Depuis sa conception en Novembre 2004, et son lancement formel en Février 2006, le Projet de Gouvernance de l’Internet continue de participer dans plusieurs types d’activités comprenant l’analyse politique, l’engagement dans le plaidoyer, le suivi des développements institutionnels et l’organisation de réunions d’experts. IGP publie régulièrement des analyses et des billets d’opinion en réponse aux débats politiques du moment. Les publications du Projet sont largement lues et citées par les activistes, les universitaires, les acteurs du secteur privé et des affaires à travers le monde.

Plaidoyer

• IGP at the Forum (Eminence Grise) - 3 November 2006
  The Internet Governance Project was prominent at the Forum. Below is a summary of our activities.
  
  IGP partners Mueller, Hofmann, Mathiason and Cogburn participated in the successful pre-Forum conference of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet). See story below.
  
  IGP partner Jeanette Hofmann was selected by civil society groups to speak in the slot for civil society at the concluding session of the Forum. Her comments can be seen here. Hofmann also co-facilitated, with Elizabeth Longworth of UNESCO, the joint IGP-UNESCO workshop on content filtering and blocking.
  
  IGP partner Milton Mueller moderated the intense and exciting workshop on DNS root zone file management. A short written summary of the DNS workshop is available here.
  
  IGP partner Derrick Cogburn made it possible to include remote presenters in both of our workshops. Professor Ron Deibert participated in the Freedom of expression panel from Toronto, and technologist Thierry Moreau participated in the DNS workshop from Montreal. The experience provided valuable lessons on enhancing virtual participation in global policy dialogues. Further refinements in implementation will be made in Rio. While the sessions that IGP co-sponsored were not recorded due to technical difficulties, furture sessions will be archived on the IGP website.
  
  IGP partners Derrick Cogburn and Lee McKnight linked the IGF in Athens with the Caribbean Internet Forum in Grenada. The session, "Building Bridges from Athens to Grenada to Syracuse" had five speakers from Athens -- Dr. Cogburn, Dr. Alex Trigona (Diplo), Jenniffer Britton (Caribbean Telecommunications Union), Theresa Swinehart (ICANN), Ambassador Clark (Barbados) -- providing an overview of the substantive discussions and tone of the Athens meeting; one speaker from Grenada, providing feedback on what was happening in Grenada; and questions from students and faculty from Syracuse.
  
  IGP partner John Mathiason spoke at the Framework Convention Workshop, and IGP partner Milton Mueller was a panelist on the main plenary session on Access, where he discussed issues of telecommunication policy.
• IGP urges DoC to broaden ICANN oversight and complete DNS transition - 7 July 2006
  The IGP submitted comments today in response to the NTIA inquiry on transition of the DNS. The essence of IGP's comments can be summarized as follows: The transition of DNS administration envisioned by the White Paper has gotten stuck somewhere in the middle of the process. This halfway house is an unstable and undesirable place. We urge the U.S. Commerce Department to complete the transition of DNS to a nongovernmental, multi-stakeholder regime and to clarify and limit the role of national governments, including the U.S. government. To pave the way for the transition, we ask the U.S. to ameliorate and internationalize its oversight in ways that will strengthen the accountability of ICANN to the global Internet community. We ask that two new principles related to accountability be explicitly recognized as part of ICANN's charter. One pertains to the basic human right of freedom of expression; the other would be a general principle of accountability. ...read the comments
• Mathiason and Cogburn appointed to Global Alliance Advisory Panel - 8 June 2006
  IGP Partners John Mathiason and Derrick Cogburn will serve in a high-level Panel of Advisors, providing policy and expert advice to the Steering Committee and Strategy Council of the UN's newly created Global Alliance for ICT and Development. The Strategy Council consists of 60 members representing governments and non-governmental stakeholders and will identify priorities and themes to be addressed. The mission of the Global Alliance is to facilitate and promote integration of ICTs into development activities by providing a platform for open, inclusive, multi-stakeholder cross-sectoral policy dialogue, thereby linking the outcomes of the WSIS with the broader United Nations development agenda. ...read about the Global Alliance
• Jeanette Hofmann selected to IG Forum's MAG - 17 May 2006
  IGP Partner Jeanette Hoffman was selected to serve on the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG), which will assist the Secretary-General's Special Adviser Nitin Desai in convening the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a new forum for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on Internet governance. The Advisory Group will meet on 22 and 23 May in Geneva, following an open consultation on 19 May, also in Geneva. Its main task is to prepare the substantive agenda and program for the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, which is to be held in Athens from 30 October to 2 November. ...read the anouncement

