ICANN fights government gTLD power grab

ICANN has opposed a US move to grant governments veto power over controversial new top-level domain applications.
Cutting to the very heart of Obama administration internet governance policy, ICANN has told the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that its recent proposals would “undermine the very principle of the multi-stakeholder model”.
The stern words came in ICANN’s response to the NTIA’s publication of revisions to the IANA contract, the contract that allows ICANN to retain its powers over the domain name system root.
The NTIA’s Further Notice Of Inquiry contained proposed amendments to the contract, including this:

For delegation requests for new generic TLDS (gTLDs), the Contractor [ICANN] shall include documentation to demonstrate how the proposed string has received consensus support from relevant stakeholders and is supported by the global public interest.

This was widely interpreted as a US attempt to avoid a repeat of the .xxx scandal, when ICANN approved the porn gTLD despite the unease voiced by its Governmental Advisory Committee.
As I noted in June, it sounds a lot like code for “if the GAC objects, you must reject”, which runs the risk of granting veto powers to the GAC’s already opaque consensus-making process.
In his response to the FNOI (pdf), ICANN chief Rod Beckstrom says that the NTIA’s proposal would “replace” the “intensive multi-stakeholder deliberation” that created the newly approved Applicant Guidebook.
He also pointed out the logical inconsistency of asking IANA to remain policy-neutral in one part of the proposed contract, and asking it to make serious policy decisions in another:

The IANA functions contract should not be used to rewrite the policy and implementation process adopted through the bottom-up decision-making process. Not only would this undermine the very principle of the multi-stakeholder model, it would be inconsistent with the objective of more clearly distinguishing policy development from operational implementation by the IANA functions operator.

NTIA head Larry Strickling has been pounding the “multistakeholderism” drum loudly of late, most recently in a speech in Washington and in an interview with Kieren McCarthy of .nxt.
In the .nxt interview, Strickling was quite clear that he believes ICANN should give extra authority to governments when it comes to approving controversial strings.
The NTIA concern – shared by other government entities including the European Commission – is that controversial strings could lead to national blocking and potentially internet fragmentation.
While Strickling declined to comment on the specific provisions of the IANA contract, he did tell .nxt:

If the GAC as a consensus view can’t support a string then my view is that the ICANN Board should not approve the string as to do so in effect legitimizes or sanctions that governments should be blocking at the root zone level. And I think that is bad for the Internet.
Where you’re dealing with sensitive strings, where you’ve engaged the sovereignty of nations, I think it is appropriate to tip the hat a little bit more to governments and listen to what they say. On technical issues it wouldn’t be appropriate but on this particular one, you’ve got to listen a little bit more to governments.

He also indicated that the US would not necessarily stand up for its principles if confronted by substantial objections to a string from other governments:

So we would be influenced – I can’t say it would be dispositive – if a large number of countries have a problem with a particular string, even if it was one that might not be objectionable to the United States government.
And that is out of interest of protecting the Internet’s root from widespread blocking at the top-level by lots of governments.

Does this mean that the US could agree to a consensus GAC objection to a .gay gTLD? A .porn? A .freespeech? It certainly sounds like it.

US extends ICANN’s IANA contract

ICANN has received a six-month extension to its crucial IANA contract, apparently in order to give the US government more time to take public comments and make amendments.
The contract may have been extended some weeks ago, but I believe the first public acknowledgment from ICANN came in a presentation before the ccNSO at its meeting in Singapore last week.
The IANA contract is what gives ICANN the power to make changes to the DNS root – including adding new top-level domains to the internet.
It is granted by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
The contract is now set to expire March 31, 2012, towards the end of the newly approved first-round new gTLDs application window, which is expected to be open from January 12 until April 12.
It would be helpful, from an applicant confidence perspective, if the contract is renewed on a longer-term basis before January 12, when money will start changing hands.
The NTIA currently has a Further Notice Of Inquiry (pdf) open, soliciting public comments on what terms should and should not be included in the contract.
Quite a few civil liberty types are annoyed about the fact that the NTIA has added a clause that may enable it to block new gTLDs from the root if governments find them disagreeable.

