Late Wednesday September 28 the U.S. Congress passed a short-term funding bill to avert another government shutdown. The bill did not include any restrictions, prohibitions or riders related to the ICANN transition. As an organization that has been consistently advocating the end of unilateral U.S. government control for more than a...
A few Republican congressmen are still waging a futile campaign against the reform of ICANN. Yesterday four of them sent a letter to the Justice and Commerce Departments casting fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) upon the transition. The letter does not raise any new, specific legal or policy concerns that...
Since 1999, governments have asserted sovereignty over the delegation and re-delegation of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) at ICANN. Such assertions have no basis in international law, but that does not stop them. Now, ICANN has paved the way for them to assert sovereignty and property rights over two letter...
Someone needs to lose their job over this. An Independent Review Panel has exposed discrimination and unfairness in ICANN's evaluation of new top level domain applications. The case involves Dot Registry's applications for the top level domains .INC, .LLC and others. This is the third time ICANN has lost an...
The legal regime around ICANN and Internet governance will be affected by a milestone court decision handed down this week. Claiming that Iran was a terrorist state responsible for the deaths of their family members in the Jaffa Road bus bombings of 1996, a group of plaintiffs sought to take...
The longer it was delayed, the more conspicuous its absence became. Yet ICANN and Verisign have finally come to an agreement on a contract to perform the vital domain name root management functions. The draft was published for public review two days ago. The root zone management agreement (RZMA) controls...
Nationalist Republicans who want to retain governmental control of ICANN have based their argument on a false premise. To call it a false premise, in fact, is to be polite. It would be more accurate to call it a rhetorical ploy, what Washington calls “spin.” This “spin” is invisible to...
The revision of ICANN’s bylaws to reflect the new accountability measures is proceeding on schedule. Public comments close May 21 and it is clear that only a few revisions will be needed to fully align the draft bylaws with the proposals of the IANA transition and enhanced accountability working groups....
[caption id="attachment_3933" align="alignleft" width="215"] Source: http://www.runjackson.org[/caption] Ever since the formation of ICANN (and before), the mere mention of "alternate DNS roots" has inspired apoplectic reactions in certain circles. The idea of running a DNS root that competed with the one managed by IANA was seen as heretical at best, and an...
Lawyers have been busily working on taking the enhanced accountability and IANA transition proposals and revising the ICANN bylaw language to implement them. The first draft for public discussion was sent out Sunday, April 3. The community now has only a week or so to review them and catch errors...
“In characteristically rigorous fashion, Mueller’s outstanding book punctures the alarmist myth of Internet fragmentation and helps us to understand what is really at stake as nations and other groups vie for power over the Internet.”
