it seems apparent that any opponent to the proposed scheme would have, at least at first blush, a credible argument to make before US courts, should they desire to prevent the implementation of the IP Clearing House recommendation into the new TLD space.

Beckstrom made it pretty clear to the New York Times last week that he thinks California Law (which last time I checked was under U.S. law) is good for ICANN and good for the Internet. Will he make that case to the IRT-supporters at ICANN?

ICANN's beleaguered Non-Commercial Users Constituency - the body in ICANN set up to represent non-commercial grassroots interests including those of, say, Iranian student protesters trying to use the Internet to organize and get their message out - has issued two long position papers, one on the substantive problems and one on the procedural problems of the IRT. In a nutshell, they write:

"the substantive IRT recommendations take ICANN far afield of its technical scope and mission, create substantive new trademark rights (beyond existing law), gut existing safeguards and fair procedures for domain name registrants in the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”), and create an unbounded situation for abuse by trademark lawyers and those representing trademark owners."

If you're interested in working with the NCUC to advocate for non-commercial grassroots interests in the domain name system, apply to join the constituency here (having no funding and no paid staff, their site is not the most impressive ever to be seen, but they're working to build it with a group of volunteers).

The NCUC itself is fighting for fair representation within ICANN's allegedly bottom-up, grassroots, and inclusive decision-making process. Right now they are under-represented on the GNSO Council (one of the councils that inputs to the iCANN board which then makes final decisions). Efforts to get equal representation for NCUC delegates on the council, in proportion with commercial interests, have met with roadblocks. It's a long, political story. Click here and here for all the gory details. In a nutshell: first, the NCUC is having a charter imposed on them which create a very top-down structure, as opposed to the more bottom-up and democratic structure agreed upon by the community; secondly, the NCUC is only allowed to elect 3 of its 6 council seats: the remaining 3 will be appointed for them by the Board. NCUC chair Robin Gross writes:

Welcome to "bottom-up" policy making at ICANN: where participants are invited to build a "consensus" among a broad range of interests, only to have that consensus discarded by ICANN as a result of relentless insider back-channel lobbying from special interests.

Apparently we noncommercial users wasted our time building consensus among global civil society and participating in a public discussion forum, when we should have been lobbying ICANN board members and ICANN executive staffers -- since that seems to be the only channel of public input ICANN feels accountable to.

Obviously, noncommercial users will never be able to effectively participate in a policy development forum that is predicated on and dominated by insider lobbying from entrenched commercial interests.   ICANN's Board of Directors has a responsibility to the global public interest to ensure noncommercial interests can play a meaningful role in ICANN policy development despite its lack of economic backing. Unfortunately protection for noncommercial interests is systematically being squeezed-out of ICANN's policy development process by commercial interests.

Many people representing commercial interests might argue that simply by engaging in Internet business and connecting people around the world, the needs and interests of students in Iran or ethnic minorities in China are ultimately being met anyway. But experience with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and other companies in China has shown that the real world is not so simple. Companies do not always have the human rights interests of their users foremost in mind - understandably, they're seeking to maximize profits for their shareholders. As result, however, free expression can become collateral damage. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft finally recognized this to be true and signed on to the multi-stakeholder Global Network Initiative, working together with non-governmental free speech organizations, academics, and socially responsible investors to make sure that they conduct their business around the world in ways that do not trample on users' rights to free expression and privacy.

I hope that like those three Internet giants, ICANN will also recognize that even the most well-meaning Internet entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley are capable of making very bad mistakes. Ordinary non-commercial Internet users all around the world who use the Internet to improve their communities and countries would very much like to help ICANN build an Internet that can support and expand global freedom. But most of these people don't have budgets to fly around the world to ICANN meetings, as companies and governments do. ICANN needs to make an effort to ask questions, seek out these people's concerns, and really listen.

Let's hope that Beckstrom will live up to what he said in Sydney. Nobody expects him to die for free speech as did the Iranian activists he praised. But we certainly hope that he will make a genuine effort to support and protect it.

China @ ICANN: thoughts from former CEO Paul Twomey

Nobody else appears to have reported this - at least not anywhere I can find - but last week marked a major turning point for China's engagement with ICANN. It was probably also a major turning point in China's strategy on Internet governance.