How the US shaped the new ICANN

The US government pushed hard for ICANN to pay more attention to international governments, which caused it to delay .xxx and the new top-level domains program, a new document reveals.
A transcript of a December 2010 meeting between ICANN’s board and National Telecommunications and Information Administration chief Larry Strickling, published following a disclosure request by DomainIncite, outlines America’s “tough love” policy over ICANN.
It reveals that Strickling hauled ICANN over the coals over its opaque decision-making, its failure to adequately address its Affirmation of Commitments obligations, and its apparent lack of respect for its Governmental Advisory Committee.
The era of ICANN engaging maturely and in earnest with governments, witnessed over the last six months, arguably began in that meeting room in Cartagena, the evening of December 7, 2010.
But it did so partly because it fitted with Obama administration policy.
Strickling told the board that the multi-stakeholder model of internet governance was critical to US public policy on other matters, but that he wanted to ensure “the reality fits the model”:

we are cheerleaders for this. But as I’ve said to several of you, there’s a model but then there’s the reality. And it is incumbent on us at this particular point in time, more so than perhaps ever before, to do what we can to ensure the model, that the reality fits the model.
…
what it comes back to at the end of the day is our concern that we want to be able to demonstrate to the rest of the world that the quality of decision-making by this organization is absolutely top drawer.

ICANN was failing to live up to these ideals, he said. This was particularly true in the case of the new gTLD program, which many had expected ICANN to approve in Cartagena.
Strickling said that ICANN had not done enough to evaluate the pros and cons of the program:

I’ve heard expressed the idea that somehow I or the United States is opposed to the expansion of top-level domains. That’s not the case. I don’t have a view one way or the other. Frankly, that’s up to you to decide.
What I do care about is that when you decide that question, that you do it with a quality of decision-making with all of the information in front of you that you ought to have with the experts having given you the opportunity to ask questions and evaluate the pros and cons of decisions as fully as possible.

He later added:

It’s very clear that there are a lot of warning signs, just in the studies that have been done so far, incomplete as they are, to suggest that rushing headlong into this issue, I think, could be a mistake.
But I want to very quickly kind of backtrack from that remark in the sense that I don’t think it’s my place, in my role, to tell you how to make your decisions in terms of what the outcome should be.
And I do think I have a role to play and will play the role of evaluating the quality of decision-making, which largely is processes, but at the end of the day it really comes down to did the board have in front of it the facts it needed to have to make an informed decision, and does their decision, as reflected in their report of that decision, reflect a reasoned, mature, responsible decision.

It’s impossible to tell precisely what the tone of the meeting was from the transcript, but it’s possible to infer from the content that it was likely that of a parent scolding an unruly child.
At one point in the transcript, director Rita Rodin Johnston refers to Strickling as “Dad”, and Strickling says moments later that he does not want to “play schoolteacher” .
Seemingly pushing for it to mature as an organization, he urged ICANN to engage more seriously with the GAC, which had concluded a frustrating public meeting with the board just minutes earlier.

I don’t know what all of the top challenges are to ICANN in the next three to five years, but I absolutely believe that in that top three will be the issue of ICANN’s relations with foreign governments.
…
I think you all are missing a tremendous opportunity to deal with this issue of ICANN and Internet governance and the role of foreign governments, and it’s absolutely incumbent upon you all to find a way to work with the GAC along the lines that Heather [Dryden, GAC chair] and her fellow members expressed to you today.
…
I think that’s important for your ultimate preservation as an independent organization, and I cannot, I guess, emphasize enough the importance of working out these processes with the GAC in terms of receiving their advice, treating it with respect by responding to it promptly and fully, sitting down and mediating with them where it appears there are disagreements.

