NTIA To Extend Contract With ICANN Through 'at Least' July 2016, Strickling Tells Subcommittee
NTIA now believes it will need to extend its current contract with ICANN for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions “at least through next July,” given recent stakeholder guidance on the timeline for the ongoing IANA transition process, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling told the House Communications Subcommittee during a hearing Wednesday. Strickling has been seeking feedback from stakeholders on how long NTIA should extend ICANN's IANA contract past the current Sept. 30 expiration date. ICANN's IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) and the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability), which are both working on proposals for the IANA transition, had told Strickling they believed the transition wouldn't be complete until at least July 2016. CCWG-Accountability cautioned that NTIA should operate under the assumption that the IANA transition could be delayed until at least September 2016 if that group's work requires further negotiations to achieve consensus (see 1507070058).
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Strickling and ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé told the subcommittee IANA transition planning made significant progress during last month's ICANN 53 meeting in Buenos Aires, as expected. ICANN believes the IANA transition will make the Internet “more secure” and the transition planning process “shows that the multistakeholder model works,” Chehadé said. House Communications Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and other subcommittee members pressed Chehadé and Strickling on elements of the preliminary IANA transition proposals under review by ICG and CCWG-Accountability, as well as on concerns related to ICANN's contract enforcement procedures and its generic top-level domain program.
NTIA expects it will receive ICANN's final IANA transition plan in early November, shortly after ICANN's Oct. 18-22 meeting in Dublin, Strickling told lawmakers. The ICG and CWG-Accountability proposals are expected to be ready for full ICANN consideration at the Dublin meeting. Chehadé and Strickling were supportive of the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (HR-805/S-1551), with Strickling telling House Communications that NTIA will recommend that President Barack Obama sign the bill if the Senate passes S-1551. The Senate Commerce Committee cleared S-1551 in late June, just after the House passed HR-805. The bill would give Congress 30 legislative days to review an NTIA report certifying whether ICANN's IANA transition plan meets U.S. goals on Internet openness. The bill also would also require ICANN to enact stakeholder recommendations on the transition and ICANN accountability mechanisms.
NTIA will give Congress an opportunity to review the ICANN plan regardless of whether the DOTCOM Act gets enacted, Strickling said in response to concerns Walden raised during the House Communications hearing. Walden said he hopes the Senate will “quickly pass” S-1551 and “provide Congress with another tool to ensure a transition will meet” U.S. and international needs. Walden and other House Communications members praised ICANN for factoring Congress' concerns about the IANA transition into revisions to transition proposals, while Chehadé said Congress' engagement with ICANN had aided the transition process: “You did the right thing by asking us to do the right things and slow down.”
ICANN is highly likely to remain a California-based nonprofit corporation after the IANA transition, Chehadé and Strickling said in response to concerns from House Communications ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. “We want to nail that down” since ICANN's reliance on ICANN community stakeholders is predicated on provisions in California law, Eshoo said. ICANN's presence in California is guaranteed in the nonprofit's Affirmation of Commitments, which will remain a “very important document for us” after the IANA transition, Chehadé said. He also said the U.S. will continue to maintain ownership of the .mil and .gov domains after the transition despite there not being a formal contract guaranteeing that ownership, but said ICANN is happy to work with the U.S. government on a formalized agreement if desired.
House Commerce Committee Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., raised the strongest concerns during the hearing about ICANN's ability to successfully transition oversight of the IANA functions, saying the transition wasn't “quite ready for prime time” because of deficiencies with ICANN's enforcement of complaints against domain name owners for IP violations and other issues that could violate owners' contractual obligations with domain name registries. Blackburn said she agrees with ICANN Chief Compliance Officer Allen Grogan's assessment in an ICANN blog post that the nonprofit isn't the “Internet Content Police,” but it shouldn't be using that as an excuse to skirt responsibility for enforcing registry contracts.
NTIA has “stood up” and told ICANN it needs to improve its enforcement of registry contracts, but enforcement can be a complicated issue because of the myriad of IP laws worldwide, Strickling said. ICANN is continuing to improve its enforcement capabilities by growing its enforcement contingent and facilitating dialogues with registries and domain name owners, but combating IP violations isn't part of the nonprofit's expertise, Chehadé said.