ICANN's Dublin Meeting Agenda Dominated by Negotiations on Accountability Compromise, Stakeholders Say

A CCWG-Accountability member who attended the working group’s Friday meeting said discussions were “going decently,” but indicated that there was still significant ground for the working group to cover before the group can reach a consensus on how it will proceed toward a final accountability proposal. A two-day face-to-face meeting among CCWG-Accountability members, ICANN board members and other stakeholders in late September ended without reaching consensus on several controversial provisions in the existing CCWG-Accountability draft proposal (see 1509280056).

Provisions that stakeholders still haven’t reached consensus on include a mechanism for enforcing proposed new ICANN community powers and a proposal to amend ICANN’s bylaws to require the ICANN board to find a “mutually acceptable solution” when the Governmental Advisory Committee provides advice that’s supported by GAC member consensus.

Congress is set to closely monitor proceedings during the ICANN 54 meeting, with Senate Commerce Committee leaders telling ICANN Board Chairman Steve Crocker in a letter released Friday that they “encourage the board to work toward” a consensus with CCWG-Accountability on the working group’s proposal. “Significant accountability reforms that empower the community and are developed by the community are necessary for Congressional support” for the IANA transition, said Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Commerce Internet Subcommittee ranking member Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, in a joint letter. ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé has committed to Congress that the nonprofit corporation won’t alter any consensus IANA transition proposal that lessens the ICANN board’s power and “we expect ICANN to stand by that commitment,” Schatz and Thune said. Four senior congressional staffers were expected to further discuss Capitol Hill’s perspective on the IANA transition during a Sunday session that was to include Clinton administration Chief Internet Policy Adviser Ira Magaziner, who has been advising CCWG-Accountability during its consensus negotiations.

ICANN 54 “is sure to be a testament to the multistakeholder model as we watch, listen and engage with people from all over the world, bringing different points of views together and reach consensus on significant, substantial issues,” ICANN Vice President-Strategic Programs Jamie Hedlund said in a statement. “Furthermore, we appreciate Congress's interest in the transition and we are pleased with their commitment to the process. We agree that without strong accountability measures the transition should not move forward.”

ICANN stakeholders told us they’re hoping that CCWG-Accountability can at least find a consensus on a formula for a final ICANN accountability proposal by the end of the Dublin meeting. A consensus path forward is a reasonable best-case outcome to expect from the Dublin meeting since it remains all but certain that CCWG-Accountability won’t have a final proposal ready, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw. Stakeholders have widely assumed that it would be difficult for CCWG-Accountability to finalize its proposal by the Dublin meeting following the outcome of the working group’s September meeting.

A consensus path forward would put CCWG-Accountability “on track to adopt a final proposal in time” to present it at ICANN’s planned March 5-10 meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, Corwin said. ICANN approval of CCWG-Accountability’s proposal at the Marrakesh meeting would still necessitate an additional extension of NTIA’s contract with ICANN to provide the IANA functions past the current Sept. 30 contract expiration date, but it would at least provide some certainty to the process, Corwin said. “If we leave Dublin with no agreements, I don’t know what the forecast will be,” he said. “That would be a very serious problem.”

It’s “fairly normal” for the most controversial issues in any proposal to be the ones on which it takes the longest to reach a consensus, said Internet Society Vice President-Global Policy Development Sally Wentworth. The Internet Society “would like to see a really positive energy coming out of this meeting to show that we can work on these issues over the coming weeks and get to a final proposal,” she said. “I think that really needs to be evident” at the Dublin meeting. ICANN 54 is “going to be a really important meeting” for the IANA transition generally since the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has made “a lot of progress” on the overall IANA transition plan proposal, but “many parts of the ICG proposal depend” on the CCWG-Accountability proposal, Wentworth said. “This is the time for the ICANN community to really focus and find the areas where they can achieve consensus in a way that meets the NTIA’s criteria but is also good for the global Internet,” she said. “How we reach that consensus is extremely important.”

ICANN added significantly more sessions focused on the CCWG-Accountability proposal to accommodate additional stakeholder feedback and further negotiating time on the proposal, adding to the existing psychological perception that during ICANN 54 the accountability proposal “is the dominant issue and everything else is secondary,” Corwin said. “A lot of things have been pushed to the side,” Blacknight CEO Michele Neylon said. “I suspect a lot of things just aren’t going to get the same amount of attention” as originally intended.

Other issues are still expected to get attention -- albeit reduced -- during ICANN 54, stakeholders said. Registrars and registries will need to further discuss how to address the IP community’s continuing demands for more stringent action against websites that infringe on intellectual property, Rightside Vice President-Business and Legal Affairs Statton Hammock said. Registries will also attempt to “nail down” the process for releasing two-character domain names, which has encountered opposition from GAC, Hammock said. Domain name industry stakeholders are likely to focus on improving the effectiveness of marketing new generic top-level domains, he said. There’s also likely to be renewed interest in rights protection mechanisms across all TLDs, which could result in a revamp of ICANN’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, Corwin said.