His words hit home.
Later that week, ICANN deferred a decision on approval of .xxx, pending formal discussions with the GAC, and it arranged to meet with the GAC in Brussels to discuss the new gTLDs program.
Over the last six months we’ve seen numerous changes to the Applicant Guidebook – addressing the concerns of trademark owners, for example – as a result of these consultations.
The structure of this process also appears to been formed during this private Cartagena meeting.
Strickling clashed with then-chairman Peter Dengate Thrush on their respective interpretations of ICANN’s bylaws as they relate to rejecting GAC advice.
Dengate Thrush expressed a view that could be characterized as “vote first, consult later” (my words, not his), which Strickling dismissed as “silliness”.
Strickling evidently won the argument; ICANN this year has started consulting formally with the GAC prior to voting on important issues.
The first beneficiary of this policy was .xxx applicant ICM Registry, which Strickling addressed directly during the Cartagena meeting:

But let me just say I don’t know how — based on, as I understand the facts on both top-level domains and ICM, how you can possibly have a mediation this week, in terms of the fact that information has not been provided to the GAC that they’ve asked for, the fact that they do not feel they understand exactly what the board has disagreed with and why.

This appears to be the reason we’re looking at .xxx domain names hitting the market in September, rather than right now.
Finally, I find it ironic that, given the meeting’s focus on transparency, it was Strickling, rather than ICANN, who asked for a transcription of the talks to be made.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: We are currently scribing this session. But under our rules if you want us not to scribe this, we just turn it off.
>>LAWRENCE STRICKLING: I’m fine to be on the record. I have spoken to some of you individually, and I urged every one of you who I talked to individually to share my views as far as they wished. And I have absolutely no problem with anything I say here being in the public record.

Despite this exchange, the transcript did not become part of the public record until last Friday, 30 days after I filed a request using ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy, which is a little like its Freedom Of Information Act.
I wish I’d filed it sooner.
You can download the PDF of the transcript here.

Hot topics for ICANN Singapore

ICANN’s 41st public meeting kicks off in Singapore on Monday, and as usual there are a whole array of controversial topics set to be debated.
As is becoming customary, the US government has filed its eleventh-hour saber-rattling surprises, undermining ICANN’s authority before its delegates’ feet have even touched the tarmac.
Here’s a high-level overview of what’s going down.
The new gTLD program
ICANN and the Governmental Advisory Committee are meeting on Sunday to see if they can reach some kind of agreement on the stickiest parts of the Applicant Guidebook.
They will fail to do so, and ICANN’s board will be forced into discussing an unfinished Guidebook, which does not have full GAC backing, during its Monday-morning special meeting.
It’s Peter Dengate Thrush’s final meeting as chairman, and many observers believe he will push through some kind of new gTLDs resolution to act as his “legacy”, as well as to fulfill the promise he made in San Francisco of a big party in Singapore.
My guess is that the resolution will approve the program in general, lay down some kind of timetable for its launch, and acknowledge that the Guidebook needs more work before it is rubber-stamped.
I think it’s likely that the days of seemingly endless cycles of redrafting and comment are over for good, however, which will come as a relief to many.
Developing nations
A big sticking point for the GAC is the price that new gTLD applicants from developing nations will have to pay – it wants eligible, needy applicants to get a 76% discount, from $185,000 to $44,000.
The GAC has called this issue something that needs sorting out “as a matter of urgency”, but ICANN’s policy is currently a flimsy draft in desperate need of work.
The so-called JAS working group, tasked with creating the policy, currently wants governmental entities excluded from the support program, which has made the GAC, predictably, unhappy.
The JAS has proven controversial in other quarters too, particularly the GNSO Council.
Most recently, ICANN director Katim Touray, who’s from Gambia, said the Council had been “rather slow” to approve the JAS’s latest milestone report, which, he said:

might well be construed by many as an effort by the GNSO to scuttle the entire process of seeking ways and means to provide support to needy new gTLD applicants

