Minister confirms support for internet governance transfer

Ireland “firmly” backs the planned transition from US government to international oversight of a critical area of global internet management, Minister for Communications Alex White told delegates yesterday at the Dublin meeting of the powerful internet governance group Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

As the US government prepares to hand over supervision of the internet’s addressing and domain name management to international supervision, the Minister told the opening session of the public meeting that Ireland “firmly supports the multi-stakeholder model of internet governance”.

Ireland was an appropriate place to hold Icann’s 54th public meeting, he said.

“Few countries have benefited from the transformative power of the internet socially and economically to the extent that Ireland has,” he told the audience at Dublin’s Convention Centre.

Some 2,500 delegates from 130 countries are in Dublin for one of Icann’s three annual “public meetings”, at which technical standards for the internet’s core structure, and operating policies, are discussed and decided. Anyone may attend the meeting for free.

The structures needed for the historical handover of oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (Iana) will be the dominant – and controversial – concern at the meeting, which runs until Thursday and will conclude with an open session with Icann’s board.

Icann hopes the Dublin meeting will produce agreement on a formal handover proposal that will be acceptable to the internet community as well as the US government. But Icann president and chief executive Fadi Chehadé noted the difficulty of finding agreement, especially with the organisation’s consensus-based voting approach.

“We’ve tested our multi-stakeholder model to the ends of it,” he said in his opening address. “But we are moving forward. And I think the community that comes together here in Dublin will continue in its commitment to keep the momentum forward, to finish our work and to deliver to the world what the world is watching us do.”

On another key issue being debated at the meeting, Mr Chehadé noted that Icann was a technical and standards organisation and could not be responsible for shutting down websites based on demands from copyright holders, national governments, businesses or others with concerns about a website’s activities.

“Icann’s remit . . . is not in the economic and societal layer [of internet operation],” he said. However, Icann did have a responsibility to work with authorities and law enforcement. The challenge, he said, would be in finding “balance”.

He noted credit card companies manage to get rogue websites closed using international resources, without demanding Icann shut down sites.