The new agreement involving the U.S. Commerce Department and ICANN really does constitute a new phase in ICANN’s existence. It is a step away from unilateral U.S. oversight, and that is a good thing. (Of course, the IANA contract, which still gives the U.S. a unilateral, life-or-death power over ICANN’s authority over the DNS root zone file, is unchanged by this.) The Obama administration NTIA is to be commended for making changes that attempt to address longstanding issues regarding unilateral U.S. oversight of ICANN. While acknowledging this effort to move forward, we call attention to some design flaws in the approach taken. More fundamentally, we are surprised by the approach to accountability that seems to underlie the AoC.   more »

The first IGF-USA will take place this Friday, Oct 2 from 8:45-5:30 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, located at 1800 K Street, NW, in Washington, DC.  The forum will engage civil society, government, industry, technology/research and academia in workshops and plenary sessions covering a variety of Internet issues including: The Future of the Internet, GenNext's Online Future; Cyber Security; Freedom of Information in a Web 2.0 World; Critical Internet Resources; Privacy and Security Implications for Web 2.0; and Access Perspectives, Challenges and Opportunities. 


Speakers in the morning plenary session will include Markus Kummer of the UN Secretariat for the global IGF, Larry Strickling of NTIA and Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, with participants such as Marc Rotenberg, Electronic Privacy Information Center; Phil Bond, TechAmerica; Lee McKnight, Internet Governance Project and others. The closing plenary will include Ambassador Phil Verveer and Richard Beaird, U.S. State Department, as well as other participants from business and civil society including IGP's Milton Mueller. This plenary will address the upcoming deliberations regarding the future of the global Internet Governance Forum - a process now in its fourth year that was originally chartered for an initial five-year period and whose future is being debated.

Registration for the event is free and can be done on the IGF-USA website.  Remote participation is also available.

We are all waiting for the other shoe to drop - i.e., for the NTIA to formally release the actual document that constitutes the "Affirmation of Commitments" that will replace the Joint Project Agreement. We have a pretty good idea what's in it but at this point it's best to wait for the official release. Once it is, IGP's crack team of ICANN-analysts stands ready to provide commentary and analysis of it. Call us at +1.202.657.5881 or email info {at} internetgovernance.org. While you're waiting, be amused with Jeremy Rabkin's quip about the new title for the Agreement. An "Affirmation of Commitment," he said, sounds a lot like marriage vows exchanged by same-sexers in a state where gay marriage is not yet legal. It's sort of like a legal vow, but not quite, and no doubt some conservative types will find it all a bit strange. Internet governance is getting so New Age.

Details are beginning to emerge about the replacement for the ICANN – Commerce Department Joint Project Agreement (JPA). The Economist is reporting that the JPA will be replaced by an “affirmation of commitments” that is only four pages long. This corresponds to what we are hearing from various sources here in Washington. Unlike the JPA, which had to be renewed every few years – a process that triggered what we at IGP considered to be a dysfunctional politics in which U.S. business interests ran to Congress every time ICANN did something they didn’t like – the “affirmation” has no fixed term. From this point on, the details become hazier. The new agreement is organized around four policy areas around which regular reviews will be conducted: 1) competition among generic domains; 2) Whois; 3) security; and 4) transparency, accountability and the public interest. The reviews will be conducted by “oversight panels” that include representatives of foreign governments. That is an area where the details are especially hazy. We do not know how these “oversight panels” will be selected, or whether they will include business and civil society in a balanced way as well as foreign governments. But it does look like a move to a more transnational approach to oversight. The Economist article reports that the U.S. government will retain “a permanent seat” on the panel dealing with accountability. It also claims that “there are no penalties if ICANN fails to heed its new overseers.” This sounds like the kind of “soft oversight” we proposed be conducted through the Internet Governance Forum. We have also heard that NTIA officials were actively vetting the proposal among foreign governments.

Overall this sounds like a mixed bag. One can only marvel at the elevation of Whois (the policies governing the display of data on domain name registrants) to the same level of importance as “transparency, accountability and the public interest.” But we all know that the trademark lobby is strong and focused. The shift in the form of oversight and the move to a more international approach is welcome – but we await the details.

Two people in ALAC are pushing to create a Consumer constituency within the new Noncommercial Stakeholders Group. While superficially this may seem like a good idea, nothing in ICANN is simple or straightforward. The Board should not recognize a Consumer Constituency now. There are four reasons why the Board must wait until next year before even considering it.   more »

It is no secret that ICANN and the U.S. Commerce Department are engaged in intensive negotations over the future of their relationship as we approach the expiration of the current Joint Project Agreement. We have no inside information about what will happen, but we do suspect that there will be some kind of a new agreement that breaks some new ground. We have already seen the U.S. Congress openly ask for some kind of permanent charter or agreement (which of course we think would be a mistake) and such a new agreement could have long term consequences. Shouldn't ICANN's constituencies and participants be allowed to have their say before ICANN itself signs on to it?