Institute for Internet Policy & Law @ Beijing Normal University

ICANN’s year-end annual meeting is happening at Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, December 5-10. This is one of 3 ICANN global meetings held yearly. Cartagena must be a nice city. I can see the Walled Old Town with Towers, Churches and cannons on the Wall, which is opposite to the Convention Center. But apart from enjoying the sunshine of Caribbean Sea at the breaks, I have been at the conferences or en route to the conference.

IDN fast track process review is one of the sessions. ICANN staff chaired the session. Senior Director on IDNs presented on the following aspects of fast track process:

– Transparency
– Community Support
– Meaningfulness
– Determination of the IDN ccTLD manager
– IDN Tables
– Disputes
– Confusingly similar string
– Objection/re-evaluation rights

Although there were less than 30 participants in the plenary room, the session brought up interesting information. At the end of the presentation, there were questions raised on the Internet referred to .бг (applied Bulgaria IDN ccTLD string) case. The staff restated that they were not supposed to comment on any specific case.

I then asked a procedural question. Although the String evaluation done by DNS stability panel (according to their guidelines) is a technical decision, it is a decision made on behalf of ICANN and has (significant) policy implication. If such technical determination is not subject to reconsideration or independent review, wouldn’t it be an accountability issue, as highlighted by ICANN at the opening ceremony?

To my *rough* memory, both replied that fast track process should be sufficiently simply, without objection or re-evaluation. And, surprisingly both ICANN staff replied that anyone would be available to reconsideration or review. I assume I heard their reply clearly. The audio record at the link is broken unfortunately.

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Interestingly, ICANN staff made a statement on December 4, 2010 on Internet Governance list: “The Fast Track Process is a limited process set up for the initial implementations of IDN ccTLDs. It was a factor in the community development of the process that there should be no reconsideration process included specific to the Fast Track process because it was a limited approach to only those requests where no dispute, questions, or otherwise concerns existed.” “Now, the process is a year old, and hence we are conducting a review of how well it functions and if any changes should be made. There is a public forum online and also a session scheduled in Cartagena. We will discuss all aspects of the process there.”

ICANN Senior Director on IDNs later responded in following two bulletin points:

• The fast track process was built limited in nature and for those applications where there is no concerns or no disputes of any kind. I also said I believe this is an appropriate approach for the initial IDN TLD delegations. It does however not mean that things should be more liberal in the future, but it is always easier to expand a program than to narrow it after the fact.
• Anyone at ICANN who are unhappy about a decision and not able to solve this with staff, can always go to the Ombudsman or seek reconsideration through the process for such. For details about these general processes, which are non-dependant on the fast track process, but part of ICANNs Accountability and Review Processes, please see the link.

The case reveals the ICANN’s matrix of Ombudsman, reconsideration, independent review or other “accountability mechanisms” (if any). There are built-in appeal systems for a specific program and there are others generally applied.

Global Internet of Things Conference (GIOTC) was held on November 23-24, 2010 in Beijing National Convention Center. Hundreds of people, most from business and administration, joined the conference and side exhibition. I did not come to the confusing-structured conference hall until the afternoon of November 23, missing a couple of presentations from European Commission and many companies. In the afternoon session, the first half, chaired by Rob van Kranenburg, comprised of 6 full presentations on technological developments or business applications. Mr. Kranenburg manage to mobilize his panelists to respond questions and generate new thinkings.

At around 16:30, I took over and chair the last panel on policy discussion. Unfortunately the panel is still more about technicality than polity. The speakers, in sequence, talked about IPv6 application for IoTs, operational side of IoTs and China-EU Joint Expert Group on IoTs. Later, 3 discussants from EU-China group, M2M and ESTI, joined the panel. I tried hard to open up the policy discussions on privacy, security, trust and policy-impact of standardization, but it does not seem attracting much responses.

It is interesting to see how IoTs suddenly become an eye-catching term in China after the high leader gave a speech with reference to it in April 2010. The speech cannot be googled for I always get an error page after inputting the relevant keywords. Weird enough. Anyway, government is making huge investment on technical development and industrial application with the aim of creating a new booming point for the economy.

The agenda and introduction of my panel is attach.