This irked Council chair Stephane Van Gelder, who rattled off a response pointing out that the GNSO had painstakingly followed its procedures as required under the ICANN bylaws.
Watch out for friction there.
Simply, there’s no way this matter can be put to bed in Singapore, but it will be the topic of intense discussions because the new gTLD program cannot sensibly launch without it.
The IANA contract
The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration wants to beef up the IANA contract to make ICANN more accountable to the NTIA and, implicitly, the GAC.
Basically, IANA is being leveraged as a way to make sure that .porn and .gay (and any other TLD not acceptable to the world’s most miserable regimes) never make it onto the internet.
If at least one person does not stand up during the public forum on Thursday to complain that ICANN is nothing more than a lackey of the United States, I’d be surprised. My money’s on Khaled Fattal.
Vertical integration
The eleventh hour surprise I referred to earlier.
The US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, informed ICANN this week that its plan to allow gTLD registries such as VeriSign, Neustar and Afilias to own affiliated registrars was “misguided”.
I found the letter (pdf) utterly baffling. It seems to say that the DoJ would not be able to advise ICANN on competition matters, despite the fact that the letter itself contains a whole bunch of such advice.
The letter has basically scuppered VeriSign’s chances of ever buying a registrar, but I don’t think anybody thought that would happen anyway.
Neustar is likely to be the most publicly annoyed by this, given how vocally it has pursued its vertical integration plans, but I expect Afilias and others will be bugged by this development too.
The DoJ’s position is likely to be backed up by Europe, now that the NTIA’s Larry Strickling and European Commissioner Neelie Kroes are BFFs.
Cybercrime
Cybercrime is huge at the moment, what with governments arming themselves with legions of hackers and groups such as LulzSec and Anonymous knocking down sites like dominoes.
The DNS abuse forum during ICANN meetings, slated for Monday, is usually populated by pissed-off cops demanding stricter enforcement of Whois accuracy.
They’ve been getting louder during recent meetings, a trend I expect to continue until somebody listens.
This is known as “engaging”.
Geek stuff
IPv6, DNSSEC and Internationalized Domain Names, in other words. There are sessions on all three of these important topics, but they rarely gather much attention from the policy wonks.
With IPv6 and DNSSEC, we’re basically looking at problems of adoption. With IDNs, there’s impenetrably technical stuff to discuss relating to code tables and variant strings.
The DNSSEC session is usually worth a listen if you’re into that kind of thing.
The board meeting
Unusually, the board’s discussion of the Guidebook has been bounced to Monday, leading to a Friday board meeting with not very much to excite.
VeriSign will get its .net contract renewed, no doubt.
The report from the GAC-board joint working group, which may reveal how the two can work together less painfully in future, also could be interesting.
Anyway…
Enough of this blather, I’ve got a plane to catch.

ICANN independence request denied

ICANN’s request for greater independence has been rejected by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
In its new Further Notice Of Inquiry (pdf) investigation into the IANA contract, through which ICANN is granted its internet management responsibilities, the NTIA said:

NTIA reiterates that it is not in discussions with ICANN to transition the IANA functions nor does the agency intend to undertake such discussions.

Transitioning the IANA functions would have meant less power over the domain name system for the US government and more for ICANN.
Privatizing the DNS was one of the original goals when ICANN was set up in 1998 — it was meant to happen before Clinton left office — but the US government has been dead set against such a move since at least 2005.
The latest decision was expected. NTIA assistant secretary Lawrence Strickling had flagged up the agency’s position in a recent speech.
Nevertheless, it’s a blow to ICANN and its CEO, Rod Beckstrom, who since the San Francisco meeting in March has been pushing for the IANA contract to be re-framed into a longer-term “cooperative agreement” to better reflect ICANN’s international nature.
But the NTIA said this would not be possible:

NTIA does not have the legal authority to enter into a cooperative agreement with any organization, including ICANN, for the performance of the IANA functions.

To drive the point home, the FNOI also calls for the functional aspect of IANA – the updates it makes to the DNS root database – to be clearly separated from the policy-making side of ICANN.
On the bright side, ICANN can rest assured that the NTIA seems to have put aside thoughts of breaking up the IANA functions and distributing them between different entities.
This notion was put to bed primarily because the organizations most likely to take over roles such as protocol and IP number administration (such as the NRO and the IAB) did not seem to want them.
The FNOI also suggests a raft of process and technology requirements that ICANN’s IANA team will have to abide by after the contract is renewed.
The process for redelegating ccTLDs is currently an absolute bloody mess – utterly opaque and with no historical consistency with how decisions for transferring ownership of TLDs are made.
The ccNSO is working on this problem, but its policy development is likely to take a year or two.
In the meantime, the NTIA will mandate through the IANA contract at least one major nod to ccTLD redelegation reform, in the form of the “respect rule” I blogged about earlier.
Under the heading “Responsibility and Respect for Stakeholders”, the proposed IANA Statement of Work says: “the Contractor shall act in accordance with the relevant national laws of the jurisdiction which the TLD registry serves.”
This provision is already included in most of the agreements ICANN has signed with ccTLD registries and ICP-1, the policy that governs its redelegation processes.