[See archived advocacy news]

Analyse Politique

• European Commission responds to JPA - 03 October 2006
  Responding to the recently released JPA, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Redding welcomed the "US government's declared intention to grant more autonomy to ICANN and to end its governmental oversight." However, the IGP notes that the new JPA does not introduce any guarantee that the relationship will end in 2009. Surprisingly, the EC response also completely overlooks the highly prescriptive approach to Whois policy that was put into the new agreement, which if followed, potentially leaves Whois policy contradicting established privacy policies of many European countries. ...read the statement
• ICANN's New MoU: Old Wine in a New Bottle - 30 September 2006
  The new agreement, called a Joint Project Agreement (JPA) is a cosmetic response to the comments received by NTIA during its Notice of Inquiry in July 2006. Public responses expressed widespread support for a DNS governance regime that was free of dominance by one government and indeed, any government. At the same time, various interest groups for many different reasons asked for a more accountable and representative ICANN and often expressed reservations about freeing ICANN from governmental oversight until suitable reforms in its processes and accountability were made.
  
  The US and ICANN have responded to these concerns by dressing up their MoU relationship in new clothes. The object seems to be to strengthen the public's perception that ICANN is relatively independent. But the basic relationship between the USG and ICANN is fundamentally unchanged. ICANN still gets general policy guidance from the DoC, and still regularly reports to it. The new agreement lasts for three years, just like the old one. Considered in combination with the IANA contract, which ultimately controls any modification of the DNS root and which is still controlled entirely by the USA, the new agreement does not substantially reduce the level of US government control over ICANN and Internet identifiers.
  
  In one important respect, the JPA has actually increased direct US intervention. If the new agreement was a movie, it might be seen as the sequel to the .xxx domain veto exercised by the U.S. Commerce Department last year. One of the most important issues ICANN is considering at the moment is the relationship between domain name registration data (the Whois service) and individual privacy rights. The new agreement orders ICANN to "enforce existing Whois policy" which requires that ICANN maintain "timely, unrestricted and public access to accurate and complete Whois information." It even specifies four distinct parties contact information.
  
  This provision codifies a US govt policy preference in ICANN's agreement and disregards the results of an ongoing bottom up policy process. One ICANN Board member, Susan Crawford, has stated, "I was deeply concerned about the agreement's apparent wholesale ratification of the DOC's desire to retain the current WHOIS policy. It would be completely inappropriate to bind ourselves contractually to that policy in advance in order to satisfy the USG..." Ms. Crawford goes on to say "I have been assured, again and again, that ICANN's own current PDP processes are not undermined by this agreement, and that should a changed WHOIS policy be adopted by the Board it can be enforced without the DOC's agreement."
  
  Crawford's statement is mildly reassuring, but does not eliminate the deep concerns the Whois provision raises about ICANN's independence. If ICANN is free to alter its Whois policy in a way that the USG doesn't like, why is this provision in the new agreement at all? Why doesn't the language explicitly note that the policy can change? Recall that in vetoing the .xxx domain, the US did not have to actually refuse to alter the zone file in a way proposed by ICANN, nor did it have to explicitly order the corporation to adopt a certain policy. It simply made its preference known, and used various forms of GAC and behind-the scenes pressure to kill the decision ICANN made. In the Whois case, we have an even clearer signal, and indeed, we have language that on its face could be interpreted to bind ICANN to a specific policy. But it is good that Crawford has openly challenged this.
  