Internet for Things: Standards, Trade and Legal Issues

16：30-17：30 ( Discussion group: 60 mins )

Panel moderator:

Dr. Prof. Hong Xue, Director of Institute for Internet Policy & Law, Beijing Normal University

Speakers

1. Mr. Xiaodong Lee CNNIC

2. Prof. Jian Wang, Director of Center for International Business Studies, University of International Business and Economics

3. Mr. Hui Zhang, Secretary-General of working group sensor Network (WGSN)

Discussants

Mr. David Boswarthick, Technical Official of M2M standards group

Ms. Margot Dor, Director of Strategic Projects, ETSI

Mr. Philippe Cousin, European experts for the EU-China Internet of things Export Group

Introduction

We are impressed by the prospect that the Internet of Things is going to reshape the future of our technology, economy and society as a whole. The tremendous social impacts of IoTs signify the importance of establishing suitable governance regime to ensure progress, competitiveness, privacy and all the other essential values of information society.

This workshop will be specifically focusing on a few critical aspects of governance issues. As highlighted by European Commission’s “Internet of Things — An action plan for Europe”, governance addresses:

a)      Identification and identifier mechanism (IPv6);

b)      Privacy and personal data—right to silence chips

c)       Trust and Security, especially in trade operation

d)     Standardization (not necessarily be based on a deterministic or syntactic model but would instead be based on the context of the event; event-driven architecture )

Tim Berners-Lee made a presentation on November 22. When applauding for the long live of the web, he reemphasizes the value of universality. The primary design principle underlying the Web’s usefulness and growth is universality. When we move to communications between objects, standardization process need to keep delicate balance between the values of openness, interoperable and those of security and privacy.

What is the most sensational ICT news in China this week? Of course, it is the War between two animals–Penguin representing Tencent and  Tiger for Qihoo. After sending its 0.6 billion Chinese IM users a “Public Condemnation against Qihoo 360′” via pop-up windows, Tencent, which has been using the logo of two cute-looking penguins, publicly announced that it stops inter-operating with Qihoo’s 360’s newly released security program, Kou Kou Bodyguard. Tencent condemned Qihoo (Chinese name “Magical Tiger”) for hijacking users’ accounts through striping ads attached to QQ and redirecting QQ users to 360 browers. Qihoo that developed from an anti-virus company to the second large security and online assistance program service provider to 0.5 billion Chinese users denied the allegation that Kou Kou Bodyguard was a Trojan program to steal users’ information but has removed the program offline.

The War between  two leading Internet companies have devastated many Internet users, particularly who  had solely relied on these domestic services on IM, chatting, searching and email, etc. Under Tencent’s unilateral announcement, any user who has Qihoo 360 installed on the computer will not be able to login Tencent’s popular IM program QQ. Tencent has sued Qihoo for unfair competition and other claims to Beijing Court. Meanwhile, angry QQ users (especially those who paid fees to Tencent) have gather to bring collective action against Tencent. Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Ministry of Public Security have summoned both parties for investigation.

For more information, please refer to “QQ-360 Battle Escalates into War” on WSJ.

The case shows the poor legal protection on privacy and personal information for more than 1 billion Internet users in China. It is widely believed that Internet giants are all blatantly detecting, collecting and trading their users’ privacy information for profit. In this case, tens of million of users become the virtual hostage of commercial strategy. Internet companies’ tremendous technical capacity can be a threat of the users’ choice and legitimate interest.

How would Tencent implement its anti-360 campaign? How did it detect and verify whether a user has uninstall Qihoo 360 or not? The answer is that Tencent’s widely used IM client integrates QQ Housekeep (formerly named QQ Doctor) that can automatically scan users’ drive and detect the files and programs installed on users’ computers.  Qihoo 360 had labelled QQ Doctor as a privacy-infringement program but Tencent rebutted that 360 lied for fear of competition in security product market.

In addition, malice competition actions not only directly hurt the consumers but potentially endanger the network security and stability. Civil disputes may deteriorate into cyber-crimes. Common use of cloud computing gives Internet giants “invisible hand” to manipulate, control and imperil billion’s of users. When data, computer and usage are more beyond the control of users, we have good reason to worry who is really in control.

