Swiss Internet User Group


Internet Quality Labels
=======================

In many fields, various kinds of certification marks have become
familiar to the public and to consumers over the last years as an
instrument of quality control and assessment aimed at consumer
orientation as well as recommendations for products and services.
For example there is a variety of certification marks which each
indicate adherence to a set of requirements and procedures aimed
at avoiding electric shock hazards and other dangers with
electric equipment.  There are also certification marks which
indicate adherence to some ethical standard such as "fair trade",
"fair fishing" or "fair labor" (for example there is a label for
carpets which indicates that they have been produced without
child labor) rather than immediate properties of the product that
is being sold.

We feel that it would be valuable if in the context of the
Internet, there would be a family of certification marks which
indicate conformance to important principles of the Internet such
as those of the Tunis Commitment [1].  We propose that these
certification marks could be called Internet Quality Labels
(IQLs), and that a good choice of two areas for the initial
IQLs would be an IQL for website design and an IQL for internet
services.

The IQL for website design should cover not only accessibility
(avoiding barriers in websites that prevent many elderly people
and people with disabilities from accessing website content and
functionality) but also principles of privacy protection and
informational self-determination.

The IQL for internet services should cover requirements related
to e.g. not collecting data about their customers' web-surfing
habits, as well as at least the fundamental "net neutrality"
principles: No discrimination of internet traffic based on
originator, recipient or content.

We propose to use the opportunity of the IGF to initiate the
necessary processes for creating internationally-recognized
Internet Quality Labels, and for ensuring that whatever
organization will be in charge or administrating these IQLs
will be transparent and accountable.  (See below for some rough
ideas on how multistakeholder accountability could be implemented
organizationally.)

Before international criteria for Internet Quality Labels can be
decided, there must first be discussions at the national level in
the various countries to build awareness of the importance of the
various aspects of quality that could potentially be certified by
means of IQLs, and to determine the range of possible choices of
IQL criteria so that significant market demand for IQL-certified
websites or internet services is likely to happen in the various
national and regional markets.

During this phase of awareness-building and market research, it
will also be important to study what properties the IQL criteria
and processes need to have in order to provide significant positive
benefits for capacity building and for the economies of developing
countries.  For example, when a good set of principles for
privacy and "net neutrality" of internet services has been
determined, that could significantly simplify the required
negotiations for internet infrastructure projects in developing
countries:  The development objectives of the Tunis Agenda require
good fiber-optic internet connections to every city, worldwide, and
urgently-needed investments in this area are being delayed by
repetitive discussions of "net neutrality" related concerns.

SIUG will be maintaining a list of links [2] to scientific research,
market research data and other internet resources which are relevant
to awareness-building and for deciding the precise criteria of the
Internet Quality Labels.


Multistakeholder Accountability
-------------------------------

After the above-described process of awareness-building and market
research, decisions about the precise criteria and procedures for
the "Internet Quality Label" certification marks will need to be
made.  Concerning some questions it will be possible to base these
decisions on well-respected work of existing organizations, such
as the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) [3] of the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), where a comprehensive set of recommendations is
being developed which addresses all disabilities that affect access
to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive,
and neurological disabilities.  W3C provides a set of logos which
websites can use to indicate conformance with these recommendations.
However no mechanism of accountability through which claims of
conforming with these accessibility standards are verified.  Such a
mechanism is needed for a certification mark which governments
(at all levels) and other organizations could simply require of
their website designers in order to ensure compliance with
accessibility standards.  In addition, there are other important
quality criteria for websites besides accessibility, for example
privacy protection, which is an area where decisions about
certification criteria and verification procedures are likely to be
more difficult and potentially controversial.

The mandate for the IGF is to be a forum for multi-stakeholder
policy dialogue.  Suggesting that the IGF could prescribe and
control these Internet Quality Labels, or that the IGF could take
the action of creating a new organization for this aspect of
internet governance, would violate the constraints of the IGF's
dialogue-focused mandate.  Nevertheless, dialogue is valuable
precisely because it can lead to actions.

