--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com X-Sender: believer@telepath.com Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 09:05:02 -0600 To: believer@telepath.com From: believer@telepath.com Subject: IP: Head of U.S. Internet Policy Plans to Resign: Magaziner Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: owner-ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com Precedence: list Reply-To: believer@telepath.com 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 ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- **************************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo@majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **************************************************** --- end forwarded text ----------------- 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'