The Chinese government sent Cui Shutian, Deputy Director, Division of Telecommunications Services and Resources, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to represent its interests in ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) at last month's ICANN meeting in Sydney. Outgoing ICANN CEO Paul Twomey confirmed to me that it was the first time the Chinese government has engaged directly with ICANN since 2001.

(It's likely that some of my more China-focused and less-techie readers have never heard of ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This California-based non-profit corporation is responsible for making sure that the Internet functions as one globally inter-operable system. Its primary job is to coordinate the global assignment of domain names and IP addresses - which turns out to be a very complicated and increasingly political job. Click here, here, here, and here for useful background.)

One reason the Chinese government disengaged from ICANN and is now re-engaging will be familiar to China wonks: Taiwan. The issue of what it should be called. Beijing was not interested in lending any legitimacy to Taiwan's government under the pro-independence president Chen Shui-bian, and the Chen government wasn't big on compromising with Beijing either. Now it's agreed that Taiwan will officially be referred to as "Chinese Taipei" at ICANN (though the .tw designation won't change), and the two governments in the Ma Ying-jeou era are more willing to be pragmatic with one another, in cyberspace as well as in "meatspace."

The second reason for China's re-engagement with ICANN is that the Chinese government and ICANN have both realized they need each other, at least for the short and medium term.

Some background (skip this paragraph if you are an Internet governance wonk): The Chinese government has long suported Internet governance reform. The fact that ICANN (founded in 1998) ultimately answers to the U.S. Department of Commerce has for most of this decade been a matter of concern to a number of governments, from China to Brazil, Iran, and the European Union. Reform proposals have ranged from ICANN "internationalization" - with supervision by multiple governments - to scrapping ICANN completely and transferring its functions to a U.N. body like the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). Arguments over ICANN's future reached a climax in 2005 during the run-up to the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, at which governments agreed there wasn't enough consensus to change the ICANN-based status quo. Instead, the Internet Governance Forum was created with a 5-year mandate to continue inter-governmental and multi-stakeholder dialogue on how the global Internet should be governed, managed, developed, and regulated in the future. That mandate will end next year. In May of this year China publicly opposed the renewal of the IGF's mandate, declaring it a costly, messy, time-wasting shop and reiterating its longstanding position that Internet governance should be in the hands of sovereign governments, not other groups. Meanwhile the Joint Project Agreement between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce expires this September. The U.S. Congress, concerned with U.S. interests, wants to keep things as they are. The European Union issued an official statement last month calling for "a more open, independent, and accountable governance of the Internet." African nations, interestingly, have shifted from supporting reform to supporting the status quo. Chinese officials have continued to express concern about a "monopoly" controlling the Internet, and have made it clear that they want to continue discussing the JPA, but I've not seen anything to indicate an official Chinese comment on the EU position or any other government's position.

According to Paul Twomey who stepped down as CEO of ICANN last week, China has not recently made public statements on ICANN and the JPA. Meanwhile he, the ICANN board, and the other members of the Governmental Advisory Committee have been working hard to make China feel comfortable engaging with ICANN. Here's what he said to me in response to my question about China's position:

In terms of the relationship with the United States government and the Joint Project Agreement, I haven't actually heard what the position of the Chinese government is but they have publicly said things in the past. But I dont think we're in anything like the bipolar situation that we had three four five six years ago, where we're sort of "ICANN love it or hate it." I don't think it's in that space anymore. I think it is, much more pragmatically, that this is an institution where there's a space for the Chinese government to participate in, that it's looking after the interests of the Chinese internet community, that they're dealing with real issues that really affect their concerns, and they're welcome. And i think that's important.

China can't afford not to engage with ICANN at this point in time. The Internet is about to undergo a huge real estate expansion and the Chinese government - along with China's domain name registrars - wants to make sure that Chinese government interests are well served as the rules and technical arrangements get laid out between now and early next year.

In 2010 ICANN will implement two big changes, and China has a big interest in how these changes are implemented. First, ICANN will soon allow anybody (who can pay the six-figure registration fee) to apply to run a "generic top-level domain" (gTLD) (Explanation for non-wonks: .com, .net, .cn, .asia, .mobi, .org, .gov, et cetera are all "top-level domains;" the word before the dot, for example "cnn" in cnn.com is called a second-level domain and that's what individuals, organizations, and companies buy when we purchase a domain name for our website. So for instance, if I was extremely rich and had the technical resources I could apply to create and operate .rebecca). So a religious organization, a political party, a company, or anybody with the resources who wants to administer a distinctive Internet address can apply to establish a new gTLD.

