US Relinquishing What Tiny Control It Had Of The Internet... If UN Isn't Allowed To Take Over

from the not-that-big-a-deal dept

This was rumored for a while, but the Commerce Department has now said that it will be "relinquishing" its "control" over ICANN's IANA, which administers the basic structure of the internet domain system. You can read the details here. Of course, the US government's "control" over ICANN/IANA has always been a lot more on paper than in reality. From the beginning, while the Commerce Department technically had oversight concerning ICANN, it had always been careful to live up to its promise that ICANN was to be independent of the US government. So, while some are making a big deal over this, it's unclear if it will really matter that much.

The big fear over the past few years was that certain foreign interests -- lead by authoritarian regimes in China and Russia (with long track records of censoring the internet and stifling dissent) -- would take control of the internet away from ICANN via the ITU, an organization that's a part of the UN. That was extremely problematic on a number of levels, given in part that the ITU process is entirely controlled by country governments without input from other stakeholders, such as technologists. ICANN is far from perfect (very, very, very, very, very far from perfect), but the ITU would be significantly worse.

However, from what's being said, it appears that the Commerce Department's plan is conditional on the UN/ITU not getting control, and for internet governance to remain a multi-stakeholder process, rather than one solely controlled by governments.

U.S. officials set strict conditions and an indeterminate timeline for the transition from federal government authority, saying that a new oversight body must be created and win the trust of crucial stakeholders around the world, said Lawrence Strickling, a top Commerce Department official. The announcement essentially ruled out the possibility that the United Nations would take over the U.S. role, something many nations have advocated and U.S. officials have long opposed.

That's a good thing. From what's being said, it sounds like the Commerce Department would like ICANN to continue more or less the way it has been running, just without the official claim to being overseen by the Commerce Department. Could that lead to troubles down the road? Sure. But, frankly, the US more or less forced itself into this position with its idiotic decision to let the NSA spy on everything. Before that, plenty of other countries were happy with de facto US "control" over the internet. But once it became clear just how deep the NSA's claws were within the internet, even former allies began to demand changes.

While the ICANN model can be improved upon (greatly), it can also be much, much worse. So where this goes will need to be watched closely. But, on a first pass, simply taking the Commerce Department's name off of things should have little direct impact for the time being. And, of course, it's worth remembering, that before ICANN, the internet was more or less governed (benevolently) by this guy.

Filed Under: commerce department, iana, internet governance, itu
Companies: icann

ICANN's Sense Of Entitlement Takes Over; Shocked It Lost Its Bid To Retain IANA

from the oops dept

Via Lauren Weinstein, we find out that ICANN has effectively lost its bid to retain control over IANA functions, though the fact that everyone else sucks too means it gets to hang on for at least six more months. In the meantime, though, it appears the whole thing took an always out-of-touch ICANN by surprise:

In a worrying turn of events, it appears that ICANN had no idea about the rejection of its bid for long-term running of the IANA contract prior to an announcement being posted on the NTIA's website today.

The organization - which has run the IANA functions for over a decade - is also waiting to hear why the US government feels it has failed to meet the RFP criteria that defined a new, more open approach to the contract.

In a series of sudden and unexpected announcements earlier today, the NTIA first announced it was canceling the entire rebid process for IANA, then that it was canceling it because no one had met its criteria, and then that it was extending ICANN's IANA contract for six months to give it time to re-run the RFP process.

IANA is the part that manages the authoritative root servers and important things like IP address allocations. ICANN has run that (along with its core functionality of overseeing DNS) basically since all of this was set up when lots of people realized that perhaps relying on one guy (as brilliant as he was) to manage the entire internet wasn't the best solution. The fact that ICANN didn't breeze through the IANA RFP is an interesting result, and as Lauren Weinstein notes, it's as if ICANN has taken on quite an entitlement viewpoint:

In my view, ICANN's behavior of late regarding the NTIA has been something like the Wall Street firms vs. their ersatz regulators -- a sense of entitlement and "we're too important to be replaced" plowing forward with the domain-industrial complex's "get rich quick" agenda, with only lip-service being paid to NTIA. As I said earlier today, I would expect ICANN to find a way to come into "technical" compliance for now. But I still also feel very strongly that we need a purpose-built replacement for ICANN that will not carry its ever increasing political and "domainer" baggage. Not the UN. Not the ITU. But a new international forum that cares about all the Internet's users, not mainly the monied domain exploitation interests at the top of the DNS food chain.

If only there were real efforts being made to move in that direction...

Filed Under: bid, iana, ntia, rfp
Companies: icann