NETmundial Initiative, WEF and ICANN Withdrawal, Consequences

UPDATE: Comments of Larry Strickling (US Department of Commerce, NTIA) at the NETmundial Initiative meeting in Madrid (as reported by Samantha Dickinson):

#NETmundial Initiative, L Strickling: some members of Coordination Council wanted this mtg closed. Some of us had to push to make it open.

— Samantha Dickinson (@sgdickinson) February 26, 2016

#NETmundial Initiative, L Strickling: the fact is that after 2 years, we don’t see many in the community who see a need for NMI.#netgov

— Samantha Dickinson (@sgdickinson) February 26, 2016

#NETmundial Initiative, L Strickling: if nobody wants NMI, then why do we persist?#netgov

— Samantha Dickinson (@sgdickinson) February 26, 2016

UPDATE: The NETmundial Initiative (NMI) meeting in Madrid has concluded, and a Communique issued which includes the following points:

• Funding by the founding 'partners' ICANN, World Economic Forum (WEF), and CGI.br ends June 30, 2016 [ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade announced at the meeting that the new ICANN CEO and the ICANN Board will determine at a later date whether to continue any funding beyond June 30th. Chehade also announced his resignation from the NMI Coordination Council effective March 13, 2016].
• The Council considered and accepted a proposal for CGI.br to provide an institutional home for the ongoing initiative, subject to approval by CGI.br’s Board.  
• The Council discussed the possibility of changing its current structure following a broad community consultation. 
• The current open request for nominations to the Coordination Council is withdrawn. Once the public consultation is complete, a new nomination process will begin.  
• Two activities were proposed for 2016, sponsorship for which has already been secured: (1) Document a set of good practices for national multistakeholder Internet governance structures and mechanisms; (2) Pilot the application of such practices in sub-Saharan Africa, including a conference to share learnings from pilot participants.
• A follow-up meeting of the Coordination Council will be held in Brussels, Belgium, on 8 June 2016. 

[--end of UPDATE--]

NETmundial Initiative: "Council members are currently considering the future direction of the NETmundial Initiative, and will make decisions at the Council's face-to-face meeting in Madrid, Spain, on 26 February 2016. In the meanwhile the nomination process for a new Council announced previously is on hold pending the outcome of that meeting."

NETmundial Initiative Coordination Council, 2nd Face to Face Meeting, Madrid, Spain
Date: 26 Feb 2016 - Remote Participation: Adobe Connect Room.

AGENDA - times shown below are UTC:

08:00 - 08:30 Welcoming Remarks from Host, Co-Chairs Overview of Achievements.
Moderator: Eileen Donahoe

08:30 - 10:00 WEF [World Economic Forum] & ICANN Withdrawal: Financial & Political Consequences; Looking Forward - A quick reality check; value of NETmundial; order of magnitude of costs; potential new partners, etc. This session is meant to inform the next sessions.
Moderator: Jean-Jacques Subrenat
10:00 - 10:15 | Break

10:15 - 12:00 Moving Forward - Share and explore feasibility of ideas presented in the non-paper and subsequent CGI.br position paper; relationship with the IGF.
Moderator: Wolfgang Kleinwächter
12:00 - 13:30 | Lunch

Afternoon Agenda TBD - to be determined based on work of morning sessions
13:30 - 14:30
14:30 - 14:45 | Break
14:45 - 15:30
15:30 - 16:00 NMI Roadmap Post June 2016
Moderator: Marilia Maciel
16:00 - 16:15 | Approval of Communique

Background:
The NETmundial Initiative (NMI) was one of  ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehade's personal pet projects while on "ICANN's dime" (Fadi is Co-Chair, as is Jack Ma and others), reportedly funded (in part) by ICANN, though NMI has never received wide support from either the global internet community, nor the "ICANN community"--see NETmundial Initiative Lacks Backing, and ICANN Should Not Lead and other sources below. See also this ICANN Documentary Information Disclosure Policy Request (pdf) and Response (pdf).

See on Domain Mondo:

• NETmundial Initiative, Headwinds, Questions, Puzzlement 23 Feb 2015
• After Wuzhen, Should ICANN President & CEO Fadi Chehade Be Fired? 28 Dec 2015
• What To Do With ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade? ICANN Board Chair Knows 20 Jan 2016
• How ICANN and ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé Evade Accountability 9 Feb 2016

NetMundial Initiative (NMI) - (Wikipedia): "The NMI was launched in on 6 November 2014 in a
partnership between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Its Inaugural Coordination Council consisted of 23 members ... Leading up to and following the initial scoping meeting of NMI in Geneva, Switzerland in August 2014, several actors in the broader Internet governance ecosystem expressed concerns over NMI's proposed organization and activities. Concerns intensified following the official launch in November of that year. ISOC, the IAB and ICC BASIS published statements outlining their concerns ... According to Julia Pohle in the Global Policy Journal, there were three main controversial issues surrounding NMI raised by civil society and the technical community: permanent seats on the NMI Council, potential interference with the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and concern over disproportionate involvement in decision-making by economic and political elite. NMI retracted the notion of permanent seats on the Council, committed to supporting the efforts of the IGF and generated Internet Governance Process Principles to comprehensively address concerns regarding adherence to bottom-up, multistakeholder consensus-driven governance."

