INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON THE WHITE PAPER
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
JULY 24-25 1998

A Report on the Brussels Meeting

Michael Schneider, Vice President, EuroISPA EEIG

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am grateful to see that so many of you in the private sector in Europe have responded to the call of the US Administration and EU Commission to take the question of the administration of Internet addresses and name spaces into your own hands. We undoubtedly owe a special vote of thanks here to the ISOC, which has most generously and selflessly integrated its originally planned conference into the International Forum on the White Paper.

As time is limited, I won’t waste it on a long preface but move straight on to describing how far the European constituencies have done their homework.

Background

As Mr Wilkinson has already explained, the Commission has for some time been helping ensure that European interests are given due weight in reorganising the IANA. This involved a number of challenges, as I can confirm from my own observations. When I met Mr Wilkinson for the first time early in 1997, few people in Europe were aware of the central importance of address and name space administration in the Internet. As a result, he had to work very hard to persuade the Commission and the EU member states to look at this issue at all. Again, a year ago it was anything but obvious who would - as the technicians say - get the "token" for reorganising the IANA. As you know, a number of groups were competing, with none able to claim directly that they had found a solution which would be acceptable to all the stakeholders - or, rather, those who saw themselves as stakeholders. Ultimately, this led to intervention by the US administration in a way which, to be frank, was very critically perceived in Europe. Our concerns were further exacerbated at the start of 1998 by the so-called Green Paper. This was seen by the European Internet industry as an attempt to give permanent status to US dominance of the Internet.

All this is history now, so that it’s a moot question what effects the Green Paper would actually have had. It proved possible - and certainly to a great extent this was due to Mr Wilkinson’s efforts - to persuade the US Administration that a global process operating through the private sector was preferable to a US-centred approach. The US Administration then published its White Paper, which has been essentially regarded as acceptable in all the discussions that I’ve been involved in, even if some improvement is required to details.

Another challenge posed by the White Paper was the task of creating a broadly based consensus. As the recent conference in Reston showed, this is not entirely simple even in the USA. In Europe there is the additional problem that consensus presupposes awareness. The debate about the new IANA has largely bypassed the European industry, with the exception of the academic sector, the ISPs, and those companies already using the Internet intensively as a platform for their commercial activities - and let us not forget the trademark lawyers. As a result it was difficult to get a discussion going. The IFWP Steering Committee made strenuous efforts here, but was at first able to identify only few constituencies interested in helping flesh out the White Paper.

Here again we have to thank Mr Wilkinson, who advanced the process substantially. After early consultation with the EU member states, he called a conference on 7 July in Brussels which was a resounding success, not only for Mr Wilkinson but also for the majority of participants. He brought together over 140 representatives from all sectors to discuss many of the questions posed by the White Paper. The results of the conference are available on the WorldWideWeb, so I’m sure you will forgive me if I don’t read out the final statement here. Instead, I should like to summarize the items we reached consensus upon and outline briefly how the discussion has developed after the conference.

Following Mr Wilkinson’s proposal, a so-called "Panel of Participants" was set up as a voice for the European constituencies. Although little more than two weeks have passed since the Brussels conference, the panel has already grown to more than 20 members, and has succeeded in agreeing a joint position on a whole series of questions. In my view, if we add together the results of the conference and the work of the panel, we have no need to hide behind the agreements reached at Reston. We will be presenting our shared views, which we have called our "set of principles", at suitable points during this conference.

However trivial it may seem at first, we have agreed that we will take the White Paper as the basis or rather starting point for our work, not necessarily agreeing to every one of its details. I would ask you to remember here that the White Paper with its American origins has by no means been simply taken as a given in other quarters. In Europe in particular we are now evolving a self-confidence in fundamental issues peering those of our American counterparts. Nevertheless, we have agreed to set aside our reservations and work constructively on the basis of the White Paper.

We have also made intensive use in our deliberations of the papers of what Jon Postel today called the "old IANA". Our conclusion is that the proposals of Jon Postel in particular are a suitable basis in many respects for our future thinking. However, it has become clear that the Panel of Participants differs in detail from Postel’s views. I would accordingly welcome it if we could find time today and tomorrow to discuss the key points here in a wider forum.

Let me now provide you with an overview of the individual issues on which the Brussels conference and the Panel have expressed their views.

Overview of the individual issues

Let me start with the conference.

With regard to the reorganisation of IANA we emphasised the following points:

• The importance of a broad and open Membership of the future Corporation, including business and consumer representatives.
• Significant participation and representation of existing organisations responsible for IP addressing - in particular RIPE, ARIN and AP-NIC - the DNS including the national ccTLD Registries and the Internet Service providers.
• The need for fair and transparent financial mechanisms to fund the new Corporation and its future activities.
• Continued open, bottom-up standardisation processes in the context of the IETF and the IAB.