  In general, the new JPA increases the cynicism and Orwellian misuse of words that has characterized ICANN from the beginning. (Remember the "we don't do policy" line?) Even as the agreement's Whois provision threatens ICANN's multistakeholder, bottom-up policy process, the new JPA explicitly praises the "multi-stakeholder model" and repeatedly refers to ICANN's "bottom up" policy development process. In essence, private and civil society stakeholders are invited to invest thousands of hours of their time and money in making policy, but the new MoU makes it clear that if they develop a policy the US government doesn't like, the chances are very good that their activities will be short-circuited or overturned. If there is to be an accountable, popularly utilized ICANN policy making process, this kind of cynicism is incompatible with it.
  
  ICANN has claimed that the JPA is "less prescriptive" than the old MoU because it contains no specific milestones. Yes, the new agreement is a bit different in that respect, but there is less to that difference than it seems. Almost none of the specific milestones in the old agreements were met. The date-specific deadlines inserted into the old MoU were thus practically meaningless. (For example, the old MoU required ICANN to implement a new TLD addition process by a specific date; it still has not done so.) So the new agreement ends up doing pretty much what the old one did: provide general policy guidance based on the White Paper principles while maintaining a close supervisory relationship to the U.S. DoC. Another point to keep in mind: a prescriptive MoU implies that if the tasks were performed, the MoU would end and the "transition" would be "completed." An open-ended, generalized JPA could mean that the relationship never ends.
  
  There are also some interesting changes of emphasis and possibly important changes of approach in the JPA's treatment of root server management. These aspects of the new JPA require careful analysis and will be discussed in the IGP-sponsored workshop at the upcoming Athens Internet Governance Forum.
• Building an Internet Governance Forum - 2 February 2006
  The United Nations is building a new platform for the discussion of global Internet policy. Public consultations on this new "Internet Governance Forum" will be held in Geneva February 16-17. IGP releases a new discussion paper explaining how the Forum could work. The paper proposes three design criteria for the Forum: 1) It must be as open as possible and give all stakeholders equal participation rights; 2) its deliberations must be wide-ranging and resist politically motivated barriers to discussion; and 3) its products must feed into other, more authoritative Internet governance forums. We proposed a structure and process for the realization of these objectives. We also set out three policy problems that exemplify the kind of issues the Forum should take up: spam, Internet free expression, and public policy principles for the coordination of Internet resources. ...read the paper
• IGP paper addresses ‘Political Oversight’ issue - 1 November 2005
  WSIS seems to be foundering on the issue of "political oversight" of the Internet. IGP issues a new paper that clarifies the issues and provides concrete proposals for moving forward. We explain why WSIS must separate discussion of the role of governments in setting policy for all Internet issues from discussion of the narrower problem of ICANN's oversight. By means of a careful analysis of the contractual instruments used by the U.S. government to supervise ICANN, the paper shows how the problem of U.S. unilateral oversight can be addressed in a way that is both politically feasible and avoids threatening the stability or freedom of the Internet. ...read the paper

[See archived policy analysis news]

