IANA Transition Delay Would Increase 'Inherent Distrust' in Multistakeholderism, NTIA Official Says
NTIA Associate Administrator Fiona Alexander cautioned Friday against Congress using its legislative powers to delay the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition. Congressional intervention against the wishes of ICANN stakeholders could result in “inherent distrust” in multistakeholder internet governance, she said at an R Street Institute event. NTIA began openly pushing back in late June against Capitol Hill Republicans’ calls for the agency to delay the transition by extending the agency’s existing contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions past the current Sept. 30 expiration date (see 1606280062). Congress also is considering legislation to delay or outright halt the IANA transition, including a proposed extension to an existing rider in the Department of Commerce’s budget that bars NTIA from using its funds on the transition through the end of FY 2016. It’s unclear how and whether Congress will move to intervene on the transition, but that debate is likely to reach a crescendo when legislators return from their August recess, officials told us.
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NTIA will consult with ICANN after the nonprofit submits a report Aug. 12 on its progress on implementing changes to its accountability mechanisms and other pre-transition work to determine if ICANN believes it can complete pre-transition work by Sept. 30, Alexander said. The agency will work with ICANN to determine if a contract extension is warranted, but any “unilateral” transition delay will be damaging to the existing Domain Name System structure, she said. A delay not sought by stakeholders would tell the rest of the world the U.S. government doesn’t “believe in” its commitment to the IANA transition, which would be “the worst signal the U.S. government could send to the world,” Alexander said. ICANN remains “focused on preparing our implementation report” and will work with NTIA and others to decide whether the transition should move forward as scheduled, ICANN Vice President-Strategic Programs Jamie Hedlund told us. Any delay that doesn’t involve input from stakeholders “will send the wrong signal to the rest of the world” about multistakeholderism, he said.
TechFreedom President Berin Szoka and Heritage Foundation fellow Brett Schaefer disputed the urgency of completing the IANA transition this year. They said ICANN rushed development of its IANA transition-related plans to satisfy what they called a U.S.-imposed “artificial deadline.” An additional one-year delay of the transition shouldn’t be seen as the government “expressing a lack of faith” in ICANN’s ability to operate independently of NTIA oversight so much as allowing real-time evaluation of governance changes engendered by the transition, Schaefer said. Internet Infrastructure Coalition Executive Director Christian Dawson said it would be “extremely risky” for the U.S. to seek a new transition delay and would do nothing to “relitigate the past two years” of stakeholder work on the transition plans.
Rhetoric on the Hill generally “has become so hyperpartisan” ahead of the Democratic and Republican national conventions that it’s unlikely Congress can now reach a grand compromise on the IANA transition “that would allow the transition to happen but somehow allow the U.S. government to retain some of its ability to step in” in the near term, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw, in an interview. “There’s not the time or the will to do that now. I think that either Congress will either just let [the transition] go or it will extend the [transition spending] freeze and the White House will have to decide whether to comply with that.”
It’s still possible -- but unlikely -- that such an agreement could be reached in the three weeks after the August recess that precede the end of NTIA’s current IANA contract, Corwin and others said. “It’s amazing how quickly Congress can move when there’s a backroom agreement,” Corwin said. Congress “loves to kick stuff down the road” where possible, but the U.S. government “must declare its intent to fundamentally internationalize this piece of” internet governance, R Street General Counsel Mike Godwin told us: “We will be at a crisis point soon if we don’t take meaningful steps” to divest U.S. oversight of the Domain Name System given that such a move would diffuse support for moves to increase the ITU’s jurisdiction over internet governance. “This is our chance to prove me mean what we say” about supporting multistakeholderism, Godwin said.