Thu Jul 27 02:56:01 EDT 2000
MAL metastasizes: ICANN in denial
On Tuesday, the Brazilian ccTLD registrar spammed out an email (in
Portuguese here,
Babelfenglish here)
urging people to sign up for ICANN's Membership At Large (MAL), in order to
vote for a certain Dr Ivan de Moura Campos. The email identified him as
former Secretary of Informatics (for the Ministry of Science and
Technology, according to another
email) and "current coordinator of the Managing Committee Internet of
Brazil." The letter stated that it was in Brazil's national and regional
interest for the country to be represented on ICANN's board.
The MAL was intended to be an avenue not for national representation
but, rather, for individual representation. However, since
individual representation outside of any larger structural limitation would
likely have led to a too-obvious U.S. domination of the MAL seats, ICANN
distributed the seats across geographic regions -- and thereby opened
the door to "subregional" (that is, national) rivalries (for example, between
China and Japan).
ICANN can't be blamed for this -- no formal solution can banish the
myriad forms that ambition takes -- but they could be a bit more
circumspect about how it's developing. The singular failure of the ICANN
staff to grasp the nature (let alone the scale) of this kind of problem
became clear this week in a different but related letter. This one was
sent out by the living image of ICANN's mission creep, Andrew McLaughlin,
whose billing has swollen over time from "Senior Adviser" to
"Senior Policy
Officer" to "Chief Policy Officer" (per the mail's footer; he's also
ICANN's CFO). In this letter, McLaughlin tries to explain why ICANN's MAL
signup process is so broken:
>Subject: Technical/Financial issues with At Large Membership
>Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 22:55:15 +0900
>X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
>X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600
>Importance: Normal
>Sender: owner-mitf-orgs@icann.org
>
>>Dear Ching-Yi:
>
>This is definitely a problem, and one that we are working hard to improve.
>A few facts to inform you and the other members of the MITF:
>
>(1) The system was built to handle up to 20,000 members; currently,
>however, the total number of verified applications is over 52,000,
>increasing at a rate of 1,000 to 2,000 per day. See
>http://members.icann.org/pubstats.html for updated statistics. The system
>has been taking applications since February; the server error problems have
>only arisen in the last 2 weeks, as some large media sources have decided to
>push hard for last-minute applications.
And so, it seems, have some ccTLD registrars.
However, what he says isn't true, strictly speaking. In late April and
early May, N-TV, a German news channel began airing a ten-minute
infomercial on ICANN, which specifically promoted the upcoming .eu TLD.
Around the same time, Der
Spiegel online began its "ICANN!" membership-drive campaign. The
success of these campaigns has been quite clear for several weeks from the
levels of German participation in the MAL (the national breakdown of MAL
participation is here;
and someone less certain of his prognostications might have taken those
successes as indications that the initial projections were off.
>(2) The vast increase in applications presents two sets of problems: (a)
>technical, and (b) financial.
Note McLaughlin's job
description:
Responsible to the CEO and Board for planning and development of the
corporate policy agenda. Provides for policy staff support to the Board,
executive staff, committee Chairs and Supporting Organization Councils.
Identifies needs for policy studies and analysis, including requirements
for acquisition and maintenance of databases and other forms of
information, both internal and external, to support policy work.
Supervises and coordinates corporate policy staff and external policy
consultants and resources.
Oops.
>(3) Technically, the system is receiving more "join" requests than the
>system can handle. As noted, the system has been able to process 1,000 to
>2,000 applications a day, but most people attempting to apply get some kind
>of error message. Most of the massive increase in applications has come
>from China.
1,000-2,000 applications per day = 42-84 per hour = 0.7-1.4 per minute
-- the computational equivalent of the life of Reilly. They must be running
the MAL signup on a Gameboy.
>(4) Financially, ICANN's funding for the At Large Membership is inadequate
>to pay for such a massive increase in applications. The primary costs come
>in the form of postage for the PIN letters, and personnel time to scrub the
>database, process applications, print PIN letters, answer requests for help,
>etc. Again, we planned on a maximum of 20,000 members, not over 100,000, as
>we are currently on track to reach. Extension of the deadline would, by
>necessity, require a proportionally massive increase in funding for At Large
>membership -- and I have yet to see any such source of funding.
McLaughlin takes as a given that MAL-related costs should be covered by
purpose-specific funding (the Markle Foundation's $200,000
grant) rather than being drawn from ICANN's operating budget.
In his view, if there's no funding, there's no MAL. Markle's effort
backfired wickedly: by underfunding the MAL effort, they gave ICANN the
excuse it wanted to whittle the MAL down. If there had never been any external funds specifically dedicated to the MAL, ICANN would have had to pay for its establishment just as it covered the cost of creating its other components
groups.
One source has pointed out that splitting the PIN between a postcard
and an email would have been equally if not more secure and much cheaper.
>(5) Making the problem worse, some media organs in various countries have
>been behaving quite irresponsibly, characterizing the At Large elections as
>a kind of test of national strength. The result is that many people with no
>understanding of ICANN are being pushed to register for membership. By way
>of example (I do not mean to single out Chinese media for a misconception
>that is far more widespread), take a look at the following story from China
>Online (particularly the last paragraph):
Here is where we finally confront ICANN's Ubu-sized arrogance and stupidity.
Rather than admit that the MAL effort is mutating into something ICANN
didn't anticipate or intend, McLaughlin denounces the media, which are
"irresponsible" because they're encouraging people with no a priori
"understanding of ICANN" to participate. ICANN is for those who know;
those who don't need not apply.
>>China - China fears Net users blase about influencing worldwide Web
>>policies
>>China Online
>>July 17, 2000
>>
>>The mainland is deeply concerned that Chinese Internet users' lack of
>>interest in affecting international policies concerning the Internet could
>>severely weaken China's influence.
>>
>>China's Internet users seem uninterested in affecting the future
>>international administration of the Web, including the assignment of domain
>>names. This has caused the China National Network Information Center
>>(CNNIC), China's domain-name registration authority, to appeal urgently to
>>Chinese Internet users to register as soon as possible to help elect the
>>board of the international Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
>>Numbers ( ICANN ), Sina.com reported on July 14.
>>
>>ICANN is the world's Internet domain-name management database. Each
>>continent will elect one nation to represent it on ICANN 's board, which
>>means these elections will affect national interests.
>
>(6) At the moment we are working to implement both software and hardware
>improvements that will increase the capability of the membership systems by
>3 to 10 times. This will hopefully reduce the number of server overload
>messages encountered by applicants. But we all have to be realistic -- even
>if we could expand capacity by 100 times, there is no money to pay for that
>increased number of members. Our goal ought to be this: to give interested
>people in all parts of the world a fair (if not guaranteed) opportunity to
>join.
>
>Best regards,
>
>--Andrew
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>andrew mclaughlin | chief policy officer & cfo
>internet corporation for assigned names and numbers
> |
Note well: Our goal ought to be this: to give interested people in
all parts of the world a fair (if not guaranteed) opportunity to join.
Two questions for McLaughlin: if that vaporous minima ought to be ICANN's goal, what is ICANN's goal? And, as always, who decides what's "fair"?
