Plenary Presentation "The Issues and Consensus"
Chair's Opening Remarks: Dr. Frankel
Remarks from US Governments
A video message was presented by Ira Magaziner, Senior Advisor to U.S. President, White House
Remarks from Australian Government
Paul Twomey, National Office of Information Economy, Australia Government presented his view on the issues.
Report from Reston, Brussels and Geneva Meetings - A matrix of issues, with focus on consensus made and areas where consensus were not reached
Reports by: Laina Greene and Michael Schneider were presented
Wednesday, August 12th, 10:30 - 12:30
Plenary discussion # 1 - "Defining the New Entity"
Moderator Paul Twomey gave a brief introduction and on overview to some discussion procedures
Presentation of different models for the structure of the election process
It was said that policy and technical matters could never truly be separated. All decisions would contain aspects of both, as the new entity must be representative. If it were only making technical decisions, one could omit requiring international representation. I.e. if new TLDs were introduced, the question of how many would be a technical one, the question of which and how to resolve the disputes between the trademark holders and the domain name holders would be political ones. As a final decision making body however, it should not be crippled and restricted in too many ways. However, to avoid any arbitrary decisions, checks and balances should be in place.
- The model proposed by IANA and an alternative suggestion were presented (both showing the Board to be elected by the councils, and defining which constituencies are on the councils)
comments:
* membership and relation to funding
* add trademark holders
answer: a) direct elections, protection from election campaigns by staggered elections
b) proportionate (assign the groups different numbers of votes or weigh the votes/ groups)
Board is inefficient, concentrate on stability, require nominees to serve on council first
c) combination of both
* membership on Board (don't mix up representational and administrative bodies)
* be aware of problem of/ exercise caution when giving minorities the power to dominate the majority
* criteria for nomination: not interest, but "vitability to the Internet", even if they have a standing on the Board
* possibly two types of membership
* distinction between operating function and representation (political structure on top of work)
* can't count every single stakeholder (inefficient)
* formal membership's not that important but rather the power to give input, to participate
* out of time, let the iBoard figure out that problem; the mechanisms need adaptation to the final entity
* don’t refer to Brussels (by some not considered an open meeting)
* Board compilation: some need to be presented on the Board (have the members selected by the groups themselves, autonomously)
* bottom-up elections easier
* continental problems; i.e. trademarks in separate countries
* each interest group organises itself but what's important are fair hearing panels to ensure everyone's heard, people have a voice
* implementation of the policies by councils after approval by Board?
* the councils are accountable to the (their) members for their policies, Board ensures consistency
* not confuse interests, bodies, constituencies - can't be split into interest groups, as one company has several interests...
* if fee is raised, there will be very few individuals - therefore, too large councils/ membership is not a problem
* WP: councils develop, review and propose the policies
* Board must go through councils, can't propose its own policies without them
* two philosophies: top-down or bottom -up process ***
* give possibility for using Internet for input
* councils are different from members groups (different powers): main objective is to take over from IANA
* someone setting, someone administrating policy - through users to Board to councils (collect feedback), not back up: only if councils are operational bodies is the structure flexible
* user representational structure to insure input
* processes need to be fair and transparent, Board should only ensure this in the councils, not dictate policy as the councils should already have the user input
* should not be creating a governance but an organization of standards
* let's not create a company like the thousands of others but a regulatory/ standards authority for the aspects covered, the Board synthesises the policies, entity unified in its operation: CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE
* inclusive of broad user interests taken into account
* discussion on councils:
* administrative "cabinet" with direct election to the Board or
* discussion floor for resolving problems
* role of councils to sort out interests (just in the context of policy decisions?), Board has the actual authority and responsibility
* regulatory or representative (tables: 1-3)
* power of Board in relation to the councils, accountability to whom (7-9)
* should there be classes of membership, what will they be (10-12)
* all elements in one corporation or councils as independent legal entities (13-15)
* should there be any role for govs in the councils/ Board/ representation, if so, what? (16-17)
* issues of developing countries (18)
Plenary # 2 - Reports from the tables after the working lunch
Moderator: Paul Twomey
(Note: not all tables were filled/reported)
Table 1 (should the entity be regulatory or representative of nature?)
* no real consensus on whether it should define universal dispute resolution procedures
In attempting to better define the question posed through investigation of the terms 'techincal' and 'consultative', discussion revealed the following consensus points:-
Table 7 (powers of the Board in relation to the councils and accountability to whom)representation of stakeholders - Internet community in the Board* The development of 'policy' is an interative process between its
determination and its execution* Regardless of how the policy is developed (e.g. from within the
council/board, from external sources) , though there was agreement that the source should under normal circumstances be the councils, the Board should have the final say on determining policy* The council should execute the policy that is determined by the Board* This interative process of
a) the Board determining final policy (regardless of how policy developed) that is
b) executed by the council(s)seemed to be applicable to both the Protocols and Address councils. However,
i ts application to the Names council needs further investigation as the
Names council may involve ccTLDs (country code Top Level Domains) which
involve sovereignty issues.
