Changes to IANA Transition Deadline Could Cause International Outcry
Many stakeholders don’t believe ICANN will have a final transition proposal ready for and approved by NTIA by the tentative Sept. 30 deadline, experts told us Friday. NTIA and ICANN officials have said Sept. 30 was less of a hard deadline and more of a goal, and that up to two two-year extensions for the transition would be granted if necessary. That could spell trouble internationally, said a foreign diplomat, who worried what a prospective Republican administration might do to the transition if a GOP president is elected in 2016. NTIA will address any calls for deadline changes once it hears from the ICANN community, said a spokeswoman.
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The ICANN community isn’t likely to meet the transition’s Sept. 30 deadline, which was “just a fire to be lit under people to get them to act,” said John Laprise, an Internet governance scholar and consultant. The community either won’t submit a plan or it will “but over the objections of constituent stakeholders,” he said. The latter scenario could provoke “disapproval” from NTIA, he said. Whether the Sept. 30 deadline is the only “window” for the community to submit a proposal is “less clear,” considering Congress’s “simplistic” understanding of technology issues, Laprise said. As long as President Barack Obama remains in the White House, there will be enough “political capital” to continue with the transition, he said.
The IANA transition would be “off the table” in the event of a Republican administration, said the diplomat, citing as evidence the recent funding measure passed by Congress that prohibits NTIA from using funds for the transition. If a perception develops that the U.S. is “backtracking” on its commitment to the transition, expect some in the ITU to restate the case that ICANN should be brought under the U.N.’s purview, he said. Some business groups are considering asking NTIA to postpone the transition, which would be a “terrible” decision, he said. But it’s not that the business community doesn’t support the transition, it’s just concerned it’s a “rushed process,” he said.
The slim chance the ICANN community has of meeting the Sept. 30 deadline isn’t related to Congress’ spending measure but to the issue's complexity, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and intellectual property law consultancy Virtualaw. The transition isn’t a “political” issue; it’s one that the community is taking “very seriously,” and it wants to get it “right,” he said. The “window” to do the transition won’t close after Sept. 30, said Corwin. He said he believes the ICANN will come up with a final proposal before the next administration takes office in January 2017. Corwin didn’t know of anyone in the private or public interest sector asking Congress to prohibit the transition, he said. “I’m certainly not delivering that message.”
The “privatization of Internet administration has a long history and strong momentum regardless of the party of the president,” said Laprise. The Commerce and State departments support the transition, and the “powerful in the executive bureaucracy want this to happen and have wanted this for a long time,” he emailed. “The private sector might also see advantages as the involvement of the US government in the IANA contract always raises the legal prospect of sovereign immunity when going to court against ICANN.”
Whether the transition happens “appears” to be “90 percent U.S.-centric,” but the implications are “global,” said Khaled Fattal, CEO of the London-based Multilingual Internet Group. The U.S. was caught with its “hand in the cookie jar” after surveillance revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, he said. The Snowden leaks dealt a “cancer scare of trust” to the multistakeholder model, an issue that's far broader than the goals of ICANN or NTIA, Fattal said. If the intent of the transition is to strengthen the multistakeholder model, it’s “not enough to convince members of our own club,” he said: “We need to show the [international community] that the model works and that it’s transparent.” If the transition requires a two-year extension and contains nothing of “substance,” it will be a “meal no one wants to bite into,” Fattal said.