How will ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) handle the dilemma it has been put into by the community empowerment mechanism? The dilemma I am referring to is this: does the GAC want to participate in the community empowerment mechanism as an organization, with voting seats, or does it want to...
You may have noticed the hiatus in our coverage in July and early August. The reason? IGP has moved. After more than a decade at Syracuse University, the Internet Governance Project is now part of the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The move comes as...
Yesterday the US Government announced an extension of the IANA functions contract for another year. The move formally recognizes what everyone knew already, which is that the IANA stewardship transition and accountability reforms will not be completed in time for the September 30, 2015 target that we were aiming for...
The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG) has released a second draft for public comment. While the group has been enormously successful debating and coming to consensus on key areas (e.g., strengthening the Independent Review Process and Reconsideration processes), there continue to be some sticking points where...
One of the biggest controversies surrounding the IANA stewardship transition revolves around the fate of the IANA trademark and domain name (IANA.ORG). Both of these assets are currently owned by ICANN. But the IANA stewardship transition has raised questions about who or what should be their proper home. In each...
We are in Buenos Aires at ICANN meeting 53. The IANA transition and ICANN accountability reforms are, of course, the main topic of discussion here. Both processes are at critical turning points. The IANA Stewardship cross community working group is showing off its newly-developed plan to create a separate "Post-Transition...
The public comment period on the Cross-Community Working Group on Accountability is about to close. Reading through the proposal, we discovered aspects of the proposal that would definitely improve ICANN's accountability. But we also got a disturbing sense that some of the "chartering organizations" who make up the CCWG are...
Guest blog by James Gannon, Director and Principal of Cyber Invasion, Ltd. In May 1996 41 countries came to Wassenaar, a small town in the Netherlands, to sign what was to be called the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. The Wassenaar meeting was intended...
The comment period for the names proposal developed by the Cross-community Working Group (CWG) on IANA stewardship transition will conclude in a few days. The CWG has resolved the internal-external debate with a middle ground, a Post-Transition IANA (PTI) that is a legally separate affiliate of ICANN that would manage...
Our last blog post raised a significant amount of concern among people involved in the IANA stewardship transition. (This includes members of U.S. Congressional committees tracking the process.) A member of the ICANN board has responded to these concerns, but his response does not quell the controversy. Bruce Tonkin, the...
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