[English][Japanese]
On February 24, ICANN president Stuart Lynn issued a report calling for drastic restructuring of ICANN governance. We are issuing this statement in opposition to this report. The report wipes out all the efforts made over the last couple of years to realize a global democracy on ICANN issues, independent from the interests of national governments. Using the excuse that the first priority must be given to effectiveness of decision making, Lynn's report removes representation for individual Internet users and hands their ICANN Board seats over to a few governments.
If ICANN accepts the Lynn proposals and gives strong authority to a handful of governments it will lock individual users and civil society interests out of the ICANN process. Domain name and IP adress that are infrastructure of information and communication technology of the Internet are managed by ICANN. It is very difficult to put ICANN process above mission into practice democratically through present national governments. Therefore ICANN will become the same as other multinational organizations such as the WTO/IMF/WB. As a result, a few large countries and big business will have priority and Internet governance will become directed towards serving their political and military purposes.
"The driving notion at the time of ICANN's creation was consensus", Lynn's report says, "it is clear to me that the driving notion today, with the renewed focus precipitated by the events of 9/11, must be effectiveness. Like any institution with responsibility for key infrastructure, ICANN must be able to act when needed."
It is clear that "effectiveness" here does not mean an economic one, but a political and military effectiveness. In aiming to bring this about the report proposes to abandon the whole idea of governance by consensus. The Internet infrastructure is to be exploited for war and emergency purposes by certain countries and freedom and privacy of Internet communications are ignored.
The right to communicate is a basic human right. Internet governance should guarantee this right as its first priority. In no case should public infrastructure and technological architecture infringe on this. But Lynn's report takes the wrong standpoint that certain national interests must be placed above this right to communicate.
The global development of the Internet has supported free communication by ordinary people and assisted the people's struggle against the brutalities of globalization. The changes of Internet governance proposed in Lynn's report will seriously damage people's global communication and, as a result, will also adversely affect anti-globalization movements.
The ICANN board must reject the removal of consensus and democratic procedures called for in Lynn's report. We call for the ICANN Board to make clear its position on the following questions:
(As of March 11, 2002)