But that's not all. In 2010 ICANN will not only allow more gTLD's to be created, but it will also enable the creation of "internationalized" top-level domains, in non-English/non-Roman letter scripts. In other words it will for the first time be possible to have internationally accessible top-level Internet addresses in Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Thai, Japanese, and whatever other language can be input onto a computer. This is huge because it will make the Internet much more accessible to non-English speakers who have difficulty dealing with the current English-based global domain system. If we really want a truly global and multilingual Internet, having "international domain names," or IDN's as ICANN calls them, is essential. These new international top-level domains (IDN TLDs) will be divided into two categories: "country code TLDs" (ccTLDs) and "general TLDs" (gTLDs). For existing English-character ccTLD's (like .cn) each relevant country gets jurisdiction over how it is administered and the same will be the case for international ccTLD's. So .中国 will be controlled and administered the same way as .cn, and websites under that top-level domain will be subject to Chinese law. (Chinese bloggers have informed me that they stay away from .cn domain names because they lose their web address if their website is too politically controversial.) gTLD's, however, are different. ICANN's intention is that anybody anywhere in the world (with adequate resources) can apply to run a Chinese language gTLD. I asked Twomey what happens if people in, say, Canada or Australia apply to run .falungong and the Chinese-language equivalent. Here's what he said in response:

First of all our process, and the process of moving our policy forward, are neutral processes. And we have a series of objections mechanisms through which people can bring objections, one which we're still working through, which is morality or public order, which is a term that exists in international treaties. There's still a great deal of discussion including in the Government Advisory Committee about how that can possibly work, and should it even be there.... But ICANN is not in the business of the application level. We're not in the business of content. So the strings that people might put forward, were not in the buisiness of deciding whether its a good string or not. There are opportunities, but we're not in the business of saying that's a good string or a bad string. We dont like that one we like this one. And its global. The generic top level domains are global top level domains.

So, in other words, I followed up, anybody can apply to run a generic TLD in any language from anywhere? He replied:

That's right. Its a global technology. The technology doesn't recognize geographic boundaries so we support that. Now whatever governments might decide to do in terms of access or filtering is their business not ours... and we leave that.. because we are if you like the guardians of the single inter-operable internet, our community and the ISPs [internet service providers] are the people who provide the single inter-operable internet. We think it's very important that the issues of the addressing and routing system are separate from the issues of content carried on them. And so we don't comment, we dont condone, but we don't make comment upon those sort of content issues. But what we do say is: you know, if a government has a content issue, don't break the domain name system to try to fix it. Because that's like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Finally, here's what Twomey said about jurisdiction of gTLDs:

Let's make it clear that generic top level domains, when they're created, will have contracts with ICANN. And those contracts will clearly state that the applicable law is the law of California. And they will be contracts. Right? You know, any national laws that apply to end registrations we can't comment on, but the law under which the TLD will actually operate will be the law of California.

Many of the details, however, in terms of how a government or anybody else can object to the creation of a new TLD on the grounds of "morality and public order," and under what criteria the ICANN board then comes to a final decision, have yet to be worked out. Also, in the case of multiple applicants for the same TLD, there will be some kind of process for the ICANN "community" to decide who deserves to get that particular domain. So being there at ICANN meetings is very important if you want to influence how the rules get shaped and who has rightful claim over various names. Having the ear of board members by developing a personal relationship with them is also very important, I'm told by people who currently run generic TLDs.

Then there are trademark and other issues related to who has the "right" to a particular TLD name. There is already a big fight over the extent to which brand names can be protected or reserved by companies that are worried about their trademarks being (in their view) appropriated by others. The Chinese government and Chinese companies have an interest in trademark protection not overly favoring Western business and industry on the one hand, while still protecting Chinese companies on the other, while also making sure that arbitration mechanisms are properly internationalized and not overly Western-centric. There are also concerns about who has a right to register and administer, say, .beijing or .guilin - to name a couple examples. The Chinese are also concerned that fights over trademark protection and proposed attempts by ICANN to create a new trademark arbitration body will delay the roll-out of gTLDs in general, and internationalized gTLD's in particular.

