ICANN Accountability Measures Said Moving in Right Direction After ICANN 52
The ICANN board’s willingness to accept its removal in the event of the mismanagement of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions signaled progress at ICANN 52 in Singapore, ICANN experts said Wednesday. The conference ended last week and included talk of the IANA transition and its corresponding accountability review (see 1502060057). Domain-related issues also were addressed at ICANN 52, including universal acceptance and second level two-character domains, domain industry officials said.
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ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and board Chairman Steve Crocker said in an ICANN-sponsored interview last week that the board is prepared to allow for its removal if it fails to manage the IANA functions adequately. It’s “very important that our house is solid” in terms of ICANN accountability, Chehade said. The community needs “recourse mechanisms to ensure that we are performing these functions in a way that’s satisfactory,” he said. “That’s our goal.”
The cross community working group on enhancing ICANN accountability “showed progress” at ICANN 52, NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco said. “We also demonstrated how we are applying Stress Tests to the accountability regime, which should address many concerns raised by Congress about this transition,” he emailed. Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters Act (HR-805) sponsor Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., told us last week that Congress should have thorough oversight of the transition (see 1502100049). “There are a lot of difficult details to work out," DelBianco said. "But it’s clear the community is fully dedicated to the task.”
Donuts applauds "the ICANN community for moving ahead with work on the transition of the IANA function and on accountability mechanisms for ICANN,” said Mason Cole, vice president-communications at the domain registry. “There's still a great deal to be done and it's the biggest issue in play for the community today.”
The issue of universal acceptance for domain names and email addresses “took on primary importance in Singapore,” said Kurt Pritz, Domain Name Association executive director. Universal acceptance would provide that addresses and domains would go to the same location for all users. “Hundreds of new [top-level domains] TLDs have been introduced in the past year, dozens of which employ internationalized domain names,” DNA’s repository online said. “Yet multinational corporations and small companies often fail to adapt their filters and applications,” it said. “Many domain names do not resolve, and many emails are not delivered.”
“For gTLDS and in particular for new registries, the initiation of inter-sessional meetings is a positive development,” said CEO Nao Matsukata of FairWinds Partners, a domain consultancy. “This sets the infrastructure for a more practical relationship between ICANN and the registries and creates an important channel for operational discussion,” he emailed. “As more .Brands launch and their owners, global corporations, get engaged this sets up a very practical and meaningful process for engagement with ICANN.”
Another issue at ICANN 52 was second-level two-character domains, which were “initially reserved and registries last year petitioned to make them available to the market,” Cole emailed. “At first there was no objection, but recently a small number of governments raised last-minute protests, and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) ended up issuing advice calling for an extended 60-day comment period for pending and future requests,” he said. “The board accepted that advice, effectively holding up a previously-defined process designed to expeditiously handle product and service requests such as this,” Cole said. “If certain two-character names become subject to objection, the board and GAC need to have rationale for objecting to two-character names, like a basis in law or actual, demonstrable history of confusion with country code TLDs,” he said. “Otherwise, there's no substantive reason to withhold these names.”
“The Singapore meeting provided one more opportunity to see the growing challenge of whether ICANN or sovereign states have jurisdiction over certain sensitive issues,” Matsukata said. “The two-character issue and the GAC's insistence to amend its views clearly reflects the growing problem, but it also provides some insight into the delay between decisions made at ICANN and the time needed for consideration within home governments,” he said. “The disconnect between national interest and ICANN policies is readily evident in the two-character issues.”
Some at ICANN 52 called for “additional safeguards” for new generic top-level domains, but Donuts hasn’t had any “complaints to date about abusive usage and additional safeguards are not necessary,” Cole said. “Should any complaints arise, they can (and would) be promptly handled,” he said. “New gTLDs already have more protections by far than do legacy gTLDs and [country code] TLDs, and the evidence is that existing safeguards are working.”