Advocacy and Outrage

This page looks at advocacy bodies concerned with domain naming and addressing. It also looks at some ICANN blogs.

It covers -

• introduction
• critics
• business
• independents or antagonists
• blogs

The separate Domains & the DNS profile on this site highlights particular industry issues.

     introduction

Given perceptions that ICANN is the "unelected government of cyberspace", it has become the focus of community advocacy bodies across the world and of individuals whose enthusiasm - or pretentions - sometimes seems to be inversely proprtional to their credibility. Its importance in determining the global framework for naming of sites means that it is also the focus of lobbying by business groups.

Broader questions regarding the nature of advocacy, and of its regulation, are explored here.

     critics

Unofficial analysis of its activities is provided by a number of bodies and sites, including ICANNWatch. ICANN has released proposals for changes to the domain name system.

The Internet Democracy Project (IDP) was established in June 2000 by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR). The latter established a Civil Society (CivSoc, archived here) group as part of the IDP.

The IDP's goals were to encourage participation by non-governmental organizations in internet governance and promote the principles of a civil society. Its proponents argued that key governance decisions about central resources and operations are being made by agencies such as ICANN that have quasi-governmental powers, that operate on a global level but lack the accountability of government. They also argued that there is real need to focus the attention of civil society on seemingly technical issues determined by those agencies

The Project sponsored a forum on 'Civil Society & the ICANN Elections' on 13 July 2000 in Yokohama, site of an ICANN board meeting, and was looking at the impact of other internet governance structures on civil society. The Project expired; its site is not available via the Internet Archive (an interesting illustration of myths about ongoing accessibility and transparency).

The Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), apparently moribund since late 2003, was a coalition of over 50 cyberliberties groups from around the world.

As its name suggests, the Noncommercial Domain Name Holders Constituency (NCDNHC) represents non-commercial groups (including many non-government organizations) within ICANN. As of mid-2007 it was chaired by leading ICANN critic Milton Mueller.

The net has been littered with grand-sounding nano-advocacy groups opposed to ICANN. One example is Global Sense (GS), a small US libertarian group mixing the thoughts of Tom Paine and Esther Dyson with rhetoric about "practical idealism" in a quest for internet democracy against the forces of corporate darkness. ("TRIUMPH over fear, anger and despair by claiming your personal power to change the world by changing yourself. SEE how our natural global interactivity makes us powerful since everything we think, say and do affects all life on earth. CHOOSE smart options in daily life that can help end war, restore our lost freedoms and heal our wounded planet" etc)

Andy Bloch's aptly named ICANNnot (moribund since 2002?) is less substantial than icannVote (archived here; domain later used by a porn site) and ApplyAtLarge (archived here; also pornified), US and EU groups concerned with the 2000 ICANN election.

     business

The Global Internet Project (GIP, archived here), another US-based and industry-driven group, founded by Netscape's James Clark (star of silicon western The New New Thing) comprised "well-known leaders of the Internet Revolution" but its papers for international senior executives supplied a perspective on how the US managerial elite were perceiving the online world around the time of the dot-com crash.

Among the wave of US business groups are NetCoalition.com, (archived here), the strangely named Global Information Infrastructure (GII, archived here). The latter is not to be confused with the nonprofit Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC) - "a confederation of chief executives and other officers of business firms engaged in the development, manufacture, deployment, operation, modernization, financing, and use of services and products based upon information and communications technologies" - and the Global Business Dialogue for Electronic Commerce (GBDe).

The Electronic Commerce Forum (ECF, archived here), a US group, competed with the GIP.

The World Internet Alliance (WIA) was aligned with the Internet Law & Policy Forum (ILPF), a "gathering of major corporations exploring e-commerce legal and policy issues" under the auspices of the Discovery Institute, a US entity that has attracted attention through association with George Gilder and what has variously been tagged 'creation science' or 'intelligent design'.

The Internet Alliance, another business advocacy group, advertises itself as the "premier organisation of Internet policy professionals representing the Internet online industry" [sic]. It is aligned with the Direct Marketing Association of America and has a more provincial focus.

The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), established in 2007, seeks to influence ICANN and the US Congress to reduce domain name tasting and other abuses, eg by strengthening ACPA (US anti-cybersquatting legislation).

The US-based Domain Name Rights Coalition (DNRC) - apparently on life support since late 2004 - like the defunct Association for Domain Owners Rights (ADOR, archived here) and the TLD Lobby (TLDL, archived here), is an advocacy body for "small businesses and entrepreneurs", opposed to ICANN and the US Anti-Cybersquatting Act. There is no Australian equivalent.

New Zealand has the Democratic Association of Domain Owners (DADNO) and hosts the global Individual Domain Name Owners Constituency (IDNO). Both bodies appear to have a tiny active membership and little if any impact.

The Internet Council of Registrars (CORE) is an international organisation representing domain registrars, supportive of increased competition in the domain registration business.

     independents or antagonists

The Open Root Server Confederation (ORSC), representing alternative root scheme enthusiasts - most of whom appear to be dyslexic - advocates "deregulation and privatisation". Its heterodox root systems are independent of ICANN and not recognised by most computers. ORSC's significance is essentially as a lever for changing ICANN (or merely serving as "a mechanism for occupying the attention of cranks"): its effect has been quite negligible.

     blogs

Some of the more influential - or merely noisy - blogs from advocates are

Chris Ambler - onthenet.ambler.net
Karl Auerbach - www.cavebear.com/cbblog
Susan Crawford - scrawford.blogware.com
Bret Fausett - blog.lextext.com/blog
Ross Rader - www.byte.org/blog
Wendy Seltzer - wendy.seltzer.org/blog
Thomas Roessler - log.does-not-exist.org

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