SCN: ICANN

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

=======================

An interview with radical Karl Auerbach, who just got elected to the 
Internet's top governing body.  

(Damien Cave, Salon)---For the past two years, Karl Auerbach has 
made a hobby of criticizing ICANN, the Internet Corporation for 
Assigned Names and Numbers. He has called the Net's controlling 
authority over domain names everything from inept to "an organ of 
the trademark lobby." But on Tuesday the 50-year-old "wild-eyed 
radical," as he often calls himself, became part of that which he 
loathes: one of five new members of ICANN's board of directors.  

Can the ultimate outsider transform an organization from the inside? 
Not even Auerbach is sure. "I'm nervous," he says. "I feel like I just 
signed up to replace Sisyphus, so that he can go to Hawaii while I 
undertake to roll the boulder up the mountain every day just to have 
it roll back down every evening."  

Auerbach is willing to push anyway. He's confident that the voters 
who put him in -- everyday Net users who registered through a 
convoluted online process at ICANN -- made the correct decision. He 
might be right. The cheerful, bearded 50-year-old has activism in his 
blood. ("My grandparents worked to promote labor unions, and my 
father worked to redress imbalances of power in the California TV 
repair industry," he says.) His own life reflects an eclectic, uniquely 
Californian mix of technology, law and protest.  

This strange brew first appeared during Auerbach's teenage years. 
Growing up in Van Nuys, Calif., during the 1960s, he developed a 
love for math, attended the same high school as Internet pioneer 
Vinton Cerf and began to question what were then the early stages of 
the Vietnam War. In 1966, he joined an antiwar congressional 
campaign; in 1970, while studying physics at UCLA, Auerbach found 
himself running from the Los Angeles Police Department during a 
riot sparked by the news of the Kent State killings.  

Soon after that, computer science struck his gray matter's fancy, and 
after meeting up with Cerf -- whom he didn't know in high school -- 
Auerbach began working on the beginnings of TCP/IP. This led him 
to software, and throughout the '80s and '90s, Auerbach spent most 
of his time founding or helping to start small infrastructure 
companies that helped networks work more efficiently. These firms 
typically ended up being acquired by larger corporations: Epilogue 
Technology Corp., which Auerbach founded in 1986, is now part of 
Wind River Networking Products; Precept Software was acquired by 
Cisco in 1998, which is where Auerbach now works as a researcher.  

Through it all, Auerbach maintained his passion for political protest. 
He says he earned a law degree "because I had been subjected to 
what I thought was an illegal search by the L.A. sheriff's department 
and I was curious whether it was, in fact, illegal." (It was.) And when 
ICANN formed in 1998, under dubious circumstances, Auerbach took 
up the cause, arguing for a more democratic, less corporate 
structure. He even formed the Boston Working Group in September 
of the same year, drawing 1,000 people to the online policy think 
tank to discuss "the management of Internet names and addresses." 
 
But it's one thing to be a critic and quite another to try to effect 
change. We spoke to Auerbach about his plan for reform, how he 
hopes to implement it and what he'd like to see ICANN become.  

You've condemned ICANN repeatedly, but in your ideal world, what 
would it look like? How would you like to see ICANN changed?  

We're talking about a California remodeling job, where you knock 
down the whole house but for one wall and build a new house 
around it, then tear down the remaining wall. Essentially that's what 
ICANN needs. It needs a fundamental, ground-up restructuring. I'm 
talking about a restructuring to the point where the supporting 
organizations -- such as its law firm -- need to be redefined, if not 
eliminated; where the board members come exclusively from the at-
large membership votes; where everything that ICANN has done so 
far is subject to a very short sunset provision and has to be 
reenacted lest it expire. I'm talking about a major overhaul.  

How on earth do you go about changing this -- you're one man on a 
board of 19.  

Yeah, well, I'm going to lose a lot. However, there are other things 
that a member of a board of directors has. The first thing can be 
seen in the word "direct" -- a director directs. That's an action word. 
A director must act, a director must direct, must make well-informed 
decisions. To do that, a director has the right to inquire about and 
examine all the records, documents and procedures of a 
corporation. Very little is hidden from a director's eyes.  

This gives a director an enormous power to know what's going on in 
the corporation and to expose improper activity.  

Also, by my behavior, I intend to exemplify "open, transparent and 
accountable." I intend to be a standard by which other board 
members will be measured.  

What else do you bring to the table?  

Well, ICANN is moving into a realm where knowledge of technology 
is actually going to make a difference. And I know the technology. 
For example, all this business about top-level domains and how 
many the Net can support -- there's been no technical discussion of 
how many it can actually support. And most people don't understand 
the issues of content management, which is very definitely changing 
domain names from being globally meaningful to locally meaningful. 
 
