By Kevin Murphy in Berlin and Nick Patience
Day one of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) summit in Berlin was dominated by controversy over the formation of the constituencies that will ultimately be represented on the ICANN board. It now looks as if the seven constituencies proposed by ICANN earlier this year could soon be joined by an eighth, but that political infighting could scupper some groups’ chances of adequate representation.
The ICANN board set a lunchtime deadline for proposals from groups wishing to form one of the seven constituencies that will make up the Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO): registrars, ISPs, generic top level domain (gTLD) name holders, country code TLD name holders, commercial interests, trademark holders and non-commercial domain name holders (NCDNH).
ICANN will be aided in its work by the supporting organizations, or SOs. There will be one for domain names (DNSO), one for protocol work (PSO), and one for address issues (ASO). The formation of the PSO and ASO will be dealt with at another meeting, but yesterday was the DNSO’s day.
Each would-be constituency met yesterday morning to formulate final proposals and iron out any disagreements among supporters. Most constituencies received a single unchallenged proposal and are likely to be accredited later this week without trouble. But the NCDNH constituency saw three separate and varied proposals, which were still unresolved at the close of business yesterday. Some attendees cast doubt on whether any of the three proposals will be recognized this week.
The problem stems from ICANN’s refusal to create a separate constituency to represent small non-commercial organizations and individuals who hold domain names for their own uses, be they commercial or non-commercial. ICANN says it wants to see the seven constituencies it has outlined formed before it adds any others. The NCDNH constituency players are still divided over what exactly constitutes non-commercial use of a domain name. Yesterday we outlined the three proposals, one each from Michael Sondow’s International Congress of Independent Internet Users (ICIIU), and the Internet Society (ISOC) plus an attempted compromise submission from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a US technical education network.
Sondow, by his own admission, appears to have caved in, and a shaky alliance has been formed between the three parties. They have agreed to accept organizations only into the NCDNH, leaving out individuals, but they must be non-profit organizations, either incorporated or not and their primary goal must be non- commercial, which is pretty much in line with ISOC’s proposal. Milton Mueller of the ACM, who outlined the compromise, says the constituency members must make the NCDNH their primary constituency and they cannot be a member of any other constituency – a point that was contested from the floor of the meeting.
The group agreed to form an interim committee to resolve the differences between the different proposals comprising Sondow, ISOC CEO Don Heath, Mueller and Roberto Gaetano of the Council of Registrars (CORE). They have set an August 1 deadline for nominations to the DNSO’s names council and will have the nominations in place for the next ICANN meeting in late August. It was suggested during the general assembly meeting of the Domain Name Supporting Organization (DNSO) Tuesday afternoon that some elements of the proposal may prevent it being accredited this week.
Sondow angrily claimed the meeting had been hijacked by corporate interests (some of the people present represented commercial groups – some registrars and software vendors, including Microsoft Corp) and accused Esther Dyson, chair of the interim ICANN board of chairing the meeting; an opinion not held by most at the meeting.
Joop Teernstra, the New Zealand-based spear-header of the grass roots domain-owning internet community, pleaded with ICANN’s Dyson to allow an eighth constituency. Teernstra said later he was confident of achieving a breakthrough this week, although other opinions seemed to go against this.
The constituencies recognized by ICANN will each have three seats on the names council, which in turn has three seats on ICANN’s board of directors. There was further controversy when it was revealed that the application from the gTLD registrar’s constituency would mean Network Solutions Inc will get all three names council seats, as it is still the only constituent, until its monopoly it gets to pick and choose who represents it on the council. NSI pointed out that ICANN bylaws allow it to pick only one of its employees as a names council member, which raised the interesting possibility of the constituency being represented by people from other constituencies. As a gesture of goodwill and a blatant PR stunt, NSI also offered one of its seats to Joop Teernstra.
It was also agreed in the registrar’s constituency meeting that preliminary membership rules will now state that only companies accredited by ICANN as test-bed or first-wave registrars (some 42 as of yesterday), in addition to NSI, will be permitted to join. This effectively blocks ccTLD registrars from having a voice in the DNSO. A spokesperson from AT&T in attendance condemned the proposal as very disturbing. A constituency spokesperson justified the move by pointing out how little time the various constituencies were given to put together and discuss their proposals.
At least three of the seven constituency groups intend to ask the ICANN board for exemption from the geographical diversity requirement set out in the ICANN bylaws as they claim it either does not make sense in their case, which is the position of the gTLD and ccTLD groups or because there was no significant presence from outside the US or Europe at their meeting, which is the case with the trademark and intellectual property interests constituency.
The ICANN board will assess the claims of the various constituency groups and accredit them at its board meeting tomorrow, perhaps with the exception of the non-commercial constituency.