Dévéloppements Institutionels

• GoDaddy Abruptly Silences Website - 29 January 2007
  As reported by CNet, GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name registrar, pulled a well known security website's domain name (Seclists.org) last week after receiving a complaint from MySpace. MySpace, a popular social networking site, complained that sensitive, but not necessarily illegal, user information was being displayed improperly. Seclists.org, which archives numerous security oriented mailing lists and is run by CPSR Board Member Fyodor Vaskovich, was taken down with minimal notice according to Vaskovich. Eventually, the domain name record was restored, and the site's URL made resolvable. The incident highlights issues of Internet governance, the nature of private contracts, and ramifications for free speech. While GoDaddy was well within its Terms of Service to do what it did, its actions do not bode well for free speech advocates as communications of all kinds move to the Internet. Of course, given the contractual nature of GoDaddy and Vaskovich's relationship, he is now allegedly seeking another service provider.
• The End of the Experiment: Commerce says "I'm the Decider" - 30 November 2006
  It's all over but the shouting. ICANN's 8-year experiment in nongovernmental governance of the Internet's domain name system all but came to an end this last November 30. The U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it, and not ICANN, would be the ultimate "decider" when it comes to dot com. Dot com is the largest and most valuable Internet top level domain, accounting for about 40% of the global market.
  
  Several months ago ICANN and VeriSign had worked out a new .com registry agreement. The agreement proved intensely controversial because it gave VeriSign a renewal expectancy and permitted the company to raise wholesale prices for .com registrations by a maximum of 7 percent a year.
  
  This week the Commerce Department approved that agreement -- and simultaneously asserted broad new regulatory powers for itself. In a potentially fatal blow to ICANN's autonomy, Commerce asserted sweeping approval powers over any future Registry Agreement. From now on the Commerce Department - not ICANN's policy making process - will provide the final word on renewal of the lucrative .com license. This approval power extends into the future indefinitely.
  
  Moreover, the Commerce Department's regulatory powers extend to all aspects of future agreements. Not only will Commerce continue to ensure the Internet's "security and stability," it will now ensure that an agreement provides "reasonable price, terms, and conditions." That leaves ICANN with little substantive power over .com.
  
  VeriSign's competitors and the registrars who sell .com names at retail are sure to howl in pain over VeriSign's success in gaining "renewal expectancy" and its new price-increase capability. But the real story here is the Commerce Department's institutionalization of its regulatory role, and the tacit vote of no confidence in ICANN and its processes. Only two months after the Commerce Department, ICANN, the EU and many media outlets hailed the new "Joint Project Agreement" with ICANN as a big step toward a fully privatized, autonomous global governance authority, the Commerce Department has basically said that ICANN lacks the legitimacy and authority to act as the steward of the public interest in regulating the world's largest registry. From now on .com operates under US political oversight. ...Read the DoC announcement.
• First Internet Governance Forum Concludes - 3 November 2006
  Despite embarassing connectivity problems and wide agreement that some of the plenary discussions needed to be more focused and outcome-oriented, the UN's conference in Athens concluded Friday with most participants reasonably satisfied. So far as we know, neither governments, business nor civil society participants thought they had been slighted or excluded, and most felt the whole exercise had been worthwhile. Thus the Forum succeeded in its most fundamental goal: establishing the basis for a cooperative, pluralistic dialogue that spans governments and other sectors of society. IGP's two Workshops on DNS and free expression were standing room only affairs, and so were many other workshops, as our prediction came true that the participant-defined activities provided the most focused and mobilizing elements of the agenda.
  
  Freedom of expression emerged as a major theme of the conference, the topic of no less than three distinct workshops and one of the most well-managed plenary sessions. Amnesty International captured much of the mass media publicity around the Forum with a news conference promoting its "irrepressible.info" campaign against internet censorship. Several informal groups, called "dynamic coalitions" in Forum jargon, formed to follow up on Workshops. There was one on privacy, open document standards, an Internet bill of rights, a framework convention and travel funding for future Forums. In an important note of acceptance of the Forum, a participant from China called for creating a "world norm" on "openness, security, access, diversity, and harmonious collaboration." Prior to the Forum, business spokespersons had often pushed to avoid certain issues and any overlap with the policy domain of established insitutions. But in the Athens summing up session, "BASIS", a business umbrella group, made surprisingly positive comments about the results, showing that business spokespersons had either abandoned, or chosen not to emphasize, their fears about the Forum going off track. Sounding a valid caution, however, ICANN CEO Paul Twomey urged participants to make sure that governments are engaged and that the Forum should not become a civil society - business dialogue only. Looking forward to Rio, civil society and several developing countries pressed the Forum participants to develop ongoing working groups that develop more concrete outcomes.
  