While the introduction or acceptance of Internet Quality Labels
(IQL) will from the perspective of the IGF be described as
voluntary, stakeholders will of course be free to declare
Internet Quality Labels to be mandatory for their respective
networks.  We hope that a number of interested participants of
the IGF from across all stakeholder groups could use the
opportunity of the IGF to come in contact with each other and
decide to work together on creating a transparent and accountable
multistakeholder process for administrating and marketing
Internet Quality Labels.  The legal rights to the certification
marks could be held by a foundation under Swiss law, called "IQL
Foundation" in the following, which would enter contracts with
various stakeholders in which IQL Foundation would promise to
adhere to a set of rules designed to guarantee a fair and
transparent multistakeholder process.  (The country where IQL
Foundation is incorporated doesn't necessarily have to be
Switzerland, but it must be a country with a high standard of
protection of human rights and a well-functioning court system.)

The details of how the "IQL Foundation" should operate, together
with the precise conditions for the IQLs (that a website or an
ISP will have to satisfy in order to qualify for one of these
Internet Quality Labels) should be determined in a
multistakeholder process that should begin at the Internet
Governance Forum 2006 in Athens.

The multistakeholder process for administration of the Internet
Quality Labels must allow for the full participation of
stakeholder organizations with very limited travel
budgets. "Birds of a feather" face-to-face meetings are nice when
they can take place in the context of a conference which many of
the people who are interested in IQLs are attending anyway, but
attending conferences must not be a condition for participating
in the IQL process. All voting should take place via the
internet, using for example GnuPG digital signatures for
security.

Here are some initial thoughts on how a multistakeholder process
can be implemented in a transparent and accountable manner:

In order to have a real multistakeholder process in which the
interests of the three major stakeholder groups "government
organizations", "profit-oriented companies and industry
organizations" and "civil society organizations" can be balanced
against each other, there must first be clear criteria through
which all organizations which are legitimate representatives of
stakeholder groups can be recognized as stakeholders, as well as
mechanisms through which the influence of front groups
(e.g. groups which pretend to be civil society organization but
which in reality represent some industry interest) can be
minimized.  At the same time, all processes and organizational
structures should be kept as simple as possible while ensuring
transparency and accountability.

We propose that IQL Foundation should be governed by a Board
which would make administrative decisions by means of a majority
vote, with each of the three stakeholder groups being represented
on the Board with ten votes. Each of the stakeholder groups will
be represented on the Board by up to ten Board members, subject
to the constraints that

   1. For any stakeholder category, no more than two of the ten
      Board members can be from the same country. (Here "being
      from a country" is defined as having close ties to a
      country, such as having grown up there, having lived there
      for a long time, getting paid by an organization which is
      very active in that country, or having that country's
      citizenship. Many people are "from" several countries in
      this sense.)

   2. For any stakeholder category, no more than three of the ten
      Board members can be from the same continent. (Here "being
      from a continent" is defined as having close ties to a
      continent, such as having grown up there, having lived
      there for a long time, getting paid by an organization
      which is very active on that continent, or having
      citizenship in a country on that continent. Many people are
      "from" several continents in this sense.)

   3. For any stakeholder category, at least half of the Board
      members must be members of the technical Internet community
      as well as being representatives of the respective
      stakeholder category.

In each stakeholder category the respective Board members are
elected by means of voting, as follows: Each stakeholder may
propose one candidate for the Board, providing information on the
candidate's qualifications as well as information on whether the
candidate is also a member of the technical community and about
the candidate's ties to countries and continents.  The names of
those people who have been proposed as candidates and who agree
to be candidates are added to the list of candidates.  There is a
separate list of candidates for each stakeholder category. Each
recognized stakeholder in that stakeholder category casts ten
votes for candidates. These votes may be given to ten different
candidates, or multiple votes (even up to all ten votes) may go
to the same candidate. These votes are cast in secret, but the
vote totals as well as the source code of the software which
implements the voting procedures must be published.  A computer is
used to determine which among the potential sets of Board members
(satisfying the above-listed constraints 1, 2 and 3) for a given
stakeholder category has received the largest number of votes.

