Shane Tews

[Commentary] Wikileaks has posted a draft outcome document created by the Executive Stakeholder Committee of the NetMundial Internet Governance conference to be held in Brazil April 23 – 24.

Before the first multi-stakeholder invited to attend had taken a seat, the organizer had already decided what principles they were going to agree to and a road map for implementation. The main challenge of the document is this: while the principles may seem reasonable, even laudable, the roadmap for implementation has many challenges and potential hidden agendas. The Internet as a “Human Right”, access to information, free flow of data, freedom of association, expression, privacy, accessibility, etc., all sounds like principles we want to embrace.

And a governance process encouraged to be “open, participatory, multi-stakeholder, technology-neutral, sensitive to human rights and based on principles of transparency, accountability and inclusiveness”, sounds like a good idea we should be able to support. But now I’m wondering who will have the capacity to implement all this pro-free rhetoric?

Most likely, that job would fall to governments around the world. It would be up to them to let us know when we have hit our Internet Governance metric. Many of the items in the leaked outcome document are good aspirational goals. It’s deciding on the path to achieve them that will be the major challenge for the multi-stakeholders engaged in this process. Continuing to seek balance between governments, industry partners, content providers, and the end user will be an ongoing challenge.

[Tews is the Chief Policy Officer at 463 Communications]

[Commentary] The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it plans to end its formal relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by not renewing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract in 2015.

Now, as this technical function of the Internet enters a highly politicized environment, new challenges arise. Chief among those challenges are the lack of a public plan regarding whom to transfer the root zone management function to in the absence of the NTIA and how to protect this function from political desires by foreign countries or here in the US to limit freedom of speech.

For instance, the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), issued a statement praising NTIA for its move on the IANA function a day after he sent a letter to the Obama Administration suggesting “.sucks” should not be added to the root zone as a new Top Level Domain. If the first amendment protects “.sucks,” it should also protect .wtf, .god, .dog, or .shabaka. Similar letters have arrived at the Department of Commerce from multiple foreign governments for years, but no one worried that the suggestion of censoring the Internet via the root zone was truly a possibility.

Now, censorship is a live question thanks to the NTIA’s announcement. Those of us who care about the future of the Internet have it in our best interest to make sure ICANN keeps the free and open Internet as its top priority.

[Tews is the Chief Policy Officer at 463 Communications]