  A great deal of the positive feeling around the Forum reflected participants' knowledge that it was the first experiment. Nothing went terribly wrong, mistakes could be identified and improvements made. The non-binding discussion format succeeded in facilitating discourse and allowed nearly all participants to get something that they wanted -- the airing of an issue, a chance to confer or coalesce with like-minded participants, etc. Expectations in Rio are likely to be -- and should be -- higher. See the IGP's "Road to Rio" paper on applying "results based management" practices to the Forum.
• GigaNet Conference Brings Academics Together - 29 October 2006
  GigaNet is the "global internet governance academic network," a new network of researchers in the field of internet governance. GigaNet plans to hold annual conferences preceding the forum and engage in research collaboration and discussion around IG issues. The first GigaNet pre-conference vastly exceeded the expectations of its organizers, filling the room to capacity (80+ people) and provoking many compliments about the value and quality of the presentations and discussions.
  
  About 40 eligible academic members will be added to the group as a result of the meeting. At the business meeting, chaired by William Drake, important decisions regarding the governance of the group were mooted for final confirmation on the group's listserv. The meeting proposed to use the IGLOO content sharing tool as its public face and space for private interaction for a year. It will retain its current mail list and add all members meeting the eligibility requirements quickly. Eligibility will be for individuals, not institutions, although methods of cooperation with organizations were discussed. In particular, UNESCO expressed considerable interest in working with the group.
  
  The need to set up a decision making structure or "executive officers" was discussed. W. Drake suggested a number of committees or sub-areas, such as a web space mgmt group, membership, constitutional. Nanette Levinson proposed to make the existing startup group, plus some new volunteers, as the Executive committee for another year.
• ICANN Wants to Become Transparent and Accountable (In a Couple of Months) - 17 October 2006
  Responding to public comments showing widespread reluctance to set ICANN free of the US Government before it improves its accountability and transparency, ICANN issued a call today for public comment on developing transparent and accountable management operating principles (MOPs) for possible adoption in to its Strategic Plan. The organization hopes to start setting "new standards for interactions within the ICANN community and between members of the community and staff" by soliciting responses to a set of questions defining accountability and transparency in the ICANN context. IGP welcomes the effort and hope it comes to fruition. But is it anything more than PR? A short, two-week comment period and ICANN management's apparent belief that they are going to settle on the right principles by early December (!) can only fuel doubts about the sincerity and depth of this effort.
  
  ICANN's accountability constitutes a major global political problem that may require institutional innovations. Oversight is currently provided unilaterally by the U.S.; outside of Washington DC few people like this arrangement, but few are enthusiastic about replacing it with a multi-lateral governmental oversight. Privatization is another option, but the feasibility of that hinges on finding some external accountability mechanisms (e.g., a real independent review, or legal checks and balances) as well as improved internal accountability (e.g., having Board members elected by the public instead of self-selected). This problem will not be solved by issuing "MOPs". As for transparency, we propose as a starter some background research into the U.S. Administrative Procedures Act done by Michael Froomkin that highlights some best practices and safeguards.
• LSE report released: Another ICANN reform? - 09 September 2006
  The London School of Economics Public Policy Group finally released its long-awaited assessment of the GNSO, ICANN's representative organ for making global domain names policy. The impartial X-ray the LSE group administered on the GNSO is, on the whole, excellent as an analysis of how things are. Many of the recommendations are good, too. But on the most critical issue of all vo the distribution of voting power among GNSO constituencies * the LSE has put forward recommendations that cause serious concern.
  