US resurrects the controversial new TLDs veto

The US government intends to give itself greater oversight powers over ICANN’s new top-level domains program, according to a partial draft of the next IANA contract.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has proposed what amounts to a Governmental Advisory Committee veto over controversial new TLDs.
The agency last night published a Further Notice Of Inquiry (pdf), which includes a proposed Statement Of Work that would form part of ICANN’s next IANA contract.
The IANA contract, which is up for renewal September 30, gives ICANN many of its key powers over the domain name system’s root database.
The new documents seem to fulfill NTIA assistant secretary Lawrence Strickling’s promise to use the IANA contract “as a vehicle for ensuring more accountability and transparency” at ICANN.
If the new draft provisions are finalized, ICANN would be contractually obliged to hold new gTLD applicants to a higher standard than currently envisaged by the Applicant Guidebook.
The FNOI notes that the US believes (my emphasis):

there is a need to address how all stakeholders, including governments collectively, can operate within the paradigm of a multi-stakeholder environment and be satisfied that their interests are being adequately addressed

The Statement Of Work, under the heading “Responsibility and Respect for Stakeholders” includes new text that addresses this perceived need:

For delegation requests for new generic TLDS (gTLDs), the Contractor [ICANN] shall include documentation to demonstrate how the proposed string has received consensus support from relevant stakeholders and is supported by the global public interest.

The current Applicant Guidebook does not require “consensus support from relevant stakeholders” before a new gTLD is approved.
It gives applicants the opportunity to show support from self-defined communities, and it gives communities the right to object to any application, but it does not require consensus.
Earlier this year, the GAC asked ICANN to beef up the Guidebook to make community support or non-objection a proactive requirement for applicants, but ICANN declined to make the change.
The .xxx Factor
The NTIA’s proposed “respect rule” alludes to the approval of .xxx, which the US and other governments believe was both not in the global public interest and unsupported by the porn industry.
Had the rule been applicable in March, ICANN could very well have found itself in breach of the IANA contract, and the NTIA could have been within its rights to block the TLD.
One way to look at this is as a US government safeguard against ICANN’s board of directors overruling GAC objections to new TLDs in future.
The Guidebook currently gives the GAC the right to object to any application for any reason, such as if it believed a proposed string was not supported by a community it purported to represent.
But the Guidebook, reflecting ICANN’s bylaws, also gives ICANN the ability to disagree with GAC advice (including its new TLD objections) and essentially overrule it.
Under the NTIA’s proposed IANA contract language, if ICANN were to overrule a GAC objection to a controversial application, the NTIA would be able to claim that the gTLD was approved without stakeholder consensus, in violation of the IANA contract.
The new gTLD program would have, in essence, a backdoor GAC veto.
While these changes are being made unilaterally by the US, they are certain to be supported by the European Commission and probably other members of the GAC.
Commissioner Neelie Kroes urged Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke to block or delay .xxx back in April, and subsequently met with Strickling to discuss their mutual opposition to the TLD.
Kroes and Strickling seem to agree agree that ICANN should not have signed the .xxx registry contract over the (weak, non-consensus) objection of the GAC.
The FNOI will shortly open for 45 days of public comment, so we’re not likely to know precisely how this is going to play out in the new IANA contract until August.
ICANN is now in the tricky position of trying to figure out how to incorporate this mess into the Guidebook, which it has indicated it plans to approve just over a week from now.
Singapore is going to be very interesting indeed.

