IP: Head of U.S. Internet Policy Plans to Resign: Magaziner

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

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Source:  New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/yr/mo/cyber/articles/07magaziner.html

November 6, 1998

Magaziner, Head of U.S. Internet Policy, Plans to Resign

By JERI CLAUSING

ASHINGTON -- Ira C. Magaziner, who has led the Clinton
Administration's efforts to foster the growth of the Internet and
electronic commerce, said today that he plans to leave the White House
before the end of the year.

Magaziner said he has not set a departure
date or made any firm plans for his future,
but he hopes to wrap up his duties within
the next month and move back to New
England. His family moved there a year ago,
he said, and he has been commuting since
then.

"I felt a responsibility to follow through on
what we had committed," Magaziner said.
"And we have had some good successes."

Magaziner joined the Clinton Administration
five and a half years ago to draft what
turned out to be a doomed effort to
restructure the nation's health care system.
He then turned to the Internet, where he has been aggressively trying to
shape domestic and international policy for electronic commerce and
governance of the Internet.

"At a time when there was a lot of confusion about where the [Internet]
industry was going both domestically and internationally, Ira Magaziner
was the guy who rolled up his sleeves and got into the nitty-gritty of how
technology works, what the effect would be on our society, and then
took those notions and began to be the evangelist for the Internet industry
in a global marketplace," said Brian O'Shaughnessy, spokesman for the
Internet Alliance, one of the world's largest associations of companies
with Internet interests.

"He's a cerebral guy who took these intellectual ideas and wrestled a lot
of very powerful forces to the table... He's certainly been the champion
for [Internet] self-governance."

In June 1997, after studying the Internet for 15 months, Magaziner
released the Administration's "Framework for Electronic Commerce,"
which called for a hands-off, market-driven approach to regulation of the
global network. Magaziner's philosophy then and now is that while the
Internet is growing rapidly, this growth could be stymied by excessive
government intervention.

"For this potential to be realized fully," he wrote in that report,
"governments must adopt a nonregulatory, market-oriented approach to
electronic commerce, one that facilitates the emergence of a transparent
and predictable legal environment to support global business and
commerce. Official decision makers must respect the unique nature of the
medium and recognize that widespread competition and increased
consumer choice should be the defining features of the new digital
marketplace."

Since then, he has led efforts to hand administration of the global network
over to the private sector, and has traveled the world pushing other
countries to endorse his tax-free, unregulated approach to the new
medium.

Magaziner said he is satisfied that he has put the issue of electronic
commerce on the world's agenda. In addition to winning passage of two
new laws imposing a moratorium on new Internet taxes in the United
States and protecting copyrights in the digital age, he has won
international agreements to keep the Internet duty-free and set standards
for international payment systems.

He is also wrapping up what has been a highly contentious effort to hand
the administrative functions of the Internet's name and address system
over to a private corporation.

But as he announces his departure, Magaziner has left one important
issue -- online privacy -- unresolved.

Magaziner has been the lead cheerleader for industry self-regulation on
how personal data is collected and used in electronic databases, a
controversial stance that has put the United States directly at odds with
the European Union and one that threatens to disrupt electronic
commerce with those countries.

Critics say he has ignored consumer interests in favor of business.
However, others laud his refusal to back down.

"Ira...has been working long and hard on behalf of self-governance and
not letting the E.U. data directive simply become the rule of the day,"
O'Shaughnessy said.

The European directive that took effect last month imposes strict privacy
policies on companies that do business in Europe. A key provision of that
law prohibits any company doing business in the European Union from
transmitting personal data to any country that does not guarantee
comparable privacy protections.

The European Union has said that self-regulatory models adopted by
industry groups in the United States do not meet its requirements. It has
held off on imposing sanctions against the United States until at least
December while the governments involved attempt to negotiate a
compromise.

The Commerce Department this week laid out its negotiating position,
which proposes giving companies a variety of "safe harbors" to satisfy
privacy protection. One idea is to create independent organizations that
would monitor a company's data practices and give companies that
comply with accepted guidelines what amounts to a stamp of approval.

The E.U. has so far rejected that plan. But Magaziner said the
Administration has scored a victory in getting the E.U. to agree to discuss
self-regulation as a remedy.

"They agreed to hold back, and we are still discussing it with them," he
said. "We got them to recognize in February self-regulation as being
legitimate. So under their own direction they are saying self-regulatory
approaches can work. Now we have to get them to agree to recognize
what we are proposing. That may not be finished by the time I leave, but
it will be well along."

Magaziner has also been leading the effort to move administration of the
Internet to an international, nonprofit corporation. That power had been
exercised by the United States government -- at first directly, and in
recent years under a government contract granting a monopoly on
domain name registrations to Network Solutions, a corporation based in
Herndon, Va.

A driving force toward creation of the new board was the demand by
private companies around the world that they be allowed to compete
with Network Solutions in the lucrative business of registering domain
names.

But finding a solution that balances the interests of more traditional,
academic institutions with trademark holders and commercial entities with
a huge stake in the future of electronic commerce proved difficult, and
much controversy still surrounds the plan that Magaziner hopes to finalize
this month.

Last month, the Administration tentatively
approved handing the reins of the Internet over
to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN).

This new corporation was set up largely under
the direction of one of the Internet's founders,
the late Jon Postel. Although the ICANN proposal was presented as
having "the support of a broad consensus of Internet stakeholders,
private and public," several groups have complained that it was
hammered out in secret and still lacks proper fiscal controls and
appropriate power checks on future board members.

The Department of Commerce has asked the nine-member interim board
of ICANN to craft new bylaws that address those concerns, a proposal
that is expected to be completed within the next week and which will be
the topic of a public meeting next week in Cambridge, Mass.

 Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
-----------------------
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'