  In essence, the LSE report suggests that GNSO be restructured into three basic groupings: the registration supply industry, business interests, and civil society. This is, as the report suggests, a cleaner and more flexible division of the world than now exists. It recommends repackaging participation in DNS policy as being a member of ICANN, not of the GNSO, which the public has never heard of. The GNSO Council would be reduced in size to 16 from its present 21. The report tells ICANN to financially support the participation of the members of this smaller Council. These proposals are sensible; one could even say that they are a breath of fresh air into a coagulated system.
  
  But the report proposes that registration suppliers and business users be given 5 votes on the policy making Council, while civil society * the only voice for the general public * be given only 3. It also proposes to raise the threshold for a "consensus policy" to 75% of the vote. This means that supplier interests and business interests could, if only 4 of their representatives agreed, prevent a 75% majority from forming and thus block any policy. The public interest advocates in civil society, even if they were completely unified, could not exercise such a veto. The existence of three "at large" GNSO Council members appointed by the Nominating Committee compensates for this inequality to some degree. But the NomCom-appointed Council members can come from any constituency; the NomCom contains diverse interests and is not guaranteed to appoint members sympathetic to civil society.
  
  It is reasonable that the registration industry, whose survival depends entirely on ICANN contracts and policies, have some kind of special status in the outcome of policies. They need to be protected against various forms of crippling regulation or expropriation at the hands of GNSO Council legislators who do not have to directly bear the costs of their policies. But there is no legitimate reason why business users should be given the same veto power and civil society groups denied it. Nothing in the factual findings of the report justifies this discrimination. The report does not even mount an argument for it.
  
  The report pretends to criticize weighted voted for registries and registrars in the current system. But the LSE proposals do not eliminate weighted voting. They simply redistribute the weighting. Giving 5 votes to one sector and 3 to another is weighted voting. As I show below, the net beneficiaries of the redistribution are the business interests. The net losers are registries and registrars. For civil society, which previously had only 3 votes out of a total of 21, the overall result is basically a wash, or perhaps a slight gain. Under the current GNSO structure public interest advocates have 14% of the votes; the LSE proposal would increase its share of overall votes to 19%. Funding participation would also be a boon.
  
  But the results could be worse than a mere running of the numbers suggests. For the new "registration" industry constituency would be composed of both registries and registrars. Anyone who knows the politics and economics of the domain name industry knows that those two interest groups are often in disagreement. Frequently their fundamental economic interests are in conflict. Just look at the VeriSign settlement, for example. If these two groups are put in the same room and forced to elect five representatives it will be interesting to see the results. In some respects, requiring them to work together could be quite healthy.
  
  A consolidated business constituency, on the other hand, is likely to be completely homogeneous, dominated by western multinational corporations and their global associations such as ICC and WITSA. Their main if not exclusive concern will be trademark and other static, protectionist concerns. Consolidating those constituencies won't change much of anything, because they are already consolidated! (Indeed, one of the loveliest aspects of the report is its documentation of the uniformity and narrow level of participation of the three business user constituencies.) So the proposed new GNSO structure would effectively give the AT&Ts, Disneys and International Chamber of Commerce's an effective veto on anything the GNSO did, while the relative power of the supply industry would be greatly decreased.
  
  Did the LSE people really intend this, or did they get influenced by some behind-the scenes arm-twisting by certain vocal business advocates or ICANN staff or board members? One can only speculate.
  
  The fundamental flaw in this proposal is the idea of raising the consensus policy threshold. It is surprising that the professional political scientists at LSE would buy into the notion that domain name policies affecting the distribution of millions of dollars of costs and benefits can be set by "consensus" rather than workable political majorities or reasonable supermajorities. ICANN is not IETF. In technical standardization, the overriding benefits of a standard give everyone an incentive to agree; in most domain name policy decisions there is no such incentive. The Federal Communications Commission does not wait for consensus or even a supermajority to emerge when it regulates. And the view that ICANN is not a regulator is not a view that anyone with knowledge of the system can hold anymore.
  