Still no new TLDs agreement with GAC

ICANN and its Governmental Advisory Committee have yet to resolve their differences over the new top-level domains program, putting a question mark over the current approval timetable.
In a joint statement released early this morning, following a teleconference on Friday, the ICANN board and GAC confirmed that their talks have not yet concluded.
But ICANN still thinks approval of the program’s Applicant Guidebook could come by June 20, the second day of the forthcoming Singapore meeting:

The latest discussion and ICANN Board and GAC agreement on the benefits of having a face-to-face meeting in Singapore pave the way to possible Board consideration of program approval on 20 June 2011.

This seems to serve as confirmation that the board and GAC will meet for a last-ditch attempt at compromise on June 19. ICANN has already moved around schedules to accommodate the meeting.
Outstanding areas of disagreement continue to include rights protection mechanisms for trademark holders and processes for governmental objections to controversial TLD applications.
Negotiations so far have comprised at least four days of face-to-face talks over the last few months, which had mixed results.
ICANN has given a lot of ground already, but it seems that it has not gone far enough for the GAC. Chair Heather Dryden said in the statement:

the GAC appreciates the time taken by the Board to discuss remaining issues on the call and looks forward to continued progress as a clear signal that the Board is committed to enabling the formulation of true community consensus in developing policy that is in the global public interest as well as increasing the overall accountability and transparency of the organization.

The current talks take place against the backdrop of the renewal of ICANN’s IANA contract with the US Department of Commerce and NTIA, which gives ICANN many of its powers.
Larry Strickling, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, has publicly indicated that he may use the renewal as leverage to squeeze concessions from ICANN.
Two weeks ago, he said that he was “unclear” about whether June 20 was a realistic target for Guidebook approval.
Recently, Strickling also met with European Commissioner Neelie Kroes where they found common ground on new gTLDs and ICANN’s accountability and transparency goals.

NTIA calls for ICANN to “walk the walk”

A US National Telecommunications and Information Administration official today said ICANN needs to prove it can “walk the walk” when it comes to accountability and transparency.
Speaking on a panel at the inaugural Nominet .uk Policy Forum here in London today, NTIA associate administrator Fiona Alexander said it was time for ICANN to “up its game”
On a panel about regulatory systems for the internet, Alexander reiterated US support for the ICANN model, but said that ICANN board too often acts without the consensus of its stakeholders.
Quoting from speeches made by her boss, assistant secretary Larry Strickling, she said the US supports the December recommendations of ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency Review Team.
“The ICANN board has until June to implement these recommendations,” she said.
It wasn’t clear whether that was a slip of the tongue, or an indication that the NTIA plans to hold ICANN’s feet to the fire over its implementation timetable.
The Affirmation of Commitments calls for ICANN to “take action” on the ATRT report by June 30, but ICANN is planning a longer-term roll-out
It has some good reasons for tardiness. Adopting the ATRT-recommended changes to its relationship with the Governmental Advisory Committee, for example, will require more bandwidth than ICANN and the GAC have to offer before the June deadline.
“Governments are only going to want to get more involved, not less,” Alexander said.
The Obama administration has a lot of political capital tied up in the idea of “multistakeholderism” – it’s a model it proposes for other fora – but its would-be poster child, ICANN, has a habit of frequently looking more like a red-headed poster step-child.
“It’s time to up your game,” Alexander said of ICANN, “because this really is the model that we need to work.”

Europe and US to meet on .xxx and new TLDs

European Commissioner Neelie Kroes is to meet with the US Department of Commerce, a month after she asked it to delay the launch of the .xxx top-level domain.
Tomorrow, Kroes will meet with Larry Strickling, assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, according to a press release:

This follows the controversial decision of the ICANN Board in March to approve the “.XXX” Top Level Domain for adult content. Ms Kroes will make clear European views on ICANN’s capacity to reform. In particular, Ms Kroes will raise ICANN’s responsiveness to governments raising public policy concerns in the ICANN Governmental Advisory Council [Committee] (GAC) , the transparency and accountability of ICANN’s internal corporate governance and the handling of country-code Top Level Domains for its most concerned public authorities.

