Whatever might be said about outgoing ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, Internet users worldwide should be thanking him. Last week in Costa Rica, at the organization's 43rd meeting, Beckstrom blew a harsh blast of cold Arctic reality into the room about the board's conflicts of interest. You can read about the details here, here, and even in the New York Times.
I was there listening to Beckstrom's speech, and I wasn't surprised. I had watched in Singapore when almost half the ICANN board recused itself from the final vote on approving hundreds of new domain names, citing personal conflicts of interest.
But I am surprised it took an outgoing CEO to point to the hundreds of conflicts of interest, both real and potential, mingled into ICANN's DNA. The California nonprofit has two bureaucratic apparatuses in it that are supposed to represent the general Internet user. Both of them have been largely silent. One is preoccupied with fighting trademark interests, and the other, of which I have been a member for five years, is mired in its own processes and often seems capable of little more than self-analysis. The members who have bucked the bureaucracy and spoken out are in the minority.
Unfortunately, the apparent conflicts of interest go deeper than the recent headlines.
The chairman of the ICANN board's governance committee, Bruce Tonkin, is a senior executive at Melbourne IT, a domain registrar. The governance committee's conflict-of-interest guidelines mention a fiduciary relationship to ICANN as a conflict, but less directly a financial interest in a company that stands to make or lose money depending on ICANN's contracts.
Steve Crocker, a member of the ICANN board's executive committee (along with Tonkin, Beckstrom, and Cherine Chalaby, an investment banker), recently disclosed that Afilias, a registry, has invested in his company, Shinkuro Inc. -- a startup focused on information sharing across the Internet. That means half the executive committee has declared conflicts of interest when it comes to new top-level domains.
The board's structural improvements committee has five members, two of which have declared conflicts of interest with new domains.
The chairman-elect of the ICANN nominating committee, one of the most powerful and least accountable of ICANN's inner bureaucracies (and whose structure Beckstrom referred to as a significant threat to the organization), is the CEO and founder of Momentous, a Canadian registrar with $30 million in annual revenue. In Costa Rica, when questioned about the conflict, he said none existed. In reality, that's true, since the loosely written guidelines only address fiduciary relationships with ICANN itself. Among other duties, the nominating committee selects members of the ICANN board.
The chairman-elect of the nominating committee also happens to be a member of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement's negotiating team. Yes, the registrars more or less get to negotiate their own contracts, for the most part behind closed doors.
Most of these people are on limited terms, so the makeup might be quite different in a year or two. But there should be tighter rules governing who gets to occupy the seats, regardless of term length.
One compliment I will pay to the few rebellious voices: Five years ago, it would have been impossible to talk about topics such as fraud, phishing, criminal abuse of the domain name system, and dozens of other issues now common to panel discussions at ICANN meetings. Back then, you would have been told such issues were "outside ICANN's narrow technical mandate." But you know what? They aren't.
The truth of the matter, buried for years, is that the Registrar Accreditation Agreement, a document ICANN uses to bind registrars to certain behaviors, contains provisions that relate directly to many of the problems users experience on the Internet today. It's in the best interest of the conflicted parties within ICANN that it remains "irrelevant," or limited in scope, because a cursory look under the rhetoric reveals that some tough negotiations on the content of this document, and how it's enforced, would go a long way toward improving the state of the Internet in the public interest. But that public interest is not well served by a structure and executive leadership that's conflicted by the same industry it's supposed to oversee.
— Beau Brendler is chairman of the North American Internet user advisory committee to ICANN (NARALO) and was a voting member of its executive committee (ALAC) for three years.
I think registrars are generally in favor. For myself, I haven't really seen any convincing objections to them, although I know some of our regular contributors are hostile.
My brief personal interactions with Rod Beckstrom were very pleasant. I also appreciated his somewhat down-to-earth persona, as compared to former board chairman Peter Dengate-Thrush.
However, I have heard that he actively participated in the ouster of certain members of ICANN staff whose popularity inside the organization and outside was threatening to him. Then there is this (excerpting from ICANN's own wiki on Beckstrom): http://icannwiki.com/index.php?title=Rod_Beckstrom&diff=next&oldid=39099
"In May, 2010, Rod Beckstrom brought on [[Elad Levinson]] as a consultant, and later promoted him to VP of Organization Effectiveness. Mr. Levinson's background as a self-help, weight loss, and Buddhist-inspired psychologist and guru riled many ICANN watchers."