A lot of people think "domain name" uttered anywhere means the 
same thing. They think a name is just a name is just a name. Yet it 
costs a lot of money to move content around the network, both in 
terms of bandwidth and in terms of time. Users get really tired of 
waiting for stuff to get dragged across the Net. The idea is -- and 
Akamai and other companies are doing this -- you move content, you 
spread it around so it's replicated, so when somebody asks for it, 
you intercept the domain-name query and you look at it and say: 
"Where is this user coming from? Where is the closest place he can 
get the content?" And your DNS [domain name system] answers, 
then points the user to the place that's closest. Therefore, we've got 
geographically sensitive domain names.  

And there's this strong financial pressure by data providers and 
ISPs to manage the content so it can get to the users more 
efficiently, in terms of not generating so much bandwidth 
consumption. This is big bucks -- we're talking billions of dollars 
here. ICANN doesn't understand this. It's assuming that domain 
names are this globally unique name space, when in fact they are 
evolving to become more of a personal domain space.  

So unless one understands the technology and the implications of it, 
when one enacts rules regulating it, you essentially pour concrete 
around the technology. You inhibit, if not prevent, innovation. By 
creating all of these laws about rights to names and structures and 
DNS, we don't know what innovation we're impeding.  

Do you remember the Hushaphone decision back in 1956?  

No. I'm much too young to remember anything that happened in 
1956.  

Ah, it's a very interesting case. In the 1950s, AT&T was The Phone 
Company, this huge monolith, and it and the Federal 
Communications Commission -- which was pretty much subject to 
AT&T's whim -- had an iron fist of control over the telephone system 
in the United States. But there was a little company called 
Hushaphone, which built a plastic and aluminum widget that 
clamped onto the mouthpiece of the telephone. As with when you put 
your hand around the mouthpiece, it cut out exterior sound and 
helped focus your voice into the microphone. It was a totally 
passive piece of equipment. AT&T went ballistic. It said, "You can't 
sell that product; it will damage and destroy the telephone network."  

And the FCC said AT&T was right. "We can't have linemen blown off 
the telephone poles from a high-voltage shock because someone's 
using a Hushaphone" -- that sort of thing. It actually took something 
like 20 or 30 years to get to court, but the U.S. District Court took a 
look at this thing and said, "AT&T, you're full of it. This little widget 
cannot possibly harm the telephone network. Plain common sense 
tells us that."  

So the District Court enacted a standard that said any action that is 
privately beneficial is permissible on the telephone network, as long 
as it's not publicly detrimental. That's an important standard; that 
was the crack that broke AT&T apart. Hushaphone was the start.  

We need to revisit that rule. We need to realize that large technical 
entities sometimes don't tell us the truth. We have to realize when 
we're being subjected to a snow job. It takes some technical savvy 
to look at something and say, "This emperor has no clothes."  

Where does your relationship with Cisco fit into this?  

I don't speak for Cisco and I never will. Cisco is not like the old 
companies where the president gives an order and everyone 
marches off wherever he says. We are more of the cats. And most of 
us are financially independent, so we don't have to follow orders 
anyway.  

Are you going to have enough time to do for ICANN what you would 
like to do?  

Yeah, I think so. It will of course interfere with my work, but it's been 
interfering with my work for a couple of years. I'll probably continue 
about the same kind of schedule, which is work, then say "Hi" to my 
wife in the evening, then go do ICANN stuff. She doesn't like that.  

Aren't you also doing DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects 
Agency] research?  

I'm not sure how much of what I'm doing is yet open for public 
release, so I'll be a bit vague. But I'm doing research with folks at 
UC-Berkeley on means to build what I like to call "autopilots" for the 
Net. The idea is to add intelligent control systems and make use of 
process control principles to exercise that control and keep the Net 
operating within limits established by the network administration. 
This kind of thing will become increasingly important as the Internet 
moves toward providing "lifeline" services and time-sensitive 
applications, such as I.P. telephony.  

OK, let's get into some of your more specific gripes about ICANN. 
What do you think is ICANN's biggest flaw?  

First of all, ICANN is not a legislature, yet it is enacting what 
amounts to a law that is above all other nations on the planet. The 
Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy [for domain names] supersedes 
U.S. trademark law or any other trademark regime in any other 
country. ICANN will claim that it is merely private and contractual, 
but the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit was not imposed by federal law 
directly. It was imposed by the federal government saying to the 
states, "We will withhold money unless you -- the states -- enact a 
55-mph speed limit." So just because it's done by contract doesn't 
mean ICANN is not enacting what amounts to a worldwide law.  

And ICANN doesn't have the structures associated with classical 
government: a full-participation review, a tension between various 
opposing forces -- a separation of powers. It doesn't even have a 
notion of due process. It essentially is an oligarchy that operates on 
the same principles that Louis XIV did. So it's an inappropriate body 
to enact what amounts to worldwide legislation.  

Look at most of the UDRP cases. We have the Brazilian soccer 
team taking away Corinthians from someone in the U.S., for 
example. I'm just waiting for the second shoe to drop, which is when 
the city of Corinth in Greece goes after the soccer team in Brazil.  

But if your vision of pure democracy is realized, won't ICANN be 
crippled -- even slower than ever? After all, not even the Founding 
Fathers decided that pure democracy would work.  