The by-laws must define, separately for each stakeholder
category, the conditions for being recognized as a stakeholder in
that stakeholder category, as well as principles which govern IQL
Foundation's actions.

It must be clearly defined in IQL Foundation's by-laws in what
areas the Board has discretion in their actions and what are
principles that the Board does not have the authority to change.

All of IQL Foundation's decisions (including but not limited to
decisions which according to the by-laws are left to the Board's
discretion) must, before they are finalized, be published as a
proposed decision together with the rationale for the decision,
so that errors of fact or logical errors in the rationale for the
decision can be pointed out by interested parties.  Well-reasoned
objections must never be simply ignored.  If an objection cannot
be demonstrated to be factually false, ungrounded or irrelevant,
the proposed decision or at least the rationale text must be
modified so that the objection no longer applies, and another
opportunity for making objections (against the new version) must
be given.

In all decisions of the Board, the names of the Board members who
voted in favor of the decision should be published.

For each type of Inter Quality Label that IQL Foundation will
administrate there will be document outlining the specific
principles of IQL Foundation concerning that IQL.  These
documents, as well as IQL Foundation's by-laws, can be adopted or
changed only if in addition to the a majority vote of the Board,
a majority vote of the members in each stakeholder category is in
favor of the adoption or change.

The day-to-day operations of IQL Foundation could be run by a
Secretariat which reports to the Board.

In this scenario where the Internet Quality Labels are administrated
by a foundation, funding for IQL Foundation's activities should come
only from international and national government organizations and/or
from licensing fees for certification marks administrated by IQL
Foundation.  IQL Foundation should not depend on donations or
membership fees from industry organizations for funding, because
that would compromise IQL Foundation's ability to objectively seek
an appropriate balance between industry and civil society interests.
There could have a rule of making the Labels available only to
businesses in countries which make an contribution to IQL Foundation's
budget which is appropriate in relation to the country's overall
financial means.

An alternative possibility for IQL administration would be for the
certification marks to be administrated by a business organization
which is allowed to cover its costs for IQL administration by means
of licensing fees for the certification marks, and which in addition
would be allowed to benefit economically from brand awareness and a
good reputation which the company can achieve through taking good
care of the IQL process.  This could work out to everyone's best
benefit if in addition to the enforceable contractual obligations
which have been described above for the case of a foundation, the
contracts which this company makes with the various stakeholders also
restrict the company's profit-oriented commercial activities to a set
of fields of business which may be complementary to the IQL-related
activities, but where it is unlikely that significant conflicts of
interest could arise with the commitment to good stewardship of the
IQLs.


Closing remarks
---------------
While the initial idea of Internet Quality Labels has been proposed
by Civil Society people in Switzerland, we would like this proposal
to be broadly discussed, nationally and internationally, leading to
a true multistakeholder process for working out the details.


History of this proposal
------------------------
On July 7, 2006 ETH Zurich and SWITCH organized a Swiss "Internet
Governance Symposium" in Zurich [4].  A good number of participants
of this symposium participated in a discussion of what we could
propose as a Swiss contribution to the Internet Governance Forum.
During this discussion, it was decided unanimously to draft a
proposal on "Internet Quality Labels" in response to the IGF's
"call for contributions".  The plan was to use a wiki to create
this text collaboratively.  Unfortunately, such a collaborative
process did not really happen.  The present proposal text was
written and revised several times by Norbert Bollow, the president
of the Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG).  SIUG maintains a list of
organizations and individuals who have endorsed this "Internet
Quality Labels" proposal [5].


[1] http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/7.html

[2] http://siug.ch/IQL/links

[3] http://www.w3.org/WAI/

[4] http://igf-06.ch/

[5] http://siug.ch/IQL/endorsements