With regard to Registries and Registrars, the conference adopted the following principles:

• Competition in the registration market and early opening of the InterNIC registries to access by all qualified Registrars.
• Early consideration by the new Corporation of the creation of appropriately structured new generic Top Level Domains, linked to the needs of the business and user community.
• All gTLDs to be operated by shared not-for-profit Registries on a cost recovery basis and restoration of the InterNIC Registries to a not-for-profit operation on the basis of the announced agreement between the US Government and NSI.
• Development of flexible and market oriented registration policies which take full account of the requirement for transparency and reliability of DNS registration data, and ensure the portability of names and the long-term scalability of the generic TLDs.
• Access to the name space has to be open on a non-discriminatory basis.

On stability and reliability, the conference agreed that:

• The master Root Server should be transferred to the new Corporation at an early date and steps should be taken to guarantee the neutral, independent and reliable operation of the Root Server system.
• Current policies and practices regarding Internet protocols and standards should be maintained. Global stability and interoperability of all Internet services is a critical long-term requirement.
• Policies for the allocation and use of the IP addresses should be transparent and non-discriminatory and should take full account of the future growth in demand for Internet addresses, evolving from the current system.
• The Domain Name system is currently implemented globally by both national ccTLD Registries and the generic TLDs. Both systems have an important role to play in the European DNS market.
• Users’ requirements include transparency and predictability of the DNS, and automatic and reliable access to all other users through the Root Server system.
• The new Corporation should promote the early development of global Internet directories.
• Industry requirements include consistent, flexible and market oriented registration policies, including dispute resolution.
• The meeting concluded that the new Corporation should expand the current generic TLD name space progressively so as to accommodate future global growth in the Internet.
• The meeting welcomed the proposed reorganisation of the .US domain and drew attention to the possible creation of a .EU domain.
• Participants endorsed the general principle that existing trademark rights should be protected in the context of the Domain Name System. Registries and Registrars should maintain registration data such that trademark owners might readily identify possible infringement of their rights; trademark owners should also be able to refer possible disputes to the Courts in the relevant trademark jurisdictions.
• In order to ensure consumer confidence, an effective legal and commercial framework including dispute resolution, needs to be in place prior to the introduction of new gTLDs.
• The autonomy of national ccTLDs should be preserved although it is recognised that some harmonisation of practices is desirable.

The topics I mentioned have been subject to subsequent discussion within the Panel of Participants, whereby we reached agreement on the following additional issues:

• There was consent about the fact that the new IANA should be a non-profit organisation in the sense of that it is to work on a cost-recovery-basis.
• With regard to the first Board – or iBoard for short - it was decided that all members should not be eligible for the final Board for a specific period of time or several terms and the iBoard should be phased out gradually to guarantee continuity. In this context, "continuity" means that a minority will be staying on the final Board for a short period of time. For the same reason, it was also suggested that the final Board always be elected in stages, never as a whole.
• A discussion has been carried out regarding the specific qualifications a Board member should have. General consensus was reached that commercial and technical experience should be present, as well as experience in the Internet debate. The Board should be representative of a broad range of stakeholders, with emphasis put on the sectoral spread as well as the regional.
• In a second step, methods which should be employed to allow fostering and measuring reasonable diversification were discussed with regard to the mechanism and principles to be used for the appointment of the Board's members. It was unanimously agreed that there should never be a majority of members from any single region.
• The question of criteria to be able to vote was discussed. Two possibilities were proposed: either that a large, diverse membership should be created, of which every member have a vote or that the different constituencies be given votes.
• Three models have been proposed for the structure of the new entity: In the 1^st scenario, a larger group - we may call it the voting constituency - elects the councils, giving them the greater part of legitimacy and power. In the 2^nd scenario, the voters elect the Board, therefore enabling it to make the greater part of the decisions. In a more sophisticated 3^rd scenario both the councils and the Board are elected by the voters, while giving the Board the power to create new councils, independently of the existing councils.
• As to the influence within the nIANA, it was decided that the users and industry should be able to directly elect a number of members to the respective bodies, whichever election-model is decided upon.
• The composition of the councils was another important topic. It was agreed that the councils should mainly be made up of experts, if adequate input of the users can be ensured. Competent legal advice should be ensured as well.
• The issue of responsibility and autocracy of the councils was raised. Consensus was reached that possible policies to be worked out could be initiated both by the councils for their respective area of competence or by the Board. These proposals would then be worked out by the councils and then be handed to the Board for approval. The question of who should implement the policies was left open for discussion.
• With regard to jurisdiction and legal venue, the general agreement was that it should under no circumstance be US-centric.
• The question of a dispute-resolution was addressed. There was agreement that a dispute resolution mechanism for all gTLDs should be implemented and that - independently of the question of who executes this resolution on the long run - a uniform international policy should apply.

Thank you for your attention.