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Presented by Paul Wilson, Director General, APNIC
1 December 2004
The Regional Internet
Registries have been participating in WSIS for over two years, individually
and more recently through the Number Resource Organization, which represents
RIRs globally. There are a few WSIS areas where we might like to spend
our time, but WGIG is now demanding all of our attention.
We are participating in WSIS as experts in the area
of IP addressing, and as supporters of ICANN. We've given our support
not as components of ICANN, but as independent members of this broader
framework of Internet administration, which ICANN itself is intended to
support.
In the second round of WSIS, the RIRs will continue
to play an active role, especially in the WGIG. We will continue to support
ICANN, and to work with ICANN to address the genuine questions that it
faces.
We feel that within WSIS, the principle issues are
those of the independence and genuine internationalisation of ICANN. The
NRO has called on ICANN to continue its work in this area, not by building
a monolithic multinational organization, but rather by increased co-operation
and collaboration with its core stakeholders.
We've also called on ICANN to work with the US Government
to publish a genuine, unambiguous plan for its independence after the
current MoU, and to commit to this plan before the conclusion of the second
phase of the WSIS. This is critical, to provide the WSIS community with
certainty as to the future form and status of ICANN after WSIS, a question
which is certainly still unclear to many.
Also as a critical issue of Internet governance,
the NRO rejects any concept of an alternative Internet administrative
model located within any governmental or intergovernmental structure.
We acknowledge fully that there is a valid role for governments in the
administration of the Internet, however this can and should be placed
in the context of the current model.
Recently, the NRO posted a public response to Houlin
Zhou's memorandum on Internet Governance, addressing the proposal for
a national allocation scheme for IPv6 addresses. Like others such as the
Japanese Internet Governance Task Force, we have serious and very genuine
concerns about the technical and operational implications of such a scheme.
The assertion of sovereign concerns in this case
is a certainly powerful and legitimate argument, however there are mechanisms
either in place now or certainly feasible, which may address the same
concern with far lower risk. For the sake of the stability and security
of the Internet, such solutions should certainly be explored.
Finally, in relation to the WGIG, I'd like to revisit
some comments I made during the Geneva meeting last week. It seems that
the definition of Internet Governance, which is the first of WGIG's tasks,
is being driven by negative aspects of the Internet, as a list of "problem
areas" of the net. Or in other words, as a list of bugs rather than
features.
The point here is that many aspects of the Internet
are not being suggested as topics of Governance, simply because they currently
work well enough not to be on the radar. These include such things as
the routing system (which is pretty stable), competition between alternate
root servers (which would certainly be an issue in the absence of the
concerted efforts which have been made to avoid it), and the global interoperability
of all parts of the net (which is assumed without question but by no means
guaranteed).
I suggested to the Working Group last week that
these and other aspects of the Internet must not be taken for granted,
and the famous principle of "do no harm" should be borne strongly
in mind. I suggested that rather than seeing Internet Governance as a
list of bugs, WGIG should consider features of the Internet which are
to be appreciated and preserved, and include this consideration in the
scope of its work. The risk of overlooking them, and this is a real risk,
is to "do harm" to the Internet, and potentially therefore,
to leave a longer list of problems for some future Working Group to solve.
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