  The report documents at length the inordinate amount of time it takes the GNSO to come to a conclusion. The cause of this problem is simple: GNSO is composed of interest groups which have no incentive to come to an agreement. This problem would be dramatically worsened by raising the threshold for agreement.
  
  When it comes to analysis of how the GNSO works now, this report has some real gems. GNSO is really the only "bottom up" policy making process in the ICANN structure. Yet the report documents the incredibly small amount of attention paid to GNSO by the ICANN Board, and shows that there are few institutionalized channels for communication between the Board and GNSO. The visibility of the GNSO to the public, the report shows, is abysmally low.
  
  The report's researchers wrestled their way through the tangled skein of WHOIS task forces in order to calculate the number of hours spent, and estimated the cost at $7 million in person-hours. As someone who has contributed greatly to this donation to ICANN's budget I appreciate the quantification. And it is about time someone talked about rational document management in the context of ICANN's policy making processes.
  
  There are some indications that key ICANN decision makers had access to the report before others, and thus that its recommendations are not simply those of an impartial outsider but were vetted to conform to a direction in which certain people want to go. This is speculation of course. But it is speculation from someone with 8 years of experience in the way ICANN operates.
• Iaint'a Giving Up IANA - 22 August 2006
  The US Commerce Department renewed its purchase-order with ICANN for "the IANA function" on August 15. The renewal is guaranteed for only one year. The contract gives the U.S. the option to keep renewing the contract for four more years, but does not require the U.S. to do so. The IANA function contract is separate and distinct from the ICANN-DoC Memorandum of Understanding, which provides political oversight over ICANN's policy making functions and is set to expire on Sept. 30. Whether the ICANN MoU will be renewed and if so, how it will be redefined remains to be seen.
  
  The IANA function involves "coordination of the root zone of the domain name system with 24 hour-a-day/7 days-a-week coverage. It includes receiving requests for and making routine updates of the country code top level domain (ccTLD) contact (including technical and administrative contacts) and nameserver information. This function also includes receiving delegation and redelegation requests, [and] investigating the circumstances pertinent to those requests..." It also involves overall responsibility for delegating allocated and unallocated IPv4 and IPv6 address space and Autonomous System Number space. These functions are crucial to the operation of the Internet, and their delegation to ICANN by the US government is what gives ICANN all of its policy leverage over the Internet.
  
  Predictably, the US action shows no sign that it took any account of the 600-odd comments submitted to its own Notice of Inquiry in July. Despite overwhelming calls from the technical community, industry and civil society for relaxation, amelioration or relinquishment of its unilateral, essentially arbitrary authority over modifications to the root zone file, the new IANA contract specifies that whenever ICANN attempts to modify the root zone file, "Within thirty (30) calendar days of the date that the request was deemed completed and confirmed, Contractor [ICANN] shall complete all processing and issue a report with a recommendation to the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding whether the proposed changes should be authorized." (Appendix A, PROCESS FOR IANA ROOT MANAGEMENT REQUESTS). In the NTIA proceeding, hundreds of commentors from the US and over 30 other countries expressed concern or opposition to the current US arrangement.
  
  Somewhat less expectedly, the new IANA contract shows no signs of approving or requiring automated updates of root zone file changes by ccTLDs -- the so-called "e-IANA" capability. The full text of the IANA contract is available here.
• NTIA hearing hints little change in DoC position - 27 July 2006
  Over 100 people attended yesterday's public hearing as part of the ongoing NTIA notice of inquiry on the continued privatization of the DNS. Commerce Dept. official John Kneuer, the acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communication and Information, said the NOI had generated nearly 700 public comments, but did not mention that the vast majority of them were critical of the unilateral oversight exercised by the USG and ICANN's continued problems with lack of transparency, accountability and representation. Contrary to certain inaccurate reports, no major changes or revelations occurred at this meeting; the Commerce Department attempted to solicit the views of certain stakeholders and revealed little about its own views. How NTIA will use the comments remains to be seen, but one experienced former government official said that "NTIA how has all the excuses it needs to change essentially nothing."
  
