ICANN fights on several fronts: demands for wider international control of internet governance and domestic lawsuits. Paul Twomey, ICANN president, takes it all in his stride.
On the Verisign lawsuit – there seems to be a lot of positive feeling here towards Icann with people implying that such lawsuits are a consistent drain on Icann’s resources and a way to stifle the Icann process. Because the Internet is an environment interlinked by contracts between various players, dispute over contracts and agreements is a natural part. Sometimes those disputes end up in the courts for determination. So in that respect this is part of the natural business environment in which we operate. We are disappointed that Verisign has decided to choose confrontation over consensus in this process but it’s their right to do so. For us it’s a question of continuing with business as usual. I can’t say very much about the issues themselves, but I concur with your comments: we have received a lot of positive and supportive communications from the community and outside the community.
What have you heard from Europeans since the opening of the Brussels office? Is Icann changing as far as they are concerned? The majority of feedback that I receive from European stakeholders is almost the same as the feedback I receive from any of the developed world stakeholders. So in that respect, the feedback is global, not particularly European. There are specific things like data protection and privacy issues that are not purely European issues but nonetheless Europeans are conscious of them. And also issues around participation and listening. Clearly the country code managers in Europe represent a group of well managed and stable country codes, which is a distinction from certain other parts of the world.
We’ve had very strong support from governments in Europe. Not all governments have had the same views and we’ve had very high level access. Even in countries where people have considered that they may have different or diverging views about internet governance, we’ve had interaction and conversation at prime ministerial level. We’ve had strong support from the Commission. We’re also very interested in things that are happening in Europe – DotEu for example, which I think is a very interesting project. We’re very please to have opened an office in Brussels.
Do you feel WSIS is the next big challenge for Icann going into the 2005 Tunisia meeting? No I think the next big challenge for Icann is actually doing our core business. That is the operation of stability and security functions around the DNS, looking at choice and competition in this marketplace, potentially looking at issues for new TLDs and gTLDs. The WSIS is something we’re happy to be involved in. I did talk here about some of our concerns about the way in which the issues are being cast and the confusion around some of these terms. We’re looking forward to participating but if you ask me what the primary focus for our organisation is, it is actually working with the community on our core business.
You don’t feel threatened by what is supposed to be an ITU challenge to Icann? There’s a lot of simplification of this in the media. We certainly do not see this as an ITU challenge to Icann. We just don’t see it in that context. We don’t see it as Icann versus the UN. We don’t see it as Icann versus anybody. What we see is a dialogue around a range of issues that have come out of the operation of the Internet and in the narrow technical coordination area in which we operate, I think they first recognized that was part of it. The working group working on definitions of who does what we think is quite appropriate. We are just not interested in attempts to cast the process in some sort of boxing match between ourselves and the ITU.
What happens after this last MOU? Icann is here to stay? The completion of the MOU process is the completion of the transfer of the operation of the zonefile and the functions that to a degree we do now. Much of what happens now in the operation of it is that we do it and the US DOC has some oversight. It’s just recognition that we’ve achieved full transfer, they’re comfortable with it and therefore the oversight part transfers.
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