I just got an e-mail from someone currently attending the IGF meeting in Geneva . The e-mail ended up in my spam folder because the IP address used for the WLAN at the meeting is on a spambot/virusbot blacklist, namely cbl.abuseat.org. Apparently some guy there has his computer infected by a spambot or a virusbot. Because the local host uses a NAT, all the computers share the same public IP address. This means that all the attendees to the meeting risk seeing their e-mails blacklisted somewhere.

Funny this comes from the very people who would like to set up strategies to fight cybercrime …

Lesson to be learned:

One: NATs are a nuisance. They are responsible for collateral damage.

Two: In a hostile networking environment, never ever trust the local network and fire up your ssh or IPsec tunnel to a machine you can trust.

Three: give us IPv6 as soon as possible to get rid of NATs

The European Commission has released a communication on IPv6, in time for the IPv6 Day in Brussels next 30th May.  It goes in the same direction as the report presented at the OECD Ministerial meeting on “Future of the Internet Economy”, that was held in Seoul, Korea earlier this next month. At the same time, the Commission committed to make its own web services available on IPv6 by 2010.

It is good to see that intergovermental organizations take the lead on this, after 10 years of failure of the private sector to actually deploy IPv6. This is a good example of why governments are needed in the Internet governance arena, be it the IGF or the GAC in ICANN.

Quick and dirty fixes like NATs allow for small investments and high short-term returns. This is what most CEOs in the Internet industry are concerned with,  because they risk to get fired if they do not provide a good and quick return to shareholders. When a long term and societal vision is needed, governments become key leading partners.

It is true that these governments also include a bunch of “supreme guides of the people’s revolution” and other sorts of autocrats and dictators. Indeed, they censor and control their local Internet. These are the same people who control other media like TV or the written press. There is nothing new under the sun, and I still do not understand some in the Internet community who like us to think the Net is different from other media and that the (bad) rules do not apply.

This is why we need the increased presence of democratic governments in Internet governance circles. Unfortunately, the current ideology in democratic countries is to let the private sector do whatever it  wants, with little political support. Not-so-democratic governments, on the contrary, tend to be very active. The end result, as we see in the IGF, is that the latter come up with requests that neither the private sector nor the “civil society” (whatever that means) can counter, because they lack the political weight. A good dictator knows the best way to silence the private sector is to become one of its customers, because no company wants to loose business.  Which leads us back to paragraph 3 above.

Veni Markovski has an excellent article on his blog about Civil Society Professionals in Internet Governance. You know, the people you meet each and every time in IGF, ICANN and other related meetings.  Quoting from his post:

- we may be seeing the emergence of a professional class of civil society activists (”CS professionals”).
- the CS professionals are alleged to have specific private interests. Their careers, income, and status depend on the Internet governance process.
- the CS professionals are alleged to have a biased world view, based on easy access to the Internet, full command of the English language, and personal origins in USA and Western Europe.
- representatives from less affluent, non-English-speaking societies may find themselves marginalized by this CS professional class

The ever excellent Internet Protocol Journal, published by Cisco has an article this month by Steve Gibbard about the distribution of the Internet root servers. The press often writes there are only 13 of them. There are actually 117 at the time of this writing, and most of them outside the USA. This article will tell you where and what the remaining issues are. The study goes on to examine the geographical location of the gTLD and ccTLD servers.

<unpaid ad>The IPJ is a free publication of Cisco. Contrary to many manufacturer funded publications, this one is not a collection of advertisements and self-glorifying articles. Quite to the contrary, it is open to all contributors and is of a very high standard. Cisco should be commanded for providing this useful service to the community. In the end, this black and white publication benefits more to their image than expensive, flashy coloured ads. It is free, as in “free beer”. There are no strings attached. If you wish a paper copy subscription, just fill in the form on the web site. </unpaid ad>

The online registration for Internet Governance Forum in Athens, Greece, from 30th October to 2nd November 2006 is now open at http://www.intgovforum.org/register/index.php.

The IGF’s hosting provider, Net Access, has also hosted spammers, which means the IP address of their server (66.246.220.27) is on several black lists. In case you do not receive a confirmation message of your registration, this may be the reason. Check your spam filters.

