SVG: The main point on the agenda of this meeting being to reform ICANN, can you tell me what's wrong with it? SL: Last February I published a paper that described 3 principal problems that ICANN faced if we were going to move forward successfully in the future.
The first problem was ensuring that our partners and stakeholders were coming to the table in the way that we'd envisaged in the formation of ICANN. ICANN depends on agreements. We have no special powers other than the agreements that people voluntarily enter into.
The second problem that I described: process is important in a very diverse world such as ICANN but we were getting to the point where process was being put ahead of effectiveness. So we had to reverse the balance to put effectiveness - getting things done - ahead of process.
The third problem was that ICANN was seriously under-funded for the work that needs to be done.
The result of my paper was that the board appointed an evolution committee in March, in Ghana, under the chair of Alejandro Pisanty (vice-chairman of the board of directors of ICANN). That committee has done wonderful work with the community in coming forward with ways of addressing many of the problems that I raised and this meeting is, with some exceptions, almost the final point of the work that they've done. They've produced a plan, they've refined the plan based on comment from the community. The plan for where we go was adopted two months ago in Shanghai. This meeting is focusing not so much on the plan itself but on how do we get to that point - to how do we make the transition.
ICANN has received criticism for what is seen as it's desire to move away from at large representation and adopt a more closed system of decision making. Do you feel this is justified? No. When you say "criticism", that's relatively few people who are very vocal. This is not necessarily a shared view by everybody across the world. The board decided at its meeting in Accra: let's differentiate between at large involvement and on-line elections. A lot of people think on-line elections is the litmus test of at large involvement. That's one way to do it and in fact it's one way that's been shown not to be a successful way of doing it. No one knows how to conduct global elections that are free of fraud and capture at this point in time.
What the board is focussing on is real involvement, not someone voting every three years then disappearing in the woodwork. But how do you get people to really participate in the ICANN process and the ICANN structure? The work that's been done by the At Large Organising Committee that's led to the At Large Advisory Committee notion is, I think, a very important first step towards meaningful participation by more individuals, on a continuing basis in the policy development process of ICANN.
Now at some point in the future as these organisations build up, it doesn't mean we won't revisit the notion of elections. But the board is convinced this is the right step to take today. On-line elections are not an end in themselves, they're one way to try and accomplish real involvement of users into the process.
Some Europeans seem to view ICANN is being too close to the American Dept of Commerce. How independent are you? Independent is an interesting word. I don't quite know what that means. We have an agreement with the department of commerce, or a Memorandum Of Understanding. The reason is, historically the department of commerce has the responsibility for the Internet root. The Internet was started in America and these are legitimate things.
On the other hand we are a very global organisation. Thirteen of our nineteen directors are from outside of the United States. We have participation from all over the world. Our meetings are held all over the world to encourage that participation. We have a Government Advisory Committee that any government of any defined country or economic zone can participate in and help encourage the ICANN processes. We talk with people from countries and from governments all over the world.
The US department of commerce is fully conscious of its global responsibility in that world. But until you have an institutionalized structure that people can depend on, the time does not yet come when you can talk about having something that is totally globalised.
Does the Internet fail? It works. Isn't that the ultimate test?
Some people worry that your mandate is to keep the Internet American... People can have all sorts of fantasies and fears. No one's told me that. If you look at what the department of commerce has said in the past and if you look at what ICANN was set up to do in the White Paper it's exactly the opposite of that. It's to internationalize as much as possible.
The Internet is a global phenomenon. It's not American. It depends on the collaborative efforts of people from all over the world. You have country-code Top Level Domains as well as generic ones. Even those generic names aren't all American by any means. DotName is based in the UK and a lot of people don't realize that Afilias, that runs DotInfo, is an Irish company.
Let's focus on making sure the Internet really works and is stable as the kind of enriching environment that people all over the world want to see. The big growth in the Internet now is not in the United States but outside of it, with at least half a billion users around the world.
We're seeing China open up its domain through an American company. Some people also worry that the strong presence of American companies like Neustar or Verisign is preventing you from having a global mandate… People have all sorts of dreams and fantasies, all sorts of paranoia or conspiracy theories... Sometimes a spade is a spade. DotCN decided they wanted an arrangement with Neustar, that's what the free marketplace is about. I know that the management of DotCN are very responsible people who are very conscious of the growth of the Internet.
I've been in this job now for a year and a half and I'm amazed there's more conspiracy theories around than who killed Kennedy!
There seems to be some feeling in the ccTLD community that the gTLDs are considered the big players at ICANN, even though ccTLDs finance 30% of ICANN... No they don't. Less than 10% of the actual funding support of ICANN comes from ccTLDs. What you may be confusing with is a number that gets said as a target number for contributions that's much much higher than ever gets contributed. For ccTLDs that are not under agreement, they make voluntary contributions. We set a kind of fair share level. Some contribute generously more than their fair share and some give far less and some give nothing, like Nominet and DotUK who this year gave nothing. Contribution is not a requirement and the ICANN budget cannot be dependant on voluntary contributions.
