A powerful Senator is starting to ask NTIA questions about IP addressing. On October 4, 2011, The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee's chairman, Senator Jay Rockefeller, sent a challenging but private letter to the administration official responsible for overseeing ICANN, Lawrence E. Strickling. IGP has obtained a copy of the letter through the US Freedom of Information Act. The letter, which poses 22 tough questions, focuses not on the old controversies related to new gTLDs, but on the IANA contract.
In Important Case, RIPE-NCC seeks legal clarity on how it responds to foreign court orders
An international law enforcement action against a large botnet that used the DNSChanger malware is making pathbreaking Internet governance law. A lawsuit initiated by Regional Internet Registry RIPE-NCC may set an important legal precedent. At issue is the extent to which an IP address registries can be used as tools of transnational law enforcement. It has significant implications for RPKI and secure BGP deployment as well.
The new IANA: An important milestone
Is there such a thing as a Freudian typo? If so, the new IANA contract certainly contains one. On page 9, it requires the Contractor to promptly notify the NTIA of “any outrages.” They meant outages, of course. But we like the proposed language much, much better. IGP has been almost solely responsible for ICANN's outrage notification function for the past six years, and we would be happy to share that duty with others. All kidding aside, the new IANA contract solicitation, which was posted by the U.S. Commerce Department November 10, represents a milestone in ICANN's relationship to the U.S. government.
Milestone for civil society representation in ICANN
The Dakar meeting was an important milestone in ICANN’s development. It marked the completion of the reform of the GNSO and the finalization of the new Noncommercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG). If you support the “multi-stakeholder” model of Internet governance and you think representatives of business interests should be balanced with representatives of public interest groups and nonprofits, then the fate of the NCSG should be important to you (however boring the bureaucratic details may be). Just before the Dakar meeting the NCSG concluded the first Stakeholder Group-wide election for its Chair and for 4 GNSO Council seats. the GNSO Council has now – finally – been rebalanced and reformed. While most of the progress is irreversible, some of the old controversies are still brewing.