The competent governmental agency, MIIT, finally stepped in the dispute. In an official announcement made on November 21,  both parties were condemned for acts of unfair competition and bad social impacts. Both were required to stop any acts that may damage the legitimate interests of users, stop mutual attacks and apologize to the users. The announcement also asked both to take appropriate make-up measures.  Interestingly, MIIT ordered both to carefully learn relevant laws and regulations and improve their moral construction. Let alone the morality standards that are apparently in doubt, people may wonder what kind of laws and regulations they should “carefully learn”. Obviously, there has no law or regulation to touch a commercial operator’s proactive or aggressive self-defensive actions.

“Domain Name Dispute Resolution and ODR: Asian Perspective” was held on 15 October 2010 in Beijing Shangri-La Hotel New Wing.

The Conference is to  further improve the substantive and procedural rules on domain name dispute resolution, develop relevant theories and practice in terms of online dispute resolution, strengthen the communication and cooperation of theoretical and practical workers in this field and promote the domain name and online dispute resolution services provided by ADNDRC. The conference is organized jointly by CIETAC, Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre and Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre.

Scores of presentations given by government officials, domestic and foreign scholars, judges, lawyers and representatives from enterprises were listened by a decent number of audience. A lawyer from Hong Kong, a Korean professor and Prof. Hong Xue gave the presentations in English. An ICANN staff from contract compliance department gave a briefings in Chinese.  There were little chances for interactions. Presenters did not even talk with each other. The whole day was long and uninteresting.

Almost the whole morning session, full of empty congratulations, best wishes and formality greetings, was rather boring, until Prof. Hong Xue opened the discussion on substantive issues: UDRP para.4(a)(i). But it was past 12 o’clock, holly time in Beijing for lunch. People got impatient to think about whether laches of a complainant could be a defense under UDRP. Okay, everyone then went to lunch.

Afternoon session was not much better than the morning. People on podium seemed talking to themselves. Audience were tired. One presenter proposed to eliminate “bad faith” condition from DRP. Well, it is new but destructive.

Finally I fairly doubted the conference reached the goal it advertised “”Wonderful speeches delivered by some renowned judges, scholars and lawyers during the conference on several significant topics, such as procedural issues of domain name dispute resolution, the People’s Courts’ basic principles and practice on hearing of domain name dispute, application of the substantive conditions justifying complaints under UDRP, dispute resolution in e-commerce and online arbitration and setting up online arbitration system in China.”

I spent a hectic week (September 13-17) at Vilnius, Lithuania for the 5th Internet Governance Forum. Although the local food is not very impressive to me, I got sufficient food for thought.

On Day One, I rushed to two sessions to give presentations. One was “Setting the Scene” in the Main Room. I’m the author on Chapter Diversity for “official” IGF book “Creating Opportunities for All.” Another was the workshop organized by Council of Europe on Framework of General Principles of Internet Governance, which is a very ambitious project that may have to be handled at UN forum.

On Day Two, I presented at a workshop “Internet Governance and Youth”, along with a critic lady from Pirate Party and a couple of young people. Frankly I don’t believe young people need to be arrogant to the “old” for establishment their own identity. Okay that session was not interesting. In the afternoon, I was the remote moderator for the workshop “Development Agenda.” An irresponsible commentator complained that he could not tweet the session but he lied for he did not even login the webex platform. At night, Prof. Drake and I went to UNESCO reception for a drink.

Day Three was comparatively relaxing to me. I went to the Dynamic Coalition’s workshop at the beginning and SSIG workshop before lunch. In the afternoon, I went to Russian IGF session and Intermediary Liability workshop before joining NomCom outreach. At night, around seven scholars were invited to join UNESCO dinner for a strategic talk. Everyone was so busy with talking or taking notes that we did not remember what we ate.

Last Day began with a Chinese workshop on open access to scientific data and library information. I later joined APrIGF report session. After having lunch with CNNIC friend, I went to city TLD workshop and had interesting dialogue on the large panel. The closing ceremony seemed endless. Prof. Ang, Mr. Tan and I ran into to heavy rain to catch the bus to go to the city for dinner.

On departure Day, Mr. Tan and I went to KGB museum and felt extremely depressed by the execution photos and other old files. Later we felt better in an open market in front of the City Hall. That’s my week by Baltic Sea and my second stay in the beautiful city. Nice to go home anyway.