If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Recent media reports have given voice to India’s call for the establishment of a global agency to manage the Internet. India wants a multi-government role in formulating Internet governance rules. The rationale is that this will reduce the grip of western powers and increase the country’s own influence in framing Internet-related policies.

Many other countries also subscribe to this line of thought. But it is near-sighted. Why? Because governments and even the public at large already have a significant say in the workings of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit body that coordinates the Internet’s global domain name system. Governments just have to exercise that right. This is how:

The Corporation’s by-laws require the setting up of specific advisory committees whose primary role is to offer advice and recommendations on all proposed policy matters. One such committee set up by ICANN is the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which constitutes representatives appointed by governments of various countries, including India. The GAC is entrusted with the responsibility of voicing government concerns and opinions on all of ICANN’s proposed policies.

So, for instance, if the panel’s representatives believe a particular new gTLD (generic Top Level Domain, such as .com or .net) application lacks certain essential safeguards or protections, it is empowered to raise these concerns (formally called “GAC Advice”) with ICANN and the applicants to work out a solution or even recommend that a particular application not be pursued in the new gTLD programme. In recent times, GAC Advice on various new gTLDs has led to several of them being stalled in the application process.

Take, for instance, the GAC Advice issued post the ICANN’s 46th public meeting in Beijing in April 2013. Two important things came of that Advice. The first was with respect to raising serious concerns over certain categories of extensions. For example applied-for gTLDs with religious sensitivities associated with them, such as .islam and .halal and others that the Committee believed may require further deliberation such as .wine, .vin, .zulu, .amazon etc. The .patagonia extension, applied for by a clothing brand, was also pulled up given that it is the name of a large region of Latin America. For such applications, the GAC advised the ICANN Board not to proceed further.

The second outcome of the Beijing meeting pertained to a list of safeguards that the advisory Committee believed to be a necessity for a multitude of extensions to ensure that they are used for their intended purpose and not misused/ abused.

This list includes safeguards for extensions pertaining to children such as .kid, .play, .school, .toys, those dealing with environmental issues such as .green, .eco, those focused on professional services such as .lawyer, .accountant and several more such categories.

As a consequence, applications for these extensions have been delayed for over 10 months as ICANN and the GAC worked to figure out implementable, mutually acceptable solutions. In fact, a prominent applicant for the .green extension eventually withdrew its application citing the delays resulting from the stringent safeguard advice issued by the GAC as one of its reasons.

It is also noteworthy that after ICANN’s 47th public meeting in Durban, the GAC’s communiqué specifically highlighted the Indian government’s concerns with the applications for .indians and .ram. In summary, the Committee’s influence is really the combined influence of world governments — much the same as what the Indian government is seeking.

Even so, we are today at a crossroads where global governments are celebrating the US’s communicated intent to step out of its overseeing role of the ICANN after September 2015, when its contract ends.

The US has said it will cede this authority to “the global multi-stakeholder community” — in other words, the academics, engineers, businesses, consumers and governments that have a stake in the Internet. It has also mandated that it will not accept “a government-led or an inter-governmental organisation solution.”

With everything that the ICANN is already doing to involve governments, I see no reason for a multi-government organisation taking over the role that the Corporation already essays quite well. Governments have an open invitation to get more involved in the policy-making process, especially when it comes to the new gTLD regime. Consider a scenario where an official multi-government organisation that will likely be predominantly driven by bureaucracy is commissioned to regulate the Net. This has the potential to threaten not only the relatively well-structured policy development process, but also the existing levels of openness and freedom that are hallmarks of the Internet as we know it today.

The writer is Business Head, Radix

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