AFNIC’s response to ICANN’s improving institutional confidence consultation.

[Mathieu Weill <Mathieu.Weill@xxxxxxxx>]

1.    Introduction

AFNIC is the manager of French country-code top level domains .fr, .re, 
.tf, .wf, .pm and .yt. We are a not-for-profit, multistakeholder 
organisation founded in 1997.
AFNIC is a member of ccNSO and a founding member of CENTR, the European 
regional organisation of ccTLDs gathering 57 ccTLD managers.
AFNIC welcomes the opportunity to contribute to this essential 
consultation. We contributed earlier to the mid-term review organised by 
the Department of Commerce through the position expressed by CENTR. This 
contribution is still highly relevant.
As stated in the formerly cited CENTR’s response  :
“With 18 months to go it is the right time to start discussing about the 
post JPA era.”
We believe it is essential that ICANN reaches out to all stakeholders, 
within its constituency and in other relevant communities, to stimulate 
discussions in order to lay strong foundations for the debate that will 
take place in 2009.
2.    The President’s Strategy Committee paper provides useful 
improvement to the ICANN model
AFNIC welcomes the papers presented by the President’s Strategy 
Committee, including the transition action plan. These documents 
represent an appropriate reference for further works on the transition 
issue.
AFNIC considers that the 6 key requirements identified in the Transition 
Action Plan are extremely relevant. ICANN should pursue its efforts to 
address these requirements.
AFNIC also welcomes most of the recommendations made in the Transition 
Action Plan, with some exceptions that will be detailed below. On the 
whole, these recommendations provide useful and sometimes necessary 
improvements to ICANN’s model in order to increase accountability toward 
the relevant stakeholders.
Recommandations 1.1 (consensus or super-majority for policy decisions), 
2.1 and 2.2 (Board re-examination procedure and removal of the Board), 
3.2 and 3.3 (presence of ICANN across the globe) are examples of these 
improvements to be made to the ICANN model. Indeed, they would engage 
ICANN towards more accountability towards the members of its constituency.
Further studies could be engaged as to their implementation, but AFNIC 
considers they would provide an encouraging sign of improvement.
3.    Some structural challenges would deserve to be further addressed

The current discussion takes place as ICANN is reaching its 10th 
anniversary. The post-JPA ICANN can expect to last at least as long. It 
is quite surprising, then, to realise that the PSC’s documents do not 
dwell on some of the structural changes the Internet has been through 
this last decade and is facing today. AFNIC believes that, among others, 
the following changes need be taken into account to design a sustainable 
post-JPA model :
a.    with 1,3 billion users, the Internet has reached a massive and 
global scale, and the “next billion users” will mainly come from 
developing countries, and will for the most part be familiar with 
non-latin scripts and languages. How will these new users be represented 
within the ICANN model ? Should script-based constituencies be added ? 
Should ICANN establish links with relevant organisations who could 
appropriately ensure that they, too, can contribute ?
b.    Internet technical resources have become critical for large parts 
of countries’ economies and societies. Stakeholder’s interests are 
growing more and more essential to their business models or daily 
operations, making consensus-based policies an even-higher challenge 
than ever. Are the current decision-making processes still appropriate ? 
Or will they lead more often than not to status quo, as is the case for 
instance with the whois policy issue ? Is it still relevant to address 
issues on a constituency by constituency basis or should more transverse 
processes be established ?
c.    The introduction of new TLDs is desirable but it might cause 
scalability issues within ICANN’s processes. Would it be appropriate for 
the domain market if the technical coordinator was, on average, 10 or 
more times larger (in terms of staff and budget) than the average actor 
on the market ? Is the principle of consensus policies applied to all 
TLDs with few distinctions appropriate if there are thousands of TLDs ? 
Or should ICANN evolve towards policies imposed only to those actors 
with significant market influence ?
AFNIC also notes the absence, in the documents, of mentions of 
Governments and public authorities role within ICANN. As the topic has 
been, and still is, the focus of much debating about the ICANN model, 
AFNIC believes it is not in ICANN’s interest to promote only the status 
quo alternative. We believe that a different governance model for ICANN, 
based on structural distinction between management and policy 
decision-making bodies, would provide opportunities to satisfy those 
parties in favour for stronger Government involvement and those parties 
in favour of containing Government involvement to the relevant issues.
Similarly, establishing private sector leadership has been a key 
expectation ever since before the creation of ICANN.
It seems obvious that addressing the issues of Governments and private 
sector respective roles within ICANN is crucial to institutional 
confidence. We note that the GAC itself, in its communiqué following the 
Paris meeting, intends to contribute on this topic.
While these questions do not create additional requirements to those 
mentioned in the Action Plan, AFNIC considers that further work is 
needed to analyse how they interact with those requirements. We hope 
that, before the next phase announced in the PSC’s agenda, these 
questions can be addressed. We are convinced that it would further 
improve institutional confidence in ICANN if it took the necessary steps 
to anticipate on these matters.
4.    Security and stability should not be taken out of context

ICANN’s mission is dedicated to security and stability of the Internet 
Domain Name System. These goals are highly valuable and AFNIC subscribes 
to them entirely.
We note, however, a confusing use of the words security and stability in 
some parts of the PSC’s documents. Security and stability of ICANN 
indeed seem at some points to become as important as security and 
stability of the Internet. While the objective is certainly highly 
relevant to ICANN, this confusion should be avoided, as it might lead 
external observers to believe that ICANN would put its own interests 
first, or at the same ranking as the Internet’s future.
This is especially the case in section 5 of the “Improving Institutional 
Confidence” document. Stability of the 1000 contracts does not seem to 
be a high-ranking issue when compared to the increased barrier to entry 
for non-US stakeholders wishing to enter into a contractual relationship 
with ICANN; or compared to the extremely high cost of managing 
incompatible legal regimes between ICANN contracts and local regulations.
Furthermore, paragraph 5.1 seems to imply that there is no other place 
than the United States that provide a “stable environment with a strong 
history of freedom of expression and a legal structure that favors 
competition and private sector leadership”. Such statement is overtly 
affirmative and can be highly, and with reasons, resented by large parts 
of the global Internet community.
AFNIC believes that ICANN’s concern for its own stability should not be 
given more importance than it deserves in the document. It should be 
made very clear that ICANN’s financial and operational security is only 
a facilitating factor for protecting against capture, for meeting the 
needs of the global community, and focusing on operational excellence.  

5.    Conclusion

AFNIC welcomes the initiative of the PSC. With the exception of the 
emphasis on ICANN’s own stability, we consider most of the propositions 
as appropriate to improve the ICANN model and, ultimately, institutional 
confidence. However, in several instances, they would not be sufficient 
to obtain the level of confidence expected from a post-JPA ICANN.
We believe that this useful and timely first step deserves to be further 
improved by addressing more deeply some of the structural issues, such 
as new multistakeholder decision-making processes, the introduction of 
new scripts and TLDs, as well as the respective roles of governments and 
private sector.
We remain committed to contribute to the process described in the 
consultation. This process should however become more open and 
multistakeholder as we proceed. We would be happy to provide the PSC or 
ICANN with any additional elements, and are looking forward to the next 
steps that will be taken on this issue.