#netmundial

@AkramAtallah I tried to bring you with me to #WEF but Klaus was very firm on this point. Could you ensure #ICANN still funds #NETmundial ?

— Shit Fadi Says (@ShitFadiSays) January 22, 2016

Recruitment for next #NETmundial Initiative Coord Council not going well. Deadline quietly extended to day before #ICANN CEO quits.

— thereforeICANN (@thereforeICANN) January 22, 2016

#Wuzhen Initiative #netgov work said led by 31 member high-level advisory committee & secretariat. Interesting viz. #NETmundial Initiative

— William J. Drake (@wjdrake) December 18, 2015

#ICANN has spent half a million dollars on NYETMundial Initiative, including $200k for a "solutions map" https://t.co/OQgmEOmE3C

— Milton Mueller (@miltonmueller) February 26, 2016

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DISCLAIMER

ICANN 54: New gTLDs Still Beg For Money, Claim Severe 'Implications'

UPDATE 27 Oct 27 2015: On Sunday, Internet Hall of Famer Paul Vixie unloaded on ICANN and its new gTLDs (new generic top-level domains), calling the new gTLDs "all commercial failures" and ICANN a corrupt, industry-captured corporation that does not serve the public interest--as reported by ZDNet (emphasis added)--

• "I think it [ICANN's new gTLDs] is a money grab. My own view is that ICANN functions as a regulator, and that as a regulator it has been captured by the industry that they are regulating. I think that there was no end-user demand whatsoever for more so-called DNS extensions, [or] global generic top-level domains (gTLDs).”
• The demand for the new domains came from "the people who have the budget to send a lot of people to every ICANN meeting, and participate in every debate", that is, the domain name registrars who simply want more names to sell, so they can make more money. But these new domains don't seem to be working. "They're gradually rolling out, and they are all commercial failures."
• "I'm sure that there will be another 2,000 of them sold, because $185,000 to pay the application fee for each one [is] chump change to the companies who want to make money doing this."
• Creating the new domains goes against ICANN's purpose--"ICANN is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity [under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law], and their [ICANN's] job is to serve the public, not to serve the companies... I think that until they can come up with an actual public benefit reason they should be creating more of these, they've got no cause to act;" "there should be no price at which you can buy .microsoft, but there is, and that's a mistake. That indicates corruption, as far as I'm concerned."

_______

ICANN 54: The same tired refrain was heard yet again at another ICANN meeting, from the failing new gTLDs lobbyists, if only slightly more desperate this time--

"Good afternoon, Christa Taylor from dot TBA in Canada. I just have a couple comments for consideration for the Board and community. I understand the use of auction funds is open for comments and I would ask that they be used to strategically and financially benefit the new gtld ecosphere. Registration revenues have not reached the tipping point and implications could be severe if they're [the ICANN auction proceeds] utilized in some other manner..." (emphasis added) (ICANN 54 Public Forum, October 22, 2015)

Translated: Many new gTLDs (new generic top-level domains) are failing, and we (the new gTLDs lobby) want ICANN (and the global internet community) to financially support us and 'save us' from the consequences of our failing to do proper 'due diligence' before applying for unwanted, unneeded new gTLD(s), for which nobody, including ICANN, guaranteed 'success,' and now we want YOU to give us YOUR money.

Have these people (new gTLDs lobbyists) no shame?

Actually, Ms. Taylor apparently was not listening--it was announced at the beginning of the Forum that this was not the time nor place to make comments about issues for which there are, or would be, ongoing ICANN processes open for public comments--see: New gTLD Auction Proceeds Discussion Paper Open for Public Comments until 8 Nov 2015 23:59 UTC.

Unsurprisingly, Ms. Taylor's 'comment' was appropriately 'dealt' with (i.e., brushed off):

Wolfgang Kleinwachter: ... Cherine will take the first part of your question.

[ICANN Board Member] Cherine Chalaby: Regarding the -- what to do with the auction money, I think this is -- we are committed that this is going to be a community decision, and the Board is not going to direct where this money is going to be. So you got to give your input. I think the GNSO is going to you know, undertake the work there and make a recommendation on this issue. And they use the community input as a whole in that. So that's an important thing. Thank you very much.

We have heard this same refrain from the new gTLDs lobby, over and over again, at other ICANN Public Forums--see: ICANN is NOT a new gTLDs Marketing Agency: ICANN 53 Review, Part 3 (June 29, 2015).