Should there be individual members to the councils/ Should there be membership classes? The decision was "Yes". There are different types of stakeholders and their representation should be ensured.
Classes: commercial users/non-commercial/e-commence interests/ISP's/name registrars and registries/trade mark holders: each should have a certain number of seats on the board. The e-commerce community might be represented as of a later stage. No decision was made on how many members the Board should have.
There were also no decisions on whether the technical community should be included. Generally, each class should each have 1-3 members on the board.
Table 8 (powers of the Board in relation to the councils and accountability to whom)
The Board manages a company which is made up of number of councils. A bottom up process would be best for choosing the stakeholder members of the councils. The role of councils is to take policy proposals to the board.
When board does not agree with the proposed policy, it brings it back to council. The criteria for council membership: different for each council, possibly the stakeholder representation could required set to a certain degree.
Table 14 (are all the bodies elements of one entity or are the councils independent legal entities)
The different bodies must be part of one organization in order to work together well. The members should be nominated or elected, no top-down decisions should be taken.
Table 16 (should governments have a role in the new entity, if so, which?)
Governments should be allowed input, at minimum at user level. However, governments are not all the same and therefore do not have a homogenous position. They should be allowed some control over the Internet within their country.
Two positions:
* Governments are to be treated as users, unwritten rules giving their concerns more weight anyhow. If the entity works well, then the message of any input voiced is important, not who’s saying it.
Table 18 (developing countries and their specific concerns)
Different problems exist in the developing countries. The AP-region is government based and governmental involvement is crucial.
IP-address allocations: developing countries are not considered enough as having a future role.
Operations problem: the entry level in Internet is high due to the monopoly in global telecommunications. The new IANA should allocate space to the developing countries. Government involvement should be allowed regardless of Article 4, which would need re-phrasing to include governmental intervention and "indirect government involvement". The developing countries see a need of restricting of new IANA: it should be considered having regional advisory councils below the central councils, though no more than 1 per region. This would be fair for developing countries. The new structure reinforces basic roots, the old-goodness need to be improved, regional interests built upon.
Discussion:
Izumi Aizu invited comments on Asian issues and concerns from the floor.
The WP bylaws state that any region cannot have more than 50 percent representation on the board. Further needed is an upper limit and a lower limit a number of regions represented. At least one representative of each region is needed.
Malaysia:
An issue that was obvious in group meeting is that more meetings are needed to heighten the awareness within the region. Efforts should be made to meet more often to work on regional representation and on a unified voice at an early stage.
Dept' of telecommunications, India:
The monopoly of Telecom in India is being dropped soon, there are plans of taking up a registration position for domain names. Some regional representation is needed within the new entity, as there are regional issues of great importance to guard regional interests. Also, large populations need to be represented. The Indian government is a service provider as well. India has 80 percent rural population, the government is needed to better this situation, therefore it needs to play a role in the new IANA as well.
China:
The new organization needs to take an interest in country code TLDs: each country has a different culture, different interests. Without the involvement of the government, CnNIC can’t be created. The government is needed in connection with the Internet, to help build a network. The names are issued by the government, it regulates disputes; the new IANA should not interfere in these well working structures. The nIANA should have a wide representation at the regional level, should be fair in DNS registration and ccTLD, gTLD and IP address assignments, as to date there is an unfair allocation of IP addresses and applying for IP-addresses is very difficult -
Question to the plenary:
How can one ensure the IFWP-process is representative of Asia Pacific interests when some individuals come to each meeting and influence the debate at each one? How can one ensure the Asian voices are really heard?
Answer: This is a 2 step process: 1) views are collected regionally and geographically; 2) There is a dialogue about what the outcome will look like, with some people involved regardless of where they come from. We need both incremental addition and continuity, starting by posing the question of what kind of organization will be built. So far, discussions have been held face to face and on the Internet, carried to Geneva and here. The purpose is, rather than influence, to bring work already done to other places, like the mutual agreement that North America and Europe will be influenced by what goes on here; we need to compartmentalise.
Izumi asked for comments on how much the participants could bear to pay to NSI for membership. Answers differed from one country to another.
Most of the costs originate when connecting from Asia to the US, so there is a need for the governments to negotiate for lower costs between the countries, the international telecommunication needs regulation.
The DNS for Thailand has been run free of charge, the organization has not been formalised. At the same time, the economic situation is very bad and businesses are concerned about paying fees for a .dn registration to IANA. Fees are barriers to entry.
