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Beckstrom calls for ICANN’s independence

Kevin Murphy, March 15, 2011, 01:06:33 (UTC), Domain Policy

ICANN president Rod Beckstrom has called for the organization to be allowed to further loosen its ties to the US government.
The two-hour opening ceremony of its 40th public meeting, here in San Francisco this morning, had a heavy focus on ICANN’s relationship with governments, and looked as much to its roots in the Clinton administration as it addressed more immediate concerns internationally.
Beckstrom and others tackled the renewal of the soon-to-expire IANA contract, with which the US grants ICANN many of its powers over the domain name system, head-on.
Beckstrom said some have expressed “a belief that the US government should live up to its 1998 White Paper commitment to transfer management of the IANA functions to the private sector-led organization entrusted to manage the DNS, which is ICANN. ”
That would mean severing one of the most frequently criticized links between ICANN and the USA.
In a press conference later, he confirmed that this is in fact his belief, saying that internet governance is “evolving behind the curve” as internet usage grows internationally.
The US handing the keys to the internet over to ICANN doesn’t appear to be immediately likely, however. But there may be some ways to continue to phase out the US special relationship on a shorter term basis.
Beckstrom took the stage shortly after Lawrence Strickling, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the US Department of Commerce, made some frank criticisms.
While stressing the Obama administration’s commitment to what he called “multistakeholderism” in internet governance, he had a few pointed remarks to make about ICANN’s decision-making process.
He accused the ICANN board of directors of “picking winners and losers” by making decisions in situations where the community has been unable to reach a consensus policy.
He singled out two recent policies where he believes ICANN has failed to sufficiently rationalize its decisions: registry-registrar integration and economic studies into new TLDs.
The criticisms are not new, and many of them may well go away if and when ICANN implements the recommendations of its Accountability and Transparency Review Team.
My initial sense is that the fact Strickling was able to speak so frankly and so publicly about the administration’s feelings is an encouraging sign of ICANN’s maturity.
And Beckstrom’s response was equally ballsy, urging ICANN’s supporters to lobby the NTIA for a loosening of US-ICANN ties.
The NTIA’s Notice Of Inquiry regarding IANA, which floats the idea of breaking up the IANA functions and possibly assigning them to three different entities, was released a few weeks ago.
During his address this morning, former ICANN chair Vint Cerf put forth the view that this kind of government procurement contract may be an inappropriate mechanism for overseeing IANA functions:

I believe that that concept of procuring service from ICANN really ought to change to become a cooperative agreement because I believe that format expresses more correctly the relationship between ICANN and the Department of Commerce.

Beckstrom evidently agrees with Cerf. At the press conference, he pointed out that the disadvantage of a procurement contract is that it’s short term, undermining confidence in ICANN.
It also requires ICANN to run the IANA to the benefit of the American people, rather than the international community, he said. This obviously can reinforce the perception in some parts of the world that ICANN has an untenable American bias.
“A cooperative agreement seems more befitting of the relationship the NTIA and ICANN has developed,” he said, noting that this is currently the structure of NTIA’s relationship with VeriSign.
The Number Resource Organization may give a further clue to ICANN’s game plan in this email (pdf) published today, in which the NRO says:

We strongly believe that no government should have a special role in managing, regulating or supervising the IANA functions.
…
The NRO suggests that ICANN, through these coming negotiations, should advocate for a staged reduction of the level of DoC’s oversight to IANA. This process could possibly involve a transitionfrom a contract to a cooperation agreement, and ultimately arrival at a non-binding arrangement, such as an affirmation of commitments

Beckstrom now wants your help to make this happen. During his keynote, he urged the ICANN community to make its disparate views known to the NTIA, “openly and in writing”.
“This is the chance to add your voice to those determining the fate of the IANA function,” he said. “If your voice is to be heard, you must speak up.”
“When all voices are heard, no single voice can dominate an organization – not even governments. Not even the government that facilitated its creation,” Beckstrom said.
Details about how to respond to the NOI can be found in this PDF.

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Comments (5)

  1. Louise says:
    March 15, 2011 at 1:33 am

    The trouble is, Rob Beckstrom, though he may mean well, only understands finance for furthering ICANN’s mission, with his MBA from Stamford. Can we please get someone to head ICANN with a technical degree, like a masters in computer science, so he is versed in security and its technicalities?
    Thanx, Beckstrom for encouraging us to make our views known. ICANN, Verisign, and the major Registrars are going to catch it now!

    Reply
  2. JS says:
    March 15, 2011 at 3:50 am

    I don’t think you need a technical degree to manoeuvre through a political minefield

    Reply
  3. C says:
    March 15, 2011 at 4:58 am

    Yeah, let the fox run the chicken coop.

    Reply
  4. S. Grief says:
    March 16, 2011 at 4:53 am

    The ICANN Board seems to be all about obtaining power and keeping it. They are all about picking the winners and losers as mentioned above.
    I look at the .XXX sTLD debacle and see how they disregarded the desires of the adult community in the IRP process. Nobody representing the adult community was even invited to testify in the hearings. The Board has ignored the testimony from hundreds and hundreds of adult webmasters and adult industry giants like Larry Flynt showing lack of support by the sponsored community.
    I guess if you are willing to spend $12 million and threaten lawsuits if you don’t get your way, you can buy yourself a sponsored community from ICANN even if the community and world governments thinks your idea is a disaster.
    If the ICANN Board stays on its present track and lose their contract with IANA, the board members have nobody to blame but their own big, overstuffed egos.
    Just my opinion…..

    Reply
  5. ICANN asks the US to cut it loose | DomainIncite - Domain Name News & Opinion says:
    March 25, 2011 at 7:58 pm

    […] Beckstrom calls for ICANN’s independence […]

    Reply

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