Month: September 2009

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.

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...

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...

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.

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...

Reports are emerging from European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG), one of the regional Internet Governance Forum events, of calls for a greater role for the IGF in monitoring Internet governance institutions. During a plenary session held today, "The post-JPA phase: towards a future Internet governance model," there was discussion...

The new President of ICANN, Rod Beckstrom, is making the rounds, listening. He's quickly figured out what makes the global institution he is supposed to run tick: the diverse and fractious "stakeholder" groups that cluster around the business and technology of IP addresses and domain names. He's trying to acquaint...