Then there are a bunch of technical issues related to this multi-lingual rollout, including an appeal by the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans among others that ICANN must change it's current rule that non-country TLD's must be 3 characters or more - given that most Chinese words are two characters in length, the three-character minimum requirement is obviously unreasonable. While the Chinese have actually already implemented Chinese-language TLD's within mainland China, they don't work outside of China. Asian ICANN participants last week repeatedly expressed frustration that it's taking too long for ICANN to move forward on this.

So there are lots of reasons why the Chinese need to engage with ICANN now, and not wait till it's restructured or its functions re-appropriated to its greater liking. Here's how Twomey put it:

First of all there's a much better understanding of what ICANN does, what it is and what it's not. I think secondly ICANN is working on issues that really are important to the internet communities of China, for instance. So particularly on the internationalized domain names and the internationalized domain names for the country codes, these are core areas of interest to the Chinese, especially to the Ministry of Information Industry and Technology. But also for the broader Chinese internet community. I'm very pleased that not only has China come back to the GAC but that there's a broad commitment in China now to have Chinese institutions and organizations participating in the ICANN context. ...ICANN is looking at the role of the GAC and what it does and how it participates. And how it interacts with the board. we've continued to have that discussion. I think it's useful that China's at the table to have that discussion.

I was a first-timer at ICANN last week, but sitting through a week of meetings, I got the distinct impression that few people expect ICANN to be radically restructured this year. Most people seemed to expect that the JPA will be renewed in some fashion for now, due to lack of consensus over an alternative. Meanwhile the Government Advisory Committee seems to be getting an expanded role, with more opportunity to lobby the interests of governments as ICANN moves forward in radically expanding the Internet's real estate. How things evolve in the longer run is harder to say, but the people running ICANN are clearly trying to make governments feel welcome to engage and work for change from within - pointing out that this is more likely to be conducive to a stable global Internet - rather than try to dismantle or radically and suddenly restructure it from the outside.

Bringing in China was likely a critical step by ICANN to ensure its own survival, at least in the short to medium term. For now, ICANN and China need each other.

China calls for an end to the Internet Governance Forum

There's been a global argument going on for some time now over how the Internet should be governed. Many governments, including China but also many others, are not happy that the "root" of the Internet is controlled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which ultimately answers to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In 2005, there were proposals from various countries to move Internet governance from ICANN to a United Nations body of some kind, or something that would give more representation and power to a variety of governments. But there was no consensus. Human rights groups were rightly concerned that giving governments like China and Iran greater say in Internet governance would lead to more censorship and the elimination of privacy and anonymity. At the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, local dissidents got roughed up, a workshop on free expression nearly got shut down by the host government, and governments agreed to stick with the ICANN-led status quo for lack of any reasonable consensus. The Internet Governance Forum was formed as a platform to continue consultation and feedback from governments and a range of "civil society" groups, including coalitions calling for the protection of human rights and free speech.

At an IGF preparatory meeting in Geneva on Wednesday, China called for a disbandment of the IGF, on the grounds that it's useless. The full transcript of the proceeding his here. An archive of the webcast is here. Below are China's two statements in full. I've bolded some of the key parts. Note the discussion of Internet censorship at the end:

CHINA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the delegation of China, I would like to present the position of the government of China on the fourth session of the IGF.

First of all, on the title -- the global title of the meeting, the delegation of China prefers the proposal put forward by Egypt, "Internet, an opportunity for all." We think that this topic is very closely linked to the international financial crisis we're going through at the moment. And in addition, it proves that the United Nations continue to work in order to promote the Internet. As we have said in February, the rights and principles for Internet is not an appropriate theme because the words "rights and principles" don't have an appropriate definition. As a meeting of the United Nations, it is not appropriate to adopt a theme which is not properly defined.

And on this matter, we suggest that we discuss the definition of "rights and principles" first of all, the workshop level.

Honorable Chairman, secondly, on the management of critical resources, the delegation of China feels that, first of all, the title of this theme should be "managing the critical Internet resources."