Izumi Aizu further invited others to comment about the Asia - Pacific problems
Adam Todd: Asians can speak up. He said ccTLDs need to be managed by the respective country.
Coffee Break from 16:00 - 16:30
Wednesday, August 12th, 16:30-17:30
Plenary discussion # 3 - "Making the New Entity work"
Moderator: Erica Roberts
There should be individual membership for users. To this, there is principal agreement, but some Asians might not be able to pay the dues and therefore would have difficulties participating. Also, if individual users are represented, the US would currently have more representatives, so this issue needs to be thought through carefully. No user group can equally represent the users in a country, as it is difficult to be completely inclusive. From the Asian point of view, this might be seen differently.
Observations about voting leverage: It was proposed to limit the votes that one interest group has. 50 percent of the vote is total control, therefore no one should have more than 25% of the vote, which is 50% of the control. It must be ensured that those in dominant position can't do anything without the minorities: we need checks and balances.
A distinction was made between users and customers: customers pay for a service, users do not.
- Legitimacy means funding. However, there was concerned over how economic disparities would then lead to representational imbalance. Nevertheless there is a need for representation in line with funding. He could not agree with proposals saying funding for the organization could come from domain name registrars; he felt uncomfortable with this as then only a small part of the organization would be paying for whole.
Singapore: checks and balances are important.
If the elected Board could form the councils, then this has to be in some way controlled. If the councils are supported by the board, then this would be more like an employee relationship. The influence she said might need to be higher for commercial than non-commercial users, though this would need reassertion. Balance is required between the poor and the rich: those paying could not automatically have more power?
Papua New Guinea: Even if there are representatives from the AP region sitting on the board, this would not imply change occurring in the region. Rather, a change in leadership may ensure change in the region. Lately, connectivity has not been supported by the Internet policy. The new entity will need assistance in terms of policy documents. Transparency does not exist for some, i.e. developing countries guidance with this method, need directions from IANA. If there are concerns about the connectivity in developing countries, help has to be given.
It is time for a change of the old guard in the AP region. An effort should be made to transfer experience, as a scarce resources in the Asia Pacific region are the human resources. To date, few people are involved in these issues, there is a need for more active participation.
It is great to see the energy from the region communicated forcefully, the nature of statements and concerns are both positive and protective. It may take time to fold in the concerns voiced, but we need to align these approaches. There are concerns surfacing about operations and costs that the rest of the community is not enough aware of. We must carry them forward, but these issues are not within the purview of IANA. Therefore, although we need to retain enthusiasm for these issues, they are not an issue within the scope of the new IANA. Right now, we need to narrow out focus to immediate tasks and use this conference as a stepping stone, as a platform for Asian participation.
As to funding, he said that one issue to be kept in mind is that what may be a small charge for one can mean much money to another. With this process, nIANA is being made more expensive, the costs of nIANA will increase with the new form.
We need to make IANA a representational body, the fact that we are unaware of the problems expressed here is indicative of the overall problems of IANA.
Each phase will require different levels of funding: There are different ways to fund the organization ; we need to realise that bills will be sent out on Oct. 1 and concentrate on what can be done in 50 days
Internet Infrastructure Fund -
A philanthropic solution would take too long for the short time left.
Possibly, the membership could be charged a small amount, but how is this made accountable?
This would be a corporate solution: one would end up with certain companies buying the process, which is not the objective.
A suggestion was made that there could be some way for companies to submit funding to a buffer organization .
Someone argued that the existing IANA funding should be enough to get this process started.
Others objected that this wasn’t true.
An alternative model might be to collect money from name and number registries and companies and philanthropic and government bodies to make cash available. That would leave unanswered the question of how to receive money equitably, fairly and honestly.
As it is necessary that i.e. .nz as the rest of the Internet keeps working in 5-6 weeks. A loan from the US government to be re-paid to offset the start-up costs might solve the problem, justified by the US starting the process.
The focus should be on long-term funding, but as a basis for this policy, immediate funding is important.
The long-term funding issue is very important and there should be more discussion on this later, with reporting back on discussion tomorrow.
The role of ccTLDs in funding
The initial seed funding is critical when starting up an organization . We need to seriously consider seed money.
The Internet Architecture Board
The IAB treats technical issues of the Internet. If the system is working now and if changes are made regardless of this, the system might be broken. Unless there are technical issues that might become guidelines for those running the infrastructure, we should move on to more relevant topics for this meeting.
A sharing of data between multiple registrars is needed for competition reasons. Tools need to be developed; this is an issue that needs to be tackled early on by the nIANA.
As to registrars sharing the registry: standards were not developed with the IAHC due to time constraints.
Wednesday, August 12th 19:00 - 22:00
Legal Session
Moderator: Patrick Fair
agenda:
* discussion of the places of incorporation � in plenary on Thursday?
