IANA Transition Delay Won't Protect Internet Freedom, Strickling Says
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling worked Thursday to “correct the record” on claims made by Internet governance stakeholders who are skeptical of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition. He again pushed back against calls for NTIA to delay the transition by extending the agency's existing contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions. Strickling told Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and four other GOP senators in late June that NTIA sees “no tangible benefit” to seeking a transition delay (see 1606280062). Extending the IANA contract “will not be effective” in protecting internet freedom despite what some transition skeptics claim, Strickling said during an Internet Governance Forum USA conference.
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The IANA contract “is too limited in scope” to protect internet freedom because it covers only the IANA functions and the root zone file, Strickling said. “It does not grant NTIA any authority over ICANN's day-to-day operations or the organization's accountability to the stakeholder community.” The U.S. government's oversight role doesn't give it any “ability to reject an ICANN budget or to remove an ICANN board member” -- powers given to the ICANN community via recent changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms, Strickling said. Extending the IANA contract “could actually lead to the loss of internet freedom we all want to maintain, he said: “The potential for serious consequences from extending the contract beyond the time necessary for ICANN to complete the implementation plan is very real and has implications” for international support for multistakeholder internet governance and U.S. credibility.
Strickling countered many criticisms of ICANN's IANA transition plan and disputed claims that NTIA violated a rider in the Department of Commerce's FY 2016 budget that prohibited NTIA from using its funds on preparations for the transition. Leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees criticized NTIA in part for what they view as the agency's “troubling” use of resources in furtherance of the transition (see 1606270070). Such claims go well beyond the language in the transition funding ban rider, which bars NTIA only from using such funds to “relinquish” its oversight of IANA, Strickling said. “This claim ignores the fact that at the same time Congress approved the restriction, it also directed NTIA ‘to conduct a thorough review and analysis of any proposed transition’ and to provide quarterly reports on the process to Congress.”
Strickling also pushed back against claims that foreign governments could force ICANN to move its HQ out of Los Angeles and into a jurisdiction less amenable to internet freedom. “ICANN is a California corporation and will remain so,” he said: “ICANN's board cannot change” an existing bylaw confirming ICANN's Los Angeles headquarters location “over the objection of the stakeholder community.” A provision in ICANN's articles of incorporation organizing the nonprofit under California's nonprofit public benefit corporation law can be changed only with support of 75 percent of the ICANN community, he noted.
Several internet governance stakeholders said during the IGF USA conference that a delay is warranted because the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) is working on a second set of accountability mechanism changes that include a debate over whether to permanently base ICANN in Los Angeles. International Center for Law and Economics Executive Director Kristian Stout said he believes there should be a “soft” transition that would include a “claw-back provision” that would allow the U.S. government to maintain an oversight role until CCWG-Accountability resolves the jurisdiction issue. TechFreedom President Berin Szoka similarly questioned why it's “not imprudent to wait” on fully transitioning IANA oversight until the ICANN jurisdiction issue is addressed.
Wiley Rein telecom and Internet governance lawyer David Gross said he doesn't believe there has been “any material change” in the state of the IANA transition debate in Congress despite ongoing calls by multiple Republican lawmakers for NTIA to delay the transition (see 1606100069 and 1606270070). The strongest calls in Congress for a delay are coming from “people who had already expressed unhappiness with the timing of the transition” rather than from earlier transition supporters or undecided members, he said. “The situation is no different today than it was previously.” Calls for a delay may not gain traction if they're seen to be motivated only “for delay's sake,” Gross said.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's endorsement of the IANA transition in the tech policy agenda that her campaign released in late June (see 1606280071) “should make formal” the Democratic Party's support for the transition, a communications industry lobbyist said. By contrast, language in the Republican Party's draft 2016 platform calling for resistance to “any effort to shift control away from the successful multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance and toward governance by international or governmental organizations” appears to be the brainchild of supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the lobbyist said. The person said it may not influence presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump's position on the issue.