We feel that this title has been defined last year, after extensive discussions. And we think that this is a fairly neutral title. At the same time, it is a very sensitive theme, and we would suggest that we continue using this title this year.

Also, we would like to stress the fact that under the theme of "critical Internet resource management," we think that JPA is a very important theme and that it's not because we're going to reexamine JPA in September that we can't discuss it at the fourth session of the IGF. On the opposite, it's because we're going to do this in September that we should do it in IGF, too.

Thirdly, now, as to security, the delegation of China feels that this is a very important question. At the present time, security in the Internet, on the Internet and cybercrime is something that has become a worldwide enemy. And here we need to talk about regrouping the energies and resources of all parties concerned and to strengthen the international mechanism in order to promote security and stability for the Internet at the worldwide level.

We also think that there are some vital matters that have not been incorporated on this theme, for instance, how do we promote open source or intellectual property or traditional library resources. These are all very important questions in order to promote dissemination of knowledge.

We also think that this is a theme which should be discussed in the opening title.

We have also noted that some have talked about the URL blocking. On the URL blocking, this is a very sensitive matter.

In order to guarantee the security of states and to guarantee the interests of citizens to fight against terrorism and other crimes, all countries have the right to filter the contents of certain Internet sites. And I think that this is something that all countries are in the process of doing.

IGF as a meeting hosted, under the auspices of the United Nations, talks about URL blocking. Now, will this give an impression to the outside world that the United Nations are against content blocking? Are the U.N. against the practice of certain states filtering some Internet sites so that when we talk about "blocking," should the theme of blocking be incorporated in our IGF meeting? We have to be very careful about that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

A second statement came in the afternoon session:

This afternoon, we are talking about the value of the IGF. And that's a very important question. The delegation of China has followed very carefully the previous statements made.

And now the delegation would like to make the following points. Firstly, we very much appreciate the secretariat for their excellent work. We agree in principle with what has been said by previous speakers on the specific aims of the IGF. We feel that the IGF has contributed a great deal in light of its historic mandate. But we have also noted the -- that the essence of IGF's work is establishing dialogue, exchanging points of view. But this is not enough to solve the problems. The real problem is that in the field of the Internet, there is a monopoly that exists. And we need to solve that problem. It's not by talking about principles merely that we can solve this problem.

We can also see this kind of discussion taking place. But it's not enough for developing countries who don't have enough resources and don't have the capacities to participate in this kind of dialogue without further commitments being made, which is why the points of view of developing countries, especially when it comes to Internet governance, their points of view are not sufficiently reflected in our discussions, which is why we don't agree that the IGF should continue its mandate after the five years are up.

So we repeat that the delegation of China does not agree with extending the mission of the IGF beyond the five years. We feel that after the five years are up, we would need to look at the results that have been achieved. And we need, then, to launch into an intergovernmental discussion.

I think that this should be a positive result of IGF's work.

The work of its next phase should be based on the results achieved in the previous years. We need to launch an intergovernmental discussion in order to solve the real problems that exist in this field of Internet governance.

Thank you.

The IGF Watch blog points out that China isn't alone in its frustration with the IGF and with ICANN. The EU's Viviane Reding proposed a new model of Internet governance last week in which ICANN would be reformed and overseen by a new "G12 for Internet Governance." But IGF Watch's Jeremy Malcolm thinks the debate may help to steer things in a more realistic direction:

True, it's just a shame that China had to be the stakeholder to make this bold point, since its motivations are transparently undemocratic - it was, for example, the only stakeholder at yesterday's meeting to openly oppose the inclusion of Internet rights and principles as theme for an IGF main session.

But from whichever source the realisation comes, given that the WSIS dream of a new consensual model of multi-stakeholder engagement in policy development has failed, it may be that we have to bite that bullet and fall back on the ugly alternative of agnonism - the recognition that the engagement of governments and civil society in global politics is inherently dialectical and conflictual, and that they will never truly deliberate as equals.

This might not even be such a bad thing. It need not in fact spell the death of the IGF, but rather its rebirth; as it would free the institution to make a clean break from its stifling Secretariat and the United Nations system generally. It could instead reconstitute itself as an independent private international institution much like ICANN itself, that would seek to participate on an equal footing in whatever institutions hold real power in Internet governance in the future, perhaps including Reding's new G-12 (or IG20, as Wolfgang Kleinwaechter had presaged it).

