Cruz Aiming To Bow Anti-IANA Transition Bill Next Week
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is aiming to introduce his Protecting Internet Freedom Act legislation when the Senate returns next week from its Memorial Day recess, an internet lobbyist told us. A draft version of the bill that began circulating last…
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week, as expected (see 1605240067), would prohibit NTIA from allowing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition to occur unless Congress “expressly grants” the NTIA administrator the authority to allow the transition to proceed. Cruz’s bill also would require NTIA to certify within 60 days of the bill’s enactment that the U.S. government has “secured sole ownership” of the .gov and .mil top-level domains (TLDs) and that the government has a contract with ICANN that grants the U.S. “exclusive control and use of those domains in perpetuity.” The Protecting Internet Freedom Act “is our last chance to save” internet freedom, Cruz’s staff said in a background memo circulating with the draft. The U.S. “cannot allow authoritarian regimes to increase their influence over the core operating functions” of the internet, the memo said. Staffers for several senators apparently have expressed interest in Cruz’s bill, but decisions about co-sponsoring the bill aren’t likely until next week, an internet lobbyist told us. Cruz’s bill doesn’t appear to be directly related to the Securing America’s Internet Domains Act (HR-5329), which Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., filed last week, the lobbyist said. HR-5329 would require NTIA to extend its current contract to administer the IANA functions through Sept. 30, 2019, unless the agency can certify it secured the U.S. government's “sole ownership” of the .gov and .mil TLDs (see 1605260036). A Cruz spokesman confirmed the details of the Protecting Internet Freedom Act and the background memo, but didn’t comment on Cruz’s timeline for filing the bill or the level of support the bill has gotten from other senators. During a hearing last week, several members of the Senate Commerce Committee expressed an interest in delaying the IANA transition via an extension of NTIA’s current contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions. It’s unclear whether interest in delaying the IANA transition will lead to congressional action, but there doesn’t initially appear there’s much momentum for scuttling the transition entirely, the internet lobbyist said.