Today IGP releases an innovative proposal to resolve the 15-year controversy over the United States government’s special relationship to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The proposal, which involves removing root zone management functions from ICANN and creating an independent and neutral private sector consortium to take them over, will be presented at the Singapore ICANN meeting March 21, and then formally submitted to the “NETMundial” Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in São Paulo, Brazil, April 23 and 24.
“We think this plan provides the roadmap for making ICANN into a truly global and multistakeholder institution,” said Dr. Milton Mueller, co-author with Dr. Brenden Kuerbis.
ICANN is a key institution in the global governance of the Internet. It develops policy for the domain name system and also plays an important role, with Verisign, Inc., in managing the root of the Internet’s name and address spaces. Both Verisign and ICANN fulfill their respective operational and policy making roles under separate contracts with the U.S. government. ICANN’s contract with the U.S. is known as the IANA Functions contract.
While the contracts are an understandable legacy of the Internet’s origins in Defense Department and National Science Foundation, the U.S. has maintained control of ICANN long after it promised to let go. This has invited other governments, including authoritarian ones, to demand equal oversight authority over the DNS. “Unless we take a consistent and principled approach to non-governmental Internet governance,” Dr. Mueller claimed, “it is only a matter of time before other governments succeed in bringing the coordination and management of the Internet under the control of intergovernmental treaty organizations.”
Dissatisfaction with the exclusive U.S. role reached a turning point in October 2013, when the Directors of all the major Internet technical organizations (ICANN, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Society, and all five of the regional Internet address registries) issued a statement calling for “the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing.”
The IGP proposal is an attempt to develop a blueprint for globalization of the IANA functions. In summary, the plan would
- Structurally separate the IANA functions from ICANN’s policy process, and ensure that the IANA functions are never used for political or regulatory purposes
- Integrate the DNS-related IANA functions with the Root Zone Maintainer functions performed by Verisign, and put them into a new, independent “DNS Authority” (DNSA)
- Create a nonprofit controlled by a consortium of TLD registries and root server operators to run the DNSA.
- Complete the transition by September 2015, when the current IANA contract expires
“It’s important/essential not to conflate policy with the operation of the root zone,” said Dr. Brenden Kuerbis. “It makes sense to put operational authority in the hands of an entity comprised of the registries and root server operators, as they are directly impacted by operation of the root, and have strong incentives to ensure its stability and security.”
“Contractually binding the DNSA to ICANN ensures adherence to the policy development process, and provides an important accountability function,” Kuerbis added. “It’s an institutional design that is consistent with the multistakeholder model and achievable in the near term.”
The proposal was submitted to the NETMundial (Brazil) meeting March 2nd.
You can download the complete proposal here, we welcome your comments.
This would be a big move, if it happens. I’m curious to see if it will actually happen.
Thanks for a really thoughtful contribution to the discussion. InternetNZ’s submission references and largely supports the approach you set out. It’s available on our website for those interested – internetnz.net.nz.
Dear one all ,
This proposal is not covering all civil society members from all countries who are looking for one world one internet and open voice and collaboration and secure internet to serve all human beings who are using internet for survival etc. With most of countries and governments are looking for control or safe Guard or misuse or with illegal Information technology acts is really causing lots of differences between people who are planning to have open , closed and misuse internet groups etc. We must over come this with open minds and open referendum It is also responsibility of all Users . For example the people who want to destroy internet or cyber attacks or cyber thefts or mis use internet with various anti national and anti people life must be dealt. This can be achieved though common under standing etc
we must not make cyber super power groups or countries to govern the same.
good day to you all
kanunumuri s raju
Cann you tell us more about this? I’d lpve to find out more details.