In April, Kroes asked Strickling’s boss, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, to put a hold on the addition of .xxx to the domain name system root until the GAC had chance to discuss it further.
Strickling declined, saying that for the US to take unilateral action over the root would provide ammunition to its critics in the international community.
The US and EC are two of the most active and vocal participants in the GAC – at least in public. Whatever conclusions Strickling and Kroes come to tomorrow are likely to form the basis of the GAC’s short-term strategy as negotiations about new TLDs continue.
ICANN’s board is scheduled to meet with the GAC on May 20, for an attempt to come to some final conclusions about the new gTLD program, particularly in relation to trademark protection.
ICANN wants to approve the program’s Applicant Guidebook on June 20, but is likely to face resistance from governments, especially the US.
Strickling has indicated that he may use the upcoming renewal of ICANN’s IANA contract as leverage to get the GAC a stronger voice in ICANN’s decision-making process.

US wants to delay new TLDs

With ICANN seemingly hell-bent on approving its new top-level domains program at its Singapore meeting, June 20, the US government wants to slam the brakes.
Congressmen from both sides of the aisle this week said the launch should be put on hold, and yesterday Lawrence Strickling, head of the NTIA, said he does not believe June 20 is realistic.
In a speech before the Global Internet Governance Academic Network, GigaNet, in Washington DC yesterday, Strickling said that ICANN needs to pay more heed to the advice of its Governmental Advisory Committee before it approves the program.

I commend ICANN for its efforts to respond to the GAC advice. Nonetheless, it is unclear to me today whether ICANN and the GAC can complete this process in a satisfactory manner for the Board to approve the guidebook on June 20, 2011, as ICANN has stated it wants to do.

While discussing the ongoing boogeyman threat of an International Telecommunications Union takeover of ICANN’s functions, he added:

Unless the GAC believes that ICANN has been sufficiently responsive to their concerns, I do not see how the Guidebook can be adopted on June 20th in Singapore in a manner that ensures continuing global governmental support of ICANN.

That’s incredibly strong stuff.
Strickling is suggesting that if ICANN rejects GAC advice about what goes into the new TLDs Applicant Guidebook, ICANN may be able to kiss international governmental support goodbye, potentially threatening the organization’s very existence.
And it wasn’t the only threat he raised.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is in the process of renewing and possibly amending ICANN’s IANA contract, which gives it the power to introduce new TLDs.
If anyone in any government is in a position to bargain directly with ICANN, it’s Strickling. He tackled this position of power head-on in his speech:

I heard from yesterday’s House hearing that some of the witnesses proposed that we use this contract as a vehicle for ensuring more accountability and transparency on the part of the company performing the IANA functions. We are seriously considering these suggestions and will be seeking further comment from the global Internet community on this issue.

I believe the only witness to raise this issue at the hearing was Josh Bourne of the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse. He wants a full audit of ICANN before the IANA contract is renewed.
The Congressional “oversight” hearing in question, before the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet, was not much more than a kangaroo court.
The Representatives in attendance read from prepared statements and from questions they frequently seemed to barely understand, stated fringe opinions as fact, asked inane questions that demonstrated the loosest of grasps on the subject before them, then came to the (foregone) conclusion that the new gTLD program should be delayed pending further work on protecting trademark holders.
I’m not saying these politicians need to be subject matter experts, but if the words “intellectual property” and “the internet” are in your job description, you ought be embarrassed if the words “new BGLTs, or whatever they’re called” come out of your mouth in public.
The Subcommittee has no direct power over ICANN, of course, beyond the fact that it belongs to the legislature of the country where ICANN is based.
But Strickling does.
In his speech yesterday, he also made it quite obvious that the NTIA currently has no plans to push ICANN further along the road to full independence by signing a Cooperative Agreement instead of a procurement contract for the IANA function.
That proposal was made by ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom, and supported by a small number of others in the industry, including Vint Cerf. But Strickling said:

The fact is, however, that NTIA does not have the legal authority to transition the IANA functions contract into a Cooperative Agreement with ICANN, nor do we have the statutory authority to enter into a Cooperative Agreement with ICANN, or any other organization, for the performance of the IANA functions.

The Beckstrom proposal always seemed like a long shot, but to have it dismissed so casually will surely be seen as a setback on the road to true ICANN independence from the US.