It's going to be an interesting year for Internet governance, and we are certain to hear a lot more from China. As it so happens, I'll be attending the next ICANN meeting in Sydney as well as the IGF meeting in Egypt as part of my research for my book.

Cyber-tarianism, IGF, ICANN

.Asia: New online real estate for the region

New virtual real estate is opening up for sale in Asia, as Edmon Chung, CEO of the new ".Asia" top-level domain, puts it.  .Asia officially launched here in Hong Kong on Wednesday.  They're a non-profit organization whose mission, they say, is "dedicated to the needs of the Pan-Asia and Asia Pacific Internet community... providing an online identity for people, organizations, and businesses who want "to express membership in the larger Asian community."

SFgate has a very detailed article about .Asia and its prospects. They describe a launch process which Edmon says he hopes will become a model for future top-level domains:

...unlike previous TLD launches, DotAsia is setting itself up to take maximum benefit from this opportunity, while forcing a leveling of the domain-registration playing field. Rather than simply opening the floodgates for speculators to register domains -- which makes winning a particular domain a matter of the fastest finger -- they've laid out a unique "sunrise" process for the first six months of their operation. After restricted names are reserved by governments and administrative organizations, valid international trademark holders and companies seeking to protect their operating names will have an open window to submit applications for those respective domains. When conflicts emerge -- the number of companies that can legitimately claim to have rights to names like "Sun" and "Star" in Asia is staggering -- verified stakeholders will have the right to participate in an open, Internet-based auction, designed to ensure that the entity that values the domain most will end up controlling it.

The same application and auction process will be followed for the first 30 days of open registration as well. Want a nifty generic domain name? Be prepared to bid on it. How much is porn.asia worth to you?

Before .Asia opens up in phases to governments, trademark holders, and then the general public, they are seeking applicants for their ".Asia Pioneer" program. The idea is to give out premium domain names to organizations, businesses or projects that will help build a quality and diverse Asian Internet community - rather than just selling everything to first-comers and highest bidders. According to the .Asia Pioneer website:

Breaking the mould of disinterested allocation of domains in a first-come-first-served race, the .Asia Pioneer Domains Program entrusts the most prestigious cyber real estate in .Asia to those who show genuine commitment to this community. The objective of the program is to immediately create active and relevant content on .Asia domains for the benefit of Internet users around the world. The program builds on the value of .Asia to provide a natural name for users to easily navigate and find the information they are looking for. Through the Pioneer Domains Program, DotAsia is giving out millions of dollars worth of domain names.

One journalist had some questions about how transparent this process will be. Edmon insists it will be very transparent. It will be fascinating  to see what comes out of this process.

At the launch party .Asia had these cute napkins (pictured at right) inviting people to scribble their ideas down and help populate Asia's new cyber-real estate. I actually scribbled down an online media idea (which I'm not showing). Unfortunately I don't have time to implement it this year given my other commitments and I certainly don't have the resources...  but maybe somebody else out there might be able to do something with it... 

China's New Domain Names: Lost in Translation

This morning I got a bunch of alarmist messages from friends asking about this English-language People’s Daily article titled: China adds top-level domain names.  The paragraph that’s freaking people out is:

Under the new system, besides "CN", three Chinese TLD names "CN", "COM" and "NET" are temporarily set. It means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States.

Not for the first time, it appears that the People’s Daily’s English translation is very misleading.

Here is a Chinese language story on the subject, and here is the original announcement in Chinese on the Ministry of Information Industry website. Below are the two most important sections, which I am translating/explaining in English (please post corrections in the comments section if you read Chinese and think I got anything wrong):

    二、我国互联网络域名体系在顶级域名“CN”之外暂设“中国”、“公司”和“网络”3个中文顶级域名。

2. “In China’s internet domain name system, aside from the “CN” top-level domains, there will be three Chinese language top-level domains: 中国 (which means “China”), 公司 (which means “company”), AND 网络 (which means “net”).”

In other words, China is NOT, I repeat NOT creating alternative .COM and .NET top-level domains that would be separate from those now administered by ICANN.  (Though it is true that CN, 中国, 公司, AND 网络 will not be administered by ICANN, but by a Chinese entity.) 