  The single moment of revelation occured when Emily Taylor of Nominet UK asked in her presentation, "Is the USG even contemplating a transition? The 2005 DNS principles seemed to say that there wouldn't be one." During the Q&A period of the first session, IGP's Milton Mueller pressed Kneuer to answer Taylor's question, pointing out the obvious tension between the notion of a privatized DNS coordination and the residual authority over root zone file modifications held by the NTIA. Kneuer, a bit flustered, replied that the US will not retain all of its "historic roles" and that they have "a longstanding policy to complete this transition." But, he added, the US will take no actions that will call into question the security and stability of the Internet, and he specifically noted that they will retain USG's supervision of root zone file changes made by the IANA, which he believes is distinct from the other functions supervised by the MoU. In short, Kneuer basically restated the 2005 DNS principles and showed that there is absolutely no movement in the US position when it comes to unilateral oversight.
  
  Only the panelists from the Internet technical community strongly supported letting ICANN go free of the MoU and completing the transition in September 2006. Lynn St. Amour, the Internet Society's executive director, said that we should "move to a minimal, transitional MoU in which USG plays only a backstop role in case of a major organizational failure." The MoU "as currently constructed is no longer necessary or appropriate," she said. Parallelling language outlined by IGP, Ray Plzak of ARIN said that "no single govt should have a special role in management of Internet resources" and said that the MoU should not be extended. Suzanne Woolf of ISC tacitly agreed, asking the USG to "move away from checklists and day to day supervision."
  
  Business representatives on the other hand were not willing to see ICANN cut loose. Major registrar GoDaddy Group, while supporting a continued transition to a private ICANN, said that it was premature to end the MoU. In an obvious reference to the VeriSign settlement, Tim Ruiz said that confidence in ICANN had been shaken recently and asked that three principles be added to an extended MoU: openness, transparency & accountability. Michael Heltzer, the International Trademark Association representative, complained about weighted voting in the GNSO and the lack of accurate Whois data. Clearly the trademark interests, who are losing ground in many ICANN battles, want the friendly US Commerce Department to remain in charge. David Fares of the USCIB, though noting the diversity of business opinion, said that "substantial progress has been made" by ICANN but stopped well short of calling for its release from the MoU. The Washington public interest group CDT, too, did not feel comfortable freeing ICANN from the MoU "without knowing what structures would need to be in place to maintain a fully privatized, independent ICANN." Some wondered why the group, often accused of being too cozy with inside the beltway interests, hasn't invested more in formulating and advocating such proposals.
  
  The comments of foreign spokespersons, though reduced to a largely token role by the NTIA's panel selections, shone through for their coherence and clarity. Emily Taylor of Nominet UK focused on the big issues: "Are we asking the right questions? What oversight role is appropriate for the root, if any? Who is best placed to do it?" She then rattled the chains of her hosts a bit by praising Point 1 of the proposal circulated by Becky Burr and Marilyn Cade, which asks the US to "clearly articulate the purpose of US authority over the root." The only other foreign representative, Bill Graham of Industry Canada, said that certain things need to improve before full privatization. Graham noted pointedly that there is pressure on ICANN to do things it was not designed to do. He urged ICANN to take a very narrow view of what its role is, especially in areas of policy. He asked for clarification of what "internationalization" means and reiterated Taylor's call for the US to open up the process by which it exercises its authority over the root. ICANN, he concluded, is a quasi-judicial body and needs to behave that way. Formal processes need to be adopted with adequate notice, time frames and posting of written documents. Decisions must be explained in written documents and must acknowledge and summarize the positions put forward by commenting parties. While noting that the GAC role is important, the letter "A" in the acronym is vitally important. He called on participants to make sure governments really understand the role of the GAC, that it is not a negotiating body that they are left out of. ...view the NTIA hearing agenda and archived webcast

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