Becky Burr (former NTIA official) and lobbyist Marilyn Cade has made a proposal to create a multilateral working group to oversee the root zone file updates.

I would characterize the Burr-Cade proposal as a “small step for mankind and a giant step for the US” to paraphrase Neil Armstrong. The main merit of the proposal is that it looks like something the USG might want to follow.

Sevaral people suggested there should be no governmental oversight at all but that does not look realistic, in the sense that there can be huge economic and political interests behind ICANN decisions. Historically, governments have always been involved in foreign economic policy decisions (WTO) and would be blamed by their people if they did not. ICANN is yet another such process.

Like it or not, there are sovereignty issues linked to ccTLDs. There is no way one could exclude governments from the decision process.

Regarding the composition of this oversight group, I would say that the European representation should be reviewed. It would not be accepted by the EU that UK, itself a member of the EU, gets a seat on its own. I would rather expect two seats for the EU, one permanent and one rotating according to the EU presidency. The third seat should be for non-EU countries.

The authors of the proposal show they have no clue regarding regional political weightings. Rather, they suggest American-friendly countries. It would be wiser to allow regional governmental councils (African Union, Organization of American States, etc) to designate their representatives.

All in all, I would personally support this proposal as a starting point for discussions. It is incidentally close to a reply to a WSIS questionnaire last year, in which I suggested that the oversight on the root should be done by a sub-committee of the GAC.

Update: Becky Burr will discuss her proposal during the ICANN Strategy Committee Consultations today at 9:00am (Marina del Rey time). There will be a live audio feed.

Update2: This article is also featured on CircleID.

Newsweek is currently running a story in its international edition on the current state of Internet Governance. Don’t rush to read it in the hope of fresh news or insightful comments. This is targeted at a general audience and is thus subject to the generalizations, counter-truths, half truths and politically correct arguments.

A few pearls:

The Open Root Servers Network is depicted as an “anti-american” initiative. Of course, Newsweek failed to mention that Paul Vixie, an American citizen, was running one of these root servers. This would not have helped making the case. And, as is usual these days, critizing, or questioning the rethorics of, an administration is equivalent to being the enemy of a country.

In the same vein, Newsweek considers it is unwise from the French and German governments to pour money into an European IT research project whose goal is to develop a search engine technology. On the other hand, Newsweek does consider that the USG funding of Arpanet and subsequent research that helped develop the Internet is OK. To summarize: US funding of research is fine, but Europeans should not do the same.

Newsweek should have called this article “Internet governance for dummies”. Unfortunately, after reading it, one is still a dummy.

I have started a Google Calendar mentioning Internet governance related events.

The calendar is here is ics and xml formats.

This is work in progress. Feel to inform me of forthcoming events I have failed to mention.

It seems like every ICANN board member needs to run a blog these days. Veni Markovski has started his own one.

For years ICANN has webcasted its public forums and board meetings, every now and then adding other meetings to the list. I now hear some within the civil society (whatever that means) suggesting that the IGF should use webcasting and similar technologies to allow remote participation, especially for those not being able to attend in person because they cannot afford a travel to Geneva, Greece, etc. We are being told this is a step towards making the process more inclusive.

While this stems from a good intention, it is looks like a bad good idea. I tried to follow some ICANN meetings through these webcasts, only to come out frustrated. Even with a good broadband connection, the quality is rather poor. One can stand the bad video, frozen images and 5 minute delay for only a few minutes. Just imagine what that would look like and how much it would cost using a 9600 bps dial-up connection in Africa. Add to that that communications is really one way. Feeding back your opinion to the meeting is close to impossible, if only for the delay, which would prevent from replying in time.

So, instead of spending lots of money on webcasting, the IGF would do better to spend it on sponsoring the attendance of those delegates who can not afford to travel. Sure, webcasting is sexy, but only for those who can watch it with comfort. However, nothing can replace face-to-face meetings. At WSIS, IGF or ICANN, many of the important conversations are happening in the corridors or at the bar. They are not webcasted. If you want to influence a process, you need to be there.