    三、顶级域名CN之下，设置“类别域名”和“行政区域名”两类英文二级域名。
    设置“类别域名”7个，分别为：AC—适用于科研机构；COM—适用于工、商、金融等企业；EDU—适用于中国的教育机构；GOV—适用于中国的政府机构；MIL—适用于中国的国防机构；NET—适用于提供互联网络服务的机构；ORG—适用于非营利性的组织。

3. “Beneath the CN top-level domain, there will be 2 kinds of sub-domains: topical categories and administrative regions. There will be 7 “topical domains”: AC for research institutions; COM for commercial; EDU for educational institutions; and GOV for China’s government organizations, MIL for Chinese national-defense organizations; NET for organizations providing internet services; and ORG for non-commercial organizations.”

Note that these are sub-domains, not top-level domains. So in other words, the websites will look like this: http://website.ac.cn, http://website.com.cn, website.edu.cn, website.gov.cn, website.mil.cn. website.net.cn and website.org.cn.

    设置“行政区域名”34个，适用于我国的各省、自治区、直辖市、特别行政区的组织，分别为：BJ—北京市；SH—上海市；TJ—天津市；CQ—重庆市； HE—河北省；SX—山西省；NM—内蒙古自治区；LN—辽宁省；JL—吉林省；HL—黑龙江省；JS—江苏省；ZJ—浙江省；AH—安徽省；FJ—福建省；JX—江西省；SD—山东省；HA—河南省；HB—湖北省；HN—湖南省；GD—广东省；GX—广西壮族自治区；HI—海南省； SC—四川省；GZ—贵州省；YN—云南省；XZ—西藏自治区；SN—陕西省；GS—甘肃省；QH—青海省；NX—宁夏回族自治区；XJ—新疆维吾尔族自治区；TW—台湾省；HK—香港特别行政区；MO—澳门特别行政区。

This section outlines the English letters used for administrative region domains. So Beijing will be website.bj.cn, Shanghai will be website.sh.cn, Tianjin will be website.tj.cn, and so forth.

A more accurate Interfax story is here. So my understanding is this: China will administer the 4 top-level domains of: CN, 中国, 公司, AND 网络 – and all their sub-domains – independently of ICANN.  China has not shut out the global internet, or created parallel evil twins of our well-loved and well-used top-level domains. What China has done is create its own Chinese sub-internet adjacent to the global one run by ICANN. This is precedent-setting. Will other governments follow? An Iranian-administered set of top level domains in Farsi? A Russian-administered set of TLD’s in Russian? Why not?

But to my knowledge, if you can read and write Chinese and have the ability to enter Chinese characters on your computer, you should be able to access those domains from anywhere, and the creation of this new Chinese sub-internet does not preclude Chinese internet users from typing in their usual .com and .net domains and getting at the same sites that we would from the U.S. – that is unless the Chinese government happens to be filtering those particular sites that you want to access.  UPDATE: This is not entirely correct, as Steven Murdoch explains below.

Will the existence of a Chinese-administered sub-internet make it easier for the Chinese government to filter the international internet more aggressively? Once the new Chinese domain system becomes well-populated and full of content, it seems likely that the answer would be “yes.”

FURTHER UPDATE (11:30PM EST TUESDAY): This entry has been posted over at CircleID where James Seng from Singapore, who has been following these issues for some time, has weighed in. He writes:

It is not an alternative root because there is no “root” being setup. And the ISPs continue to use the same default (IANA) root that ship with BIND.

In a longer comment James elaborates, copying a comment he wrote in another thread on another site, in response to somebody named Dave:

I just posted this on IPer where the news is spreading. I hope everyone calm down.

---

Hi Dave,

Just saw this news and find it funny because I just had dinner with Mao Wei and Prof. Qian last night (Mao is the Executive Director of CNNIC). To be exact, they have no idea of the news as they are in Perth right now. But after showing them the news and speaking to them, this is what I gathered.

The focus of the news is actually the launch of .MIL.CN, a new 2LD CNNIC is launching which requires a change in their Article. As a matter of procedure, they announced the revise Article that includes the the policy for the three Chinese TLD for .NET, .COM and .CN (网络，公司，中国). The Chinese TLDs was actually added 3 years ago in 2003. It is hardly news now.