It's impossible to say what exactly UN or ITU "rule" over Internet resources would look like. However, what it would be missing is the "multistakeholder model" the ICANN community is so proud of. It basically means anybody can come into the process at any time and, with relatively little attention to protocol, can have an influence on how domain policy is made. The UN and ITU are, comparatively, closed systems. If they were more like the OECD, perhaps, which has set aside room for civil society as a major stakeholder, there would be less to worry about.
Re: The ICANN nominating committee selects the members of the board, a detail I did not make specific reference to in my post, but which makes the nature of the conflict of interest even deeper.
@hounhosp I sure couldn't say what his motivation might be.
I will be honest and admit that in my own dealings with the private and community networks and with the policies and politics governing the EDU TLD I get frustrated and often feel like the 'system' needs reform.
Most recently in the area of the EDU TLD I get very frustrated with the conflicting positions on governing EDU versus positions on XXX domains and gTLD's. Especially when compared to the issues of SOPA, PIPA, et al.
Maybe I should share some of those thoughts here, if there is interest?
"the alternative is government-managed Internet resources through the ITU, UN or some such." So just how bad is this alternative you are so dreading? Who manages the process of selecting/electing ICAAN board members and what would you suggest to them as a possible recourse to professionally deal with these conflict of interests so as to esnure that they don't derail the orgainzation's goals?
On what evidence are you basing your claim that Beckstrom wasn't like by the board? " He seems......" means to me that you are not even sure of his achievement as head of ICAAN. Here is a comment from Maria's blog that shows you just how bad things were durinmg Beckstrom's tenure as head of ICAAN:
"
Rod's transition caused several senior staff to leave, and several had corporate memory through, and prior to, Paul's years in office, so very few current senior staff were personally involved in the 2004 round, when applications were selected according to some policy goal more restrictive than "has investors". His period of executive management, like Paul's, did not contain a competitive redelegation of a legacy delegation. The rhetoric and policy during Rod's first year came very close to causing the Beijing root operator to increase the differences between its zone and the Marina del Rey zone. A lack of insight into the necessity of GOST R 34.10-2001 for signing zones was similarly primary risk and management responsibility unaware.
The corporations resources, and through its rhetoric, the resources of others, were diverted to "security", with vast increases in the cost of future registry operators and some improvements in tertiary leaf-node security (WHOIS etc), with little other than DNSSEC offered to secure the primary infrastructure—the routing system, the cost imposed on operational cooperation by non-CNOBI operators (Conficker .C response cost), the time infrastructure (non-repudiation without time is meaningless), and the numerous national block/filter/wiretap regimes.
In terms of GNSO policy, his years in office have had no effect upon the Peter/Paul policy of offering revenue sharing (defensive registration and SEO monitizations), replicating the existing use and ownership pattern of Verisign's properties, as the transformation of a legacy monopoly to a competitive market. He has been Peter's quiet partner in continuing the prevention of any new public purpose delegation prior to private purpose delegations—Bertrand Delenoë's Maire de Paris, our hosts in 2008, cannot apply before Verisign, NeuStar, Afilias are given additional indefinite private franchises. Further, and greater responsibility goes to Peter acting as Chairman of the Board acting in a private interest, but unaddressed by Rod, is the abandonment of restriction upon registry-registry cross ownership.
Finally, his artless, even witless response to the DoC/NTIA RFC a year ago insisted upon the inseparability of the IANA functions contract and refuted a government interest in the IANA contract. The withdrawal of the DoC/NTIA RFP for the IANA contract is difficult to assign to any other person than the outgoing CEO and President.
The Board could have asked for an interim CEO last summer, and can still separate the operational functions of CEO from the public persona functions of President, professionalizing both, or ending the later."
"So is he crazy? Stupid crazy? Or just backed by a really good parachute?"
@jerry,
He seems to be a man of principles willing to change the way the institution functions. But he is not liked by the board because its members are resisting to the new ideas he is promoting. Little wonder his remarks where not received well by the board.
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