Sure, it's chaotic, but we only had 3,000 people from North America 
vote in this election. And we're talking about a group that has 
communications possibilities well in excess of anything that was 
imaginable to people in the 1780s.  

And what's wrong with moving slowly? We're in a whole new 
environment.  

How do you think ICANN should handle the addition of new top-level 
domains, which may be the first piece of policy you have a hand in?  

ICANN should be in the business of giving away top-level domain 
slots -- not names, but slots. A slot is a chance to put the name of 
your choosing into the root zone. ICANN should not look at the 
semantics of that name whatsoever. ICANN should be absolutely 
blind to the meaning of that word in any given language. All ICANN 
should do is check to make sure that the name is not being used 
already.  

Secondly, ICANN should keep its hands absolutely out of the way 
the top-level domain is operated. It should allow them to go out of 
business. It should allow them to impose their own charters at their 
own choosing. If someone gets a slot and wants to call it "foo" and 
only include Web sites about "foo" birds, that's the business of 
foo's top-level domain. ICANN should not try to be a policeman of 
charters or anything else.  

How many names should there be?  

We can easily handle 10,000 top-level domains per year. By actual 
experiment, I've determined that the domain-name system can 
technically hold at least 1 million top-level domains with no 
problems whatsoever, probably many times that.  

Should companies get any protections from ICANN?  

No. There are existing trademark laws that they can use. What the 
trademark people want is fast recourse. They don't want to have to 
go to Brazil, which happens to have a domain they want; and 
they've gotten this and more. But why should we give trademark 
people this speedy access to supernational jurisdiction? I'd rather 
let the law evolve along the lines that it evolved over the past 2,000 
years, which is by trial and error, finding out what works a case at a 
time.  

The legal system has these techniques. And of course, there will be 
injustices along the way, but we already have plenty of injustices 
with the UDRP. And what's more frightening is that the whole ICANN 
legal system doesn't have the same checks and balances that the 
true legal system does. The true legal system is very much aware 
that it makes mistakes: It has notions of review, of overturning prior 
judgments. It's all built into the system. But ICANN doesn't have any 
of that.  

Sounds like a libertarian stance -- are you in fact a libertarian?  

Not really. I'm very much in favor of strong government regulatory 
regimes when there is a need for them. I've read a fair amount of 
history -- particularly the history of the U.S. since the Civil War -- 
and it is clear to me that the development of the regulatory state was 
a good thing and well justified by the abuses. I don't see that those 
abuses have waned, and thus there are still good reasons for strong 
regulatory bodies.  

That said, I do recognize that there is value in recognizing that there 
are areas in which nongovernmental coercive forces -- such as 
Adam Smith's "invisible hand" -- are still a valid, and even 
preferable, alternative to a governmental regulatory body.  

In the DNS space, it's my feeling that ICANN should limit itself to 
handing out lots and lots of slots in the root zone and let the 
operators of those slots run them as they please. It's my feeling that 
this is an area in which we can allow nongovernmental and 
nonregulatory forces to work (in conjunction with the preexisting 
legal framework that penalizes things like defamation and trademark 
infringement).  

In the I.P. address allocation area, I take the reverse point of view -- 
that a strong regulatory body, and ICANN, are indeed needed. I don't 
think in the I.P. address area that economic forces will produce a 
solution that is good in terms of being open to new entrants or future 
flexibility of the Net.  

And as for ICANN's third role -- protocol parameters -- that's simply a 
useless appendage to ICANN. It reminds me of something that 
Dickens came up with -- the Circumlocution Office -- a governmental 
entity with no positive function but that took it upon itself to make 
sure that no other governmental entity could do its job. I tend to feel 
that ICANN ought to lop off its useless "protocol parameter" 
appendage. I wouldn't call that "libertarian"; I'd call that rational.  

Ultimately, do you really think you fight the system while working 
within it?  

Of course. If I didn't believe that, I'd be fighting ICANN's systems 
tooth and nail. But I'm afraid of the vacuum that would result if 
ICANN were to disappear completely.  

Where do you see the organization going?  

I believe ICANN was given two distinct and contradictory roles, one 
of which was to establish itself, the other of which was to try to come 
up with policies regarding domain names. ICANN is a new 
experiment in international government. There's no source of 
authority for that. The only place it's going to come from is historical 
acceptance, and the only way it's going to get that is by doing things 
that are right, so that over time, people say, "You know, ICANN's 
doing the right thing." They'll just come to accept it, and ICANN will 
grow to power by that means. To do that, you have to get people to 
accept the decisions and to accept that they've had a meaningful 
participation. So to me, ICANN's race to put policy into place without 
creating the structural integrity and trust was a complete error. And 
it's suffering from it now. No one trusts ICANN anymore, and it may 
not be recoverable. I'm going to try to recover it. It also means 
maybe we have to throw out a lot of what's been done and start all 
over again, with everybody involved this time. It's a brave new 
world.  

Copyright 2000 Salon.com





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