It has been in operation for 3 years now as you can see from http://www.cnnic.net.cn/index/0B/index.htm

In practice, they did not actually use any alternative/parellel root. Instead, when someone registered a domain name like 联想.公司, what they get is 联想.公司.cn and the append of .cn is done automatically by the client resolution.

Dave, hope you can help to clarify this issue. The news is just .MIL.CN.

-James Seng

WSIS: Circumventing censorship and staying safe

Here is a picture from the workshop on secure communications and anonymous blogging conducted by my colleague Ethan Zuckerman, Dmitri Vitaliev of Frontline Defenders, Wojtek Bogusz of the Tactical Technology Collaborative, and Nart Villeneuve of the Open Net Initiative. These guys are basically the dream geek team for free speech on line. They gave instructions in detail about how non-governmental organizations, human rights groups, and individuals trying to speak the truth under dangerous circumstances can secure their communications and data, and minimize the likelihood that people will get caught or arrested as a result of their work. The second part of the workshop was devoted to anonymous blogging.

Much of the instructions they gave today can be found in the chapters on secure communications and anonymous blogging in the Reporters Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents. (Try here if that link is blocked for you.)  Many of the tools they referenced can be found at the NGO-in-a-box website where you can download trustworthy and free software. There are also instructions on how to use these tools and tips about how to be more security-conscious. Also see the Tools & Manuals section from Frontline Defenders.
 

WSIS: Defending Free Speech in Tunis

Despite the odds, we managed to pull off our "Expression Under Repression" seminar here at the World Summit For Internet and Society, thanks to the strong spine of our sponsors, the Dutch NGO Hivos, who fended off a phalanx of plainclothes police who tried to shut us down. The goons finally backed off after the Dutch ambassador intervened and warned of a diplomatic incident. Before we began, uncertainty and rumor reigned about whether we’d be allowed to hold the event at all. On Wednesday, as I mentioned in a previous post, the Tunisian authorities told organizers that the seminar’s theme had nothing to do with the “ICT for Development” theme of the conference, and was thus inappropriate. On the morning of the seminar a sign outside the room said it was canceled. It was not included in the official program, and a rumor heard from delegates who visited the UNDP pavillion claimed that people who showed up would get arrested. Our colleagues have posted some eyewitness accounts of the action here.

Speakers included Malaysian blogger Jeff Ooi, Chinese blogger Isaac Mao, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakshan, and Zimbabwean internet activist Taurai Maduna. My co-conspirator Ethan Zuckerman blogged about the circumstances under which we opened the seminar and my opening remarks. (See my own pre-seminar notes here.) He also blogged some of the presentations: Isaac and Taurai. Jeff Ooi spoke eloquently about how blogging is helping to democratize a media environment in Malaysia in which the media has traditionally been dominated by the ruling party and its allies.

UPDATE: Ethan has now posted a summary of Hossein's presentation.

The Open Net Initiative ’s Technical Director Nart Villeneuve also gave an excellent presentation on how governments are filtering and censoring the internet worldwide.  (UPDATE: See Ethan's post on Nart's presentation.) Nart is one of the authors of a new report on how Tunisia censors the internet with the help of a U.S. software company, released this week in conjunction with the summit. Here is his blog post about the issue. Tomorrow Ethan will lead a hands-on workshop to teach people how to circumvent this kind of censorship, and also how to blog anonymously.

Several Tunisian journalists in the audience challenged the validity of our subject matter, arguing that economic development and social stability are a priority over freedom of speech in poor nations.  Hossein, Isaac and Taurai strongly disagreed. Taurai pointed out that if people aren’t free to speak out when officials are stealing their food and misappropriating resources, they’re more likely to remain poor. Hossein agreed that poverty in many parts of the world is as much a product of repression and corruption than anything else, and that greater freedom of speech can empower citizens to pull themselves out of poverty.

If you read German, check out Markus Beckedahl’s account of the seminar here. Andy Carvin has this podcast of Hossein’s presentation on Iranian blogs and their socio-political impact.

Ethan also has an excellent post with updated photos on the parallel civil society summit held in downtown Tunis by democracy activists on Wednesday evening. Both he and I attended.

For other WSIS blogging by Global Voices community members, check out Jeff Ooi’s post on internet governance from a Malayisan perspective.