Delaware: *most typical for publicly held corporations,
*little regulatory requirements, least intrusive
Massachusetts: *best for not-for-profits, though mostly universities and endowments
Someone pointed out that the motion had rather been "where internationally" than "where within the US", but with regard to cost, an international incorporation shouldn’t be an issue, offices could always be opened in EMEA, AP etc. Also, though Switzerland is internationally the most preferable choice, it would be too political a decision to take the entity out of the United States, the Congress would not be likely to agree to this.
Californian law
* as a foreign corporation in California, the statute is only imposed if the main place of activities is there, which would definitely not apply to the nIANA, as the activities are really world-wide, the contributors and any other connections to the state of California rather limited.
* the statute: the assets would have 50% of the vote, the stakeholders the other 50% (for a for-profit organization )
* Delaware is legally preferable
Europeans would tend to avoid both these circuit debates as any intervention of the attorney general
A long discussion began about whether to next discuss the different models for the entity proposed by individuals and organizations or rather the next steps to be taken until the day of incorporation.
The idea expressed to the definition of membership was to have several classes which may very well overlap, but to allow each organization to join but one, taking into account the possibilities along the lines of the criteria given, or to define the classes so precisely that overlapping is not a topic. Possibly, there could also be membership types (i.e. "grade A costs x$ and is mostly recommended/ appropriate for..., grade B costs xx$ ..")
Possibly, the classes would be assigned a number of seats to appoint while the Board still could control the agenda of the councils.
It was said that the Board members were to have minimal qualifications because of the liability/ responsibility of their position. Whoever has the authority or power is also accountable for the actions of the entity, will therefore be sued (predictably within the first few weeks), and as this is most likely to be the Board, it would have to be able to force decisions by the councils in matters of importance or be able to make the decision without the approval of the respective council.
The problem of taking over tasks and responsibilities from existing entities, such as for protocols from the IETF, was addressed. With the NSI and ISI contracts running out, it would be the main task to ensure continuity and stability for the transition phase of up to two years, with an entity that would solve the problems by September 30th 2000.
It was stressed by the participants that a process for closure was needed within 7-10 days. Therefore, all finally agreed to focus on the timetable for the procedure of the next few weeks.
There were several issues agreed upon to be presented to the plenary the next day:
a) membership
* the rights to each membership group, their definition and powers
* their relationship to the councils
* the relationship of the Board to the councils
c) arbitration clause (binding?) for international disputes
d) jurisdiction and choice of law in relation to nIANA’s objectives
e) limitation of the interim Board’s functions
f) election/impeachment process for Board members
g) Time for establishment of the Names Council, its relationship to the Board
h) selection and nomination of the Board
i) mechanism to ensure the Board is representative
The timetable drafted was the following:
1) definition of the framework:
* Crosscheck against existing drafts by NSI and IANA [IFWP/ SC, August 21st]
* decision about the incorporation [Tamar et al and us, August 21st]
* extension of the set of consensus points according to the response to the beta draft
* Second review of the draft [IFWP/ SC, August 26th]
* writing of new draft [?, September 1st]
* Revision and adjustment of drafts [IFWP/ SC, September 8th]
* Parallel consultation with the governments
Timeframe:
issues to be resolved
by September 1st: functions and limitation of powers of the Board, funding, representative balance and staff;
on September 1st: appointment of an interim Board, at latest by mid-September,
new Board: of the role of the councils and all other issues
Thursday, August 13th, 9:00 – 10:00
Plenary Discussion #4 Report back from the legal session
Moderator: Patrick Fair
The results of the Legal Session the night before were presented to the plenary.
a) membership
* the rights to each membership group, their definition and powers
* their relationship to the councils
* the relationship of the Board to the councils
c) arbitration clause (binding?) for international disputes
d) jurisdiction and choice of law in relation to nIANA’s objectives
e) limitation of the interim Board’s functions
f) election/impeachment process for Board members
g) Time for establishment of the Names Council, its relationship to the Board
h) selection and nomination of the Board
i) mechanism to ensure the Board is representative
The timetable drafted was the following:
1) definition of the framework:
* extension of the set of consensus points according to the response to the beta draft
* Second review of the draft [IFWP/ SC, August 26th]
* writing of new draft [?, September 1st]
* Revision and adjustment of drafts [IFWP/ SC, September 8th]
* Parallel consultation with the governments
Timeframe:
issues to be resolved
by September 1st
functions and limitation of powers of the Board, funding, staff, representative balance
on September 1st
appointment of an interim Board
by / as of mid-September
iBoard to further amend the bylaws, define the voting mechanism for the Board, the membership, the appeals process and the requirements to further develop the entity
first AGM, election of the Board
creation of new TLDs, fully develop the membership structure, definition of role of councils and other issues