People like Nominet have been very vocal in asking for more independence. Should ICANN give it? What is it that ICANN has ever done to Nominet?
It seems they feel they ought to be the ones making all the decisions concerning DotUK. They pretty well do. The policy for ccTLDs is 98% locally decided and defined. There are some global policies. For example the most important one is to agree to abide by global technical standards for interoperability. Nominet, the DotUK, is not an island. If DotUk were to fail - it won't, it's a very well run registry - that would be of significance to people all over the world.
Similarly if ccTLDs or gTLDS were to fail elsewhere, a lot of people in the UK would be mighty upset about that. We have a global Internet. No one's an island. There are some areas where we need to come together and form global policies and that's one of the reasons as part of reform, we're working to establish this ccNSO as a global policy development organisation for the ccTLDs. But it has to be bottom-up. We hope that someone like Willie Black (Nominet chairman) would put his shoulder behind the wheel and help participate in that instead of always wanting to be outside the tent and saying there are no global policies when clearly there are.
What's your feeling on the DotEU launch? We're very encouraged to see DotEu moving forward. It's been a difficult journey because it's a very complex matter. But I think that the European Commission and the member states are working very hard to bring it about and we are looking forward to it. I think it will be a very important addition to the top level domain space.
How would you see it? As a competitor to DotCom or as a kind of European DotUs? I'm not sure I would try and characterize it that way. I think it will fill a need that the EC perceived. But it's awfully hard to predict the market place and who will do things. We'll see. I'm looking forward to it. I think it will be a very interesting launch and I'm sure it will be very successful.
Having launched 7 new TLDs, what advice would you have for the EC to get the EU launch right? They're better off talking to the people who actually did the hard work on that, which were the operators of the new TLDs. They are the ones who had to come to grips with some very difficult problems, particularly for the unsponsored space.
I would think that they would say for sure, just don't assume that you can just build it and they will come. It's going to take some very creative marketing and promotion to help define why DotEu is an important name for someone to have.
But what's important to recognize is that institutions aren't uni-dimensional in their view of "do I choose this or that". They choose this and that because you want to find different avenues to different marketplaces, or different access to different user communities. Some people criticize that and say that if you have a domain name here and you make a new TLD and they buy on there then that's redundant and a waste. I'm not sure I share that view. Different paths to different kinds of communities and marketplaces are not a bad idea.
It's the end of the year, a time when it's customary to make predictions. How do you predict the Domain Name System will evolve in 2003? I'm stepping down from this job in March so I'll leave those kind of predictions to my successor. But there are a number of areas which are being looked at right now which may sound like the plumbing but are very important to users.
Questions that deal with the WHOIS data, how to handle transfers, how to make it better for users not to have to renew in such a hurry for fear of loosing their domain name. We're talking about the possibility of three new sponsored TLDs. Whether that comes or not is not the important question. I think this will be the year that ICANN seriously comes to grips with "how do we evolve the top level domain name space in the future?"
Are you worried about the downward trend in domain name registrations we saw in 2002? It's actually picked up lately. The whole economy's been dwindling, why should the namespace be any different? It's been expanding recently and I think that's a very encouraging sign.
Are you worried about security after the two recent large-scale attacks on the root nameservers and DotInfo's nameservers? Worry is the wrong word. I don't lie awake at night worrying about it. The Internet community has always been concerned about security. It didn't invent security on September 11th. We take security very seriously.
Do I have added concerns about security for the DNS space? Not really. The DNS is a very robust system. The important thing about those DOS attacks is not that we don't have lessons to learn from it, we always do. The root server operators are already taking action as a result of it.
But the important thing is that no user was affected by it that I've learned about. The domain name system itself was able to withstand that attack without a user being affected. Can we predict that will always be the case? Absolutely not. But I can tell you that we have some pretty smart people who are constantly concerned, always have been. They are looking at these issues and will take the most important steps that are needed.
You mentioned that you will step down in March. Is that a relief and will you stay involved in some way? I have no idea. I'm going to help ICANN make as smooth a transition as possible. I will be available to help my successor in anyway I can just as my predecessor Mike Roberts was enormously helpful to me.
Am I looking forward to retirement? Well this is my third attempt. I've failed before, maybe I'll fail this time I don't know. But I do know that I need to spend more time with my family and my grand children and less time on a 7 by 24 job, however exciting and important this job is. It's been very rewarding and despite some of the criticism you hear, I feel very confident for ICANN and that my successor will be able to move it forward in very good ways.
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