House Commerce Committee Clears DOTCOM Act Ahead of ICANN Meeting
The House Commerce Committee passed the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (HR-805) Wednesday, easily clearing the bill as expected (see 1506160059) on a voice vote. HR-805 and its Senate version (S-1551) would require NTIA to submit a report to Congress certifying that ICANN’s Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plan meets the U.S. goal of maintaining global Internet openness. HR-805 would give Congress 30 legislative days to review the report before NTIA can relinquish its IANA oversight role. The bill also would require NTIA to certify that ICANN has adopted proposed changes to its bylaws.
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HR-805 “simply and sensibly asks NTIA to wait -- and preserve its contractual role -- until it is ready to tell Congress that the changes to ICANN and other Internet structures necessary for the transition have been made,” said House Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., during the markup. HR-805’s provision for more “active” congressional oversight of the IANA transition “adds another guardrail to this process and it demonstrates that the United States takes this transition very, very seriously,” said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore.
Upton also said House Commerce’s endorsement of HR-805 is “very important” because ICANN stakeholders are to begin a meeting Sunday in Buenos Aires at which the IANA transition process will be the main focus of discussion. Public perceptions that the DOTCOM Act is gaining momentum in Congress could have an effect on discussions at ICANN’s Buenos Aires meeting because it “softens the tone from the U.S.,” said Information Technology & Innovation Foundation Vice President Daniel Castro in an interview. The revised DOTCOM Act language creates a perception that Congress isn’t “really trying to micromanage the transition in a way that wouldn’t be appropriate” and is instead trying to “make sure NTIA is upholding its responsibilities,” he said.
HR-805’s requirement that NTIA certify that ICANN has adopted multistakeholder-recommended changes to its bylaws is also extremely important because “it’s saying that ICANN can’t just wave its hands and do an internal, behind-the-scenes process with its board where it makes the changes it wants and rejects the changes it doesn’t want,” Castro said. The DOTCOM Act will “put pressure on the ICANN board” to adopt the proposed bylaws changes under review by ICANN’s Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability), Castro said. The version of HR-805 that House Commerce approved Wednesday included one amendment from Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., that replaces references to requiring ICANN to have “implemented” the CCWG-Accountability recommendations to requiring ICANN to have “adopted” those recommendations. Shimkus said he offered the amendment after consulting with NTIA officials.
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling urged ICANN community stakeholders Tuesday to begin thinking about implementation of the IANA transition plans and ICANN accountability recommendations as CCWG-Accountability and other groups finish their proposals. The ICANN community should consider whether “the issues of implementation have been identified and addressed in the proposal so that the community and ICANN can implement the plan as expeditiously as possible once we have reviewed and accepted it,” Strickling said in a blog post. “This is an important issue right now because after the Buenos Aires meeting, NTIA will need to make a determination on extending its current contract with ICANN,” which is to expire Sept. 30. Strickling asked ICANN’s IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group and CCWG-Accountability for an update on transition planning and their views on the transition timeline -- updates that are “critical and will strongly influence how NTIA proceeds with the contract extension,” he said.
HR-805 also “presents an alternative” to a rider in the House-passed version of the FY 2016 Department of Commerce budget (HR-2578) that would prohibit NTIA from using its funding during that fiscal year for work on the IANA transition, Walden said during the House Commerce markup. Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., also noted HR-805’s status as an alternative to the HR-2578 IANA transition rider, saying it’s “far better” to increase congressional oversight of the IANA transition than to block NTIA from working on the transition via a budget rider.
Further movement on the DOTCOM Act sets up a situation in which the House and Senate “will have to reconcile” HR-2578’s IANA transition rider with the DOTCOM Act provisions and the Senate’s FY 2016 Commerce budget language, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw, in an interview. A Senate Appropriations Committee-approved version of the Commerce budget includes a rider that would in part require NTIA to inform the Senate Appropriations and Commerce committees a minimum of 45 days before it makes a final decision on ICANN’s IANA transition plan and an accompanying successor IANA contract. Senate Appropriations released the full text of its version of the FY 2016 Commerce budget late Tuesday(see 1506170054).