[3] U.S. Press Censorship of Criticism of ICANN by Ronda Hauben ronda@ais.org Press censorship of criticism of ICANN is unfortunately widespread in the U.S. even preventing Op Eds to be allowed to be printed. A while ago I wrote to a computer trade magazine that played an important role in reporting a story about some problems in making the cutover from NCP to TCP/IP. I asked if they would be willing to run a story investigating what was happening with the creation of ICANN. The editor I wrote to told me that I couldn't do that, but that I could do an Op Ed as long as it was limited to a certain number of words. At first I found it difficult to do the Op Ed as it is hard to write something short that is also specific. However, I finally did something and sent it to the editor. He referred me to the new Op Ed editor. The new Op Ed editor asked me to redo the Op Ed. I did. He said it would be accepted and run. Then 2 hours before he would be running it, he told me to rewrite it, cut the word count, and answer a number of questions he gave me. I did so. Got it back to him in the 2 hours. And he wrote me back that he wouldn't run it. I had thought that Op Eds were to be alternative viewpoints. It became clear in accepting an invitation to do an Op Ed that that isn't true, at least in the experience with the computer trade magazine that I had. There is a serious need for a broad ranging public discussion about what is happening with the creation of ICANN and the U.S. government shift of control of enormous economic wealth and power over the Internet and its users to ICANN. But this requires an open press and the welcoming of a broad ranging set of diverse views. Following is the Op Ed I submitted before all the additional rigid requirements I was given. I thought it should circulate despite the censorship by the computer trade magazine. Is ICANN out of Control? On Thursday, July 22, 1999 the U.S. Congress held a hearing on the subject: Is ICANN out of control? It was held by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the U.S. House Commerce Committee. ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was created in Fall '98 as a private sector non profit corporation to take over ownership and control of certain essential functions of the Internet. These functions include among others, the IP numbers, the domain name system and root server system, and the protocols. It is good to see the beginning effort by the U.S. Congress to investigate what has happened with the creation and manipulation behind the scenes of ICANN. Such investigation is needed. But the hearing was a very meager beginning of the kind of study and input needed by Congress to understand the problem that ICANN is creating for the Internet community. Unfortunately, with a very few exceptions, most of the witnesses were supporters of ICANN, or were involved in protecting their own stake in getting a piece of the wealth from transferring essential functions of the Internet to the private sector. Some Congressmen asked good questions. The absence of witnesses who would be able to help to identify the problem, however, showed the pressure by those who feel they will benefit from the privatizing of what has functioned effectively as a public sector responsibility. ICANN was created in the midst of a controversy over what would be the appropriate institutional form for the ownership and control of these functions of the Internet that are crucial to its operation. At an ICANN meeting in January of 1999, a panelist from the Kennedy School of Government, Elaine Kamarck, explained that the nonprofit corporate form was inappropriate for the administration of functions like those that ICANN will be controlling. Since an individual's or company's economic life will be dependent on how these functions are administered, there needs to be the kind of safeguards that government has been created to provide. A nonprofit entity, even if it is a membership organization, does not have such safeguards for the kind of economic responsibility that ICANN is being set up to assume. The development of ICANN over the past seven months has indeed demonstrated that the nonprofit corporate form, the structural form of ICANN, does not have a means to provide internal safeguards to counteract the tremendous power to control the Internet and its users which is being vested in ICANN. Contrary to popular opinion, the Internet is not a "finished" entity. It is a complex system of humans, computers, and networks which makes communication possible among these diverse entities. Scientific and grassroots science expertise continue to be needed to identify the problems and to help to figure out the solutions for the Internet to continue to grow and flourish. A crucial aspect of the governance structure for the first 12 years of the life of the Internet had to do with being a part of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the civilian research agency in the U.S. Department of Defense known an ARPA or the Advanced Projects Research Agency. ARPA/IPTO was created to make it possible for computer scientists to support computer science research like that which gave birth to and made it possible to develop the Internet. This early institutional form made it possible for people of different nations to work together to build the Internet. How this was done needs to be understood and the lessons learned for designing the institutional form to support vital Internet functions today and for the future. The U.S. Congress needs to be willing to raise the real questions and to look for the answers wherever they are to be found. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reprinted from the Amateur Computerist Vol 9 No 2 Winter 1999-2000. The whole issue or a subscription are available for free via email. Send a request to jrh@ais.org or see http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------