Post-ICANN
Being at an ICANN meeting means (if I try to pay attention to what's going on) I can't be online except for communications having to do with the meeting itself. So I feel as if I've been away for a long time.
1. The new Barton bill is being blasted, and rightly so, for the absence of any provisions about packet discrimination by network providers. Although it does allow for FCC adjudication of disputes arising out of noncompliance with the Commission's famous Principles, these adjudications will be one-off, unreviewable, non-precedental affairs. And, under the bill, the Commission would have no rulemaking authority to say anything broadly about discrimination against or blocking of services.
2. How did the ICANN meeting go? Progress. Definite progress. We had a good public discussion about transparency and ways we could have meeting notes created that would be actually useful and meaningful. We talked a great deal in our private meetings about operational matters and about how to make ICANN work more smoothly (and less secretively). We made a public statement about a new gTLD round, and we discussed (in public, not a scripted conversation) internationalized domain name issues at length. We listened closely to what people had to say and we tried to respond. Many board members (I think, in the end, all) spoke publicly and asked and answered questions.
Some things didn't go well. The Board was constantly tied up in meetings or formal receptions that kept us from going to the happy hours (there were free drinks available for everyone every night in a very nice place), and that stopped us from talking to people and made us seem aloof. We have to change that. We couldn't go to the GNSO council public forum because we were in other meetings. We read reports during the public forum, which limited the time for public comment (that's going to change for the next meeting). We have an extremely constrained reconsideration process and an independent review process that has never been used (and whose scope is narrow). We don't plan our private meetings well enough (yet — we're working on that).
So it's a mixed bag, but it was better than it could have been, and I think things will continue to get better. I have high hopes for the GNSO Review that's going on, and I think the reviews of other parts of ICANN will also be helpful.
3. A friend of mine wrote to me and said that the last post I wrote that she understood was about doors being stuck closed, and could I please do another one of those? Here is one of those:
I used to have a big grey duffle suitcase that was so big that it could be seen from space. It was called “seen from space,” and it was a well-traveled bag. It finally gave up after Vancouver, with a big rip in the side. I tried to replace it, but I ended up with a bag that would never be seen from space and is frankly too small to fit all my stuff. So this afternoon I went for a walk with the idea of getting a New Zealand enormous bag to take its place. I found just the place — a small shop selling enormous suitcases.
The woman helping me was young and cheerful. We tried out several bags, dragging them out and comparing just how enormous they were and how great their potential for expansion was. Blue? Black? Red? I made the choice (after a lot of back and forth) she threw in a free cabin bag, and we were chuckling over just how cheap the whole thing was going to be. She ran my credit card through her machine.
And then she said, “Oh. [actually, “Aow”.] We don't take American Express [”amaeirikin expriss”]. Sorry [”soaree”].”
That was it — we were done — I don't carry another credit card. So we just said goodbye, and I walked away feeling suddenly relieved that I wasn't dragging the biggest suitcase on the planet behind me.
Bowling together
Thanks to auDA for a great event tonight: ICANN bowling. When I left, the light show was flickering and the bar had run out of beer glasses.
Really fun, and a good way to decompress after the events of the afternoon.
ICANN-Wellington continues
Although it was hard to see over all the heads of the people in front of me, I believe that Vint Cerf participated this evening in some kind of warrior ritual involving (not by him) shouting, stamping, and waving spears. Gentlemanly as always, he was very game. (He also gave a very good telco policy talk earlier on tonight.)
Someone came up to me tonight and said that all ICANN Board members should be required to blog. Hmm. It does seem to me that the Board should communicate openly (trying out ideas, keeping lines of communication open, discussing things), but getting everyone to blog seems unlikely at the moment. But we can hope.
ICANNWiki has a link to a “consensus polling” tool here. There's a meeting tomorrow at 9:00 am to talk about the tool.
Tomorrow is the first part of the Public Forum. It starts at 1pm here in Wellington on Wednesday. That's 8pm on Tuesday in New York. It will be webcast (and if you stay up until 1am you'll be able to watch the whole thing).
