Compromise DOTCOM Act Gets House Communications Subcommittee Nod

The compromise HR-805 would give Congress 30 legislative days to review NTIA’s report before the agency can relinquish its IANA oversight role. The compromise HR-805 also would require NTIA to certify that changes to ICANN’s bylaws currently under review by the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability are fully implemented. Potential momentum for HR-805 also doesn’t guarantee that the Senate will move to zero without a rider in the House-passed version of the FY 2016 budget for the Department of Commerce and other federal agencies (HR-2578) that would prohibit NTIA from using its funds on the IANA transition, stakeholders said in interviews.

House Communications approved HR-805 Wednesday on a voice vote. Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said the compromise language contained in a manager’s amendment “ensures there is a mechanism in place for public review before the transition is completed.” Eshoo and other subcommittee Democrats had objected to the original version of HR-805, which would have prohibited NTIA from approving ICANN's final IANA transition proposal until the GAO completes an ongoing study of the plan.

Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he continues to hope the GAO report’s findings, which he expects to review later this summer, will be “considered as part of the transition process.” House Communications asked GAO to examine possible risks associated with the IANA transition, commitments that exist within NTIA’s current contract with ICANN and additional criteria NTIA should consider as it evaluates ICANN’s eventual IANA transition plan. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., HR-805’s main sponsor, said he believed the compromise version of the bill brought House Communications to “a better place” and focused the legislation on the issue of increasing Congress’s oversight of the IANA transition.

Shimkus told us after the hearing that he believes House Communications’ unanimous passage of HR-805 “bodes well” for House Commerce to mark up the bill in the near future and for the full House to possibly consider it under suspension. House Commerce hasn’t committed to a markup of HR-805 and one hasn’t been scheduled yet, but Shimkus said he personally expects that “this is something we would do before” the July 4 recess. The bill is also receiving positive attention behind the scenes in the Senate, he said.

House Communications passage of the compromise HR-805 “suggests there may be some momentum” for the bill, but “whether it will go anywhere is still an open question,” said New America’s Open Technology Institute Senior Policy Counsel Danielle Kehl. “This is an issue that is incredibly important but is not something that is at the top of everyone’s agenda.” Senate consideration of HR-805 could prove even more difficult because although the Senate Commerce Committee has shown interest in the IANA transition, “it’s not clear that there’s much interest in legislation” on the issue, Kehl said.

Enactment of HR-805 “would go a long way to assuring domestic and international audiences that the IANA transition is real,” said Wiley Rein lawyer David Gross, speaking on behalf of the Internet Governance Coalition. “Whether it happens or not will depend on whether or not the criteria in the legislation is met," but HR-805 “lays out a framework that should be very achievable.” Potential passage of HR-805 would also significantly improve the environment for discussion of the IANA transition during ICANN’s planned June 21-25 meeting in Buenos Aires, at which the IANA transition process is expected to be the main focus, Gross said. “It signals that Congress is serious about trying to find an appropriate path forward.” The Buenos Aires meeting will be important for gauging the ICANN community’s reaction to the compromise sought in HR-805 and as an indicator of how long the community believes the IANA transition process will last beyond the current Sept. 30 expiration of NTIA’s contract with ICANN, Kehl said. HR-805 may suit Congress’ need for oversight of the IANA transition, “but the rest of the ICANN community may not be very happy,” she said.

HR-805’s compromise language would be “an alternative to a funds limitation that would achieve our shared goal” of “preventing harm to the Internet as we know it,” Walden said during the House Communications markup. The Senate Appropriations Committee is to consider its version of Commerce’s FY 2016 budget Thursday. Senate Appropriations’ Commerce Subcommittee members didn’t mention the IANA transition or NTIA during its markup of the budget Wednesday. Senate Appropriations doesn’t traditionally release its proposed budgets until after full committee markup and a spokeswoman for Senate Appropriations Commerce Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., didn’t comment on whether the current version of the budget contains an IANA transition provision. Shimkus told us passage of HR-805 doesn’t automatically mean the IANA transition rider in the Commerce budget should be lifted, saying several industry stakeholders had indicated they “like having that threat out there.”