Anyone wanting more background on this should read:

• Housing Bubble Like New gTLDs Mania? The Big Short Trailer (video)
• New gTLD Domains, the Walking Dead and Dying, ICANN FY15 Results
• ICANN, Domain Registry Operators, Monopoly, Antitrust, FTC Statement
• Show Me The Money! ICANN Infighting Over New gTLD Auction Proceeds

Or just listen to a new gTLDs registry operator, Frank Schilling (Uniregistry):

"I do think that Donuts’ approach of having a large portfolio [hundreds] of [new gTLDs] names is the right model. There is not enough cash flow to sustain a business otherwise. We at Uniregistry are just big enough but I expect that some registries will soon be people operating out of their bedrooms. Many of the new names just don’t work."--Frank Schilling (June, 2015)(emphasis added)

Caveat Emptor!

See also on Domain Mondo: 

• Verisign, ICANN, Internet Root Zone, Risk Factors to the Root Domain 26 Oct 2015
• Why Did ICANN Become a Member of Trademark Lobbyist Group INTA? 15 Oct 2015

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DISCLAIMER

Internet DNS Root Stability, New gTLD Domains, ICANN Study RFP

UPDATE: The fragilista. Frequently found spending a lot of time in ICANN meetings, they prefer to tinker with things they do not understand rather than doing nothing. They tend to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent. They lack humility and respect for the first law of ecology: we can never do merely one thing. Any action we take results in some unwanted consequences. We should avoid small, immediate, and visible benefits that introduce the possibility for large (and possibly invisible) side effects. Less is more. When we mess with an existing (complex) system we’re intervening; we can never do merely one thing. According to Nassim Taleb, the problem with the fragilista is that they “make you engage in policies and actions, all artificial, in which the benefits are small and visible, and the side effects (are) potentially severe and invisible.” An example is ICANN's new gTLDs policy and program--

"... [that] does not mean that 'adding hundreds of new entries per year to the root is safe.' Our ability to survey the regions in which discontinuities may lie for one or more of the root zone management functions is limited to assessment of risk, not absolute conclusions about 'safety'... 'Any increase in the size or volatility of the root zone involves risk' ... --Root Scaling Study Report (pdf) on the Impact on the DNS Root System of Increasing the Size and Volatility of the Root Zone (7 September 2009) (emphasis added) 

ICANN foolishly decided to expand the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) from just 22 gTLDs to more than 1300 new gTLDs (new generic top-level domains), without taking necessary prudent precautions, and yet knowing that new gTLD domain names would "break stuff" and "fail to work as expected on the internet" and could negatively impact the stability or security of the entire Internet DNS. So now ICANN has decided to issue a RFP (request for proposal) to determine "the impact of the New gTLD Program on the DNS root system." Here's the ICANN announcement:

ICANN Root Stability Study RFP: "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) is seeking one or more providers to conduct a technical study examining the impact of the New gTLD Program (the Program) on the DNS root system. Consistent with its mission supporting the security and stability of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers, ICANN will undertake an examination of the Program’s impact on the DNS root system. The selected provider(s) will design and execute one or more studies incorporating the collection and analysis of data from root server operators, historical performance data, data gathered from previous studies, and other tools and measures. ICANN is seeking one or more qualified providers to manage this complex exercise in a timely and efficient manner. A review of the [New gTLDs] Program for security and stability impact is a previous commitment based on advice from ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee [GAC] and other discussions. Specifically, ICANN committed to review the effects of the New gTLD Program on the operations of the DNS root system, and to postpone delegations in a future round until it is determined that the delegations in the 2012 round have not jeopardized the root system's security or stability.

"The goals of this study include, at a minimum:

• Executing a thorough review of the impact of the Program on the security and stability of the DNS.
• Identifying what steps, if any, should be undertaken as a prerequisite to adding more TLDs to the root zone.
• Identifying what steps, if any, should be undertaken by the community going forward to assess the state of the root zone on an ongoing basis.

"For additional information, complete timeline, and instructions for submitting responses please click. [ZIP, 983 KB] Proposals should be submitted to RootStabilityStudy-RFP@icann.org by 23:59 UTC on 2 July 2015." (emphasis added)

The real question is whether ICANN will hire a professional and competent firm and allow it to assess and make determinations without undue influence or interventions from self-interested, self-serving "stakeholders" of the new gTLD domain names industry or its ICANN sycophants?

See also on Domain Mondo:

• New gTLD Domain Names, Defects, ICANN Liability, FTC Complaints
• ICANN, IANA functions, Ultimate Mechanism of Accountability, A New Root
• ICANN, IANA Functions, Internet DNS Root, Root Server Operators
• ICANN Admits New gTLDs Compromise Internet Stability and Security

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