Four Senate Commerce GOP Members Sign on to Rubio Letter Seeking IANA Transition Delay
Four other Senate Commerce Committee Republicans signed on to a letter sent Tuesday by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., that urged NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling to extend the agency's contract with ICANN to perform the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions for…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
an unspecified period. The four who also signed on to the letter were Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. The letter, as expected (see 1605180063), said a delay of the IANA transition precipitated by an extension of NTIA's contract would “ensure that the many changes in the transition proposal are implemented, operate as envisioned, and do not contain unforeseen problems.” The new governance model included in ICANN's IANA transition-related plans “is unproven and should also undergo parallel testing,” Rubio and the other senators said in the letter. Blunt, Johnson, Rubio and Sullivan signaled interest in proposals for a delay of the transition during a Senate Commerce hearing Tuesday (see 1605240067). IANA transition supporters continued to argue against delaying the transition, after the hearing. The Internet Society believes “there's no reason to call for a delay in the transition,” Regional Bureau Director-North America Mark Buell said in an interview. “We've nearly reached the point where we have proposals to get us to the best place we can be on the transition.” Buell countered arguments that further fragmentation of the Internet will occur regardless of whether the transition occurs. “I think the real risk for fragmentation would be if the transition is delayed or doesn't go through at all,” he said. “If we delay, we would remove a lot of stakeholders' faith in the global Internet community. A delay won't do the Internet any favors.” Governments “that want to see the transition fail will use the extension and continued US government involvement as justification to promote further intergovernmental control over the internet,” said Center for Democracy and Technology Director-Global Internet Policy and Human Rights Project Matthew Shears in a blog post. “The longer the US government retains its role, the more the voices against multistakeholder approaches and an open internet will grow.”