Predictions: a very striking and stern communique from the Government Advisory Committee with respect to .xxx; concerns about communication patterns within/organization of ICANN; strong suggestions about the need for new gTLDs; many concerns about the VeriSign settlement. There will be long lines at the mike, and there will not be enough time - there's a second part of the Public Forum on Thursday morning as well, but it's shorter than the Wednesday session and part of the time will be taken up with committee reports.
Transparency
At the registrar constituency meeting earlier today, there was a good deal of discussion about the ICANN Board conference calls. No transcript is prepared of these calls, and minutes have been slow in coming out. When the Board votes, a transcript of the voting discussion is made, and Board members can make statements “on the record.”
At the in-person meetings, the public Board meetings are public. There's a transcript, there's a webcast, and there are minutes.
Several registrars found this lack of transparency for Board conference calls troubling. The responses to these concerns had to do with language issues and chilling effects.
I'd like to say, “for the record,” that I think we'd quickly get used to having transcripts prepared of Board meetings by conference call — we'd have to get much better at queues, so that people who are slow to speak up would be called on in a stately way, and we'd have to stop the transcript when we were working on personnel or other confidential matters. But the rest of it should be public.
There are many different views on this question on the Board, and the Chair called for suggestions for how we should be more transparent. No resolution on this yet, and there may not be a resolution for some time.
But it was a public meeting, and many Board members made their views emphatically known. A free and frank exchange of views.
Testing IDNs
Internationalized (non-ascii) domain names (IDN) are a key issue for ICANN. Yesterday, the Board completed two days of workshop presentations about various matters (IANA, security, GAC relationships), and we were briefed on the IDN testing that is planned.
I thought it might be useful to make clear the distinction between the tests (which are testing mechanisms for IDNs) and the very difficult policy questions that confront ICANN. As several people explained to me yesterday, they're different.
The test (announced here) will be looking at two approaches: DNAME and NS-records. DNAME essentially (as I understand it) makes an alias designation for an entire domain possible. So, if you were testing the top level domain .test (an imaginary domain) with DNAME, you'd be mapping all of .test into an IDN equivalent of .test. From the end-user's perspective, whether you typed in susancrawford.test or [non-ascii script susancrawford].[IDN equivalent of .test], you'd go to the same place.
DNAME would make it possible for an existing TLD operator (for a real domain, not .test) to control registrations in other scripts.
The other approach, NS-records, permits the insertion of an IDN (encoded) into the root. So this means that a new non-ascii TLD using NS-records could be proposed. The test of NS-records would involve, e.g., seeing if different script versions of .test work when they are inserted into the root.
These are two mechanisms. The policy decisions — whether existing gTLDs or ccTLDs should control their script “equivalents” (and how to decide what an “equivalent” is) haven't been made, and won't be until the results of this test are known and can be evaluated.
And even once the tests are over, it doesn't seem as if a single uniform global decision (either DNAME or NS-records) will necessarily result. These two methods aren't mutually exclusive.
These are very difficult policy questions, but the test seems to me to be just that — a test of two mechanisms.
Verizon-FCC
Last week's silent (passive) decision by the FCC to release Verizon from its common carriage obligations to companies is worth digging through.
As far as I can tell, back in 2004 Verizon claimed that it was a non-dominant provider of broadband services because it was in such intense competition with cable companies. It asked for forbearance from the application of all Title II (presumably including CALEA and CPNI and Part 68, and certainly including unbundling obligations) and Computer Inquiry rules to it.
Even though Verizon apparently didn't provide any hard data about its non-dominance in particular geographic markets; even though it provides the only loop to many many commercial buildings; even though it got specific about what services it was talking about only six weeks before the FCC's decision; even though just a few months ago the FCC rejected Verizon's request; and even though Verizon made promises in connection with its merger with MCI that are apparently now trumped — despite all of this, and opposition from many quarters (including from inside the Commission), the Commission decided to move ahead.
It's enough to make you lose faith in the administrative process.
From what I've heard here in New Zealand, there's a move towards structural separation — making the pipe just a pipe, and requiring it to interconnect with everyone else who wants to provide services. The benefit of structural separation, as opposed to common carriage tariffing rules, is that the separated entity can immediately make clear the cost of its services without having a prolonged rate-setting proceeding.
Of course, I'm here in New Zealand to work on ICANN matters, and I've had a big day of them. But I'm still amazed at this Verizon step back at home. More about ICANN later.
This blog posting coming to you upside-down
Hamish MacEwan was my host last night at Thursday Night Curry. Very lively group. Matthew Cruickshank has created Docvert, which takes MSN files and coverts them to open standards outputs. Roger De Salis is bravely rolling out fiber (fx.net.nz) across New Zealand. Lots of people want to talk about copyright policy and open source. It was a long thin (loud) table, so I didn't get to hear about everyone's efforts. But I did get the strong sense that this is a cooperative, energetic bunch that is making a lot of headway.
On the way across the Pacific, I read Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Written 45 years ago, it couldn't be more relevant.
This is what a city is, bits and pieces that supplement each other and support each other. .. The intricate order of cities — a manifestation of the freedom of countless numbers of people to make and carry out countless plan — is in many ways a great wonder. We ought not to be reluctant to make this living collection of interdependent uses, this freedom, this life, more understandable for what it is, nor so unaware that we do not know what it is.
Jacobs's point, made in many beautiful and different ways in this book, is that cities aren't art. Attempts to plan cities by, say, completely segregating residential uses on long blocks with narrow sidewalks–so there's nowhere to buy a cup of coffee or a newspaper–or optimizing for cars (so that sidewalks are narrowed and parks are cut off from people) have disastrous deadening results. She exalts the general-purpose sidewalk as a key element of city life. A sidewalk's strength is that it's not optimized for any particular use.
Planning the internet, like planning a city around the needs of cars, may destroy the delicate interdependencies among the zillions of components that create order online. We can't see the internet the way we can see Greenwich Village, but a variety of things are happening online that make for an unbelievably diverse and lively environment.
The Road to Wellington (III)
Literally. I'm in LA for an hour on my way to New Zealand.
Another key objective for this meeting (for me) is making discernable progress on new gTLDs.
It's essential that ICANN move towards a (stately, okay, but deliberate, regular, and predictable) process of accrediting new TLDs. Such a process is required by ICANN's MOU with the U.S. Department of Commerce. Competition in the gTLD space is needed, and this need was further supported by ICANN's entry into the recent VeriSign settlement.
Not uncontrolled introduction of new gTLDs — that's not what's called for — but a standardized, non-beauty-contest process. My recent (completely unreliable as an indicator) request for information about pent-up desires to open up new ones tells me that if ICANN could accredit tens of these things a year appetite for them might be satiated.
Vertigo-inducing: it is 9pm here in LA, midnight in NYC, and 5pm tomorrow in Wellington.
Network data
We have no idea what Verizon or AT&T are actually doing with their networks. No clue. And it's unlikely that they'll willingly let neutral technical people (like CAIDA) take a look.
This is a huge legal/technical/policy problem. It costs money to get the equipment needed to measure the performance of these networks, even if access weren't an issue, and the money isn't flowing in. We don't have Bell Labs any more, or any replacement for it.
This means the policy decisions we're making are without empirical foundation. Baseless. Uninformed. Isn't the idea that we should know what we're talking about, whether we're focused on body counts in Iraq or packet treatment in Texas?
I'm not sure what the solution to this is — all I can say is that it seems to be a problem that inevitably leads to additional cascades of terrible problems. In addition to forming PACs and rising up in anger, the big online companies might want to force the collection of some neutral data.
Particularly now that FCC has, without a reviewable order, allowed Verizon to do whatever it wants [word doc — Copps statement]
It's A Wonderful Life
A colleague wrote to me and reminded me that the telcos waaay back in the days before 1995 wanted a particular approach to networked communications to prosper — managed communications, easily-controlled billing….X.500 was the shorthand he used. AT&T had no fondness for NSFnet. (We'll have to dig up the correspondence with Congress.)
We need the “It's a Wonderful Life” of the internet. Not the happy ending — the alternative middle.
What if the telcos had won at the outset? What if they had managed the managed network? Would we have had PCs in such profusion? Low-cost online applications? Many walled gardens? Would the internet have ended up at the center of things, as it has now?
Probably not. Bleak, very bleak.