FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai backed a delay of the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition. Capitol Hill Republicans also are pushing for an IANA transition delay and are focusing on mandating it through proposed language in the short-term continuing resolution to fund the government when FY 2016 ends Sept. 30 (see 1609220067). The CR language would extend an existing rider in the Department of Commerce's FY 2016 budget that bars NTIA from using its funds during the fiscal year to execute the IANA transition (see 1609130050). The existing internet governance model “has been a tremendous success,” Pai said in a Wednesday statement. When NTIA announced in 2014 its intention to spin off its oversight of the IANA functions, ”I argued that the burden of proof was on those favoring this momentous change,” Pai said, and “getting it right is far more important than getting it done right now, and additional time to consider the merits of the transition would benefit all stakeholders.” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump earlier backed a transition delay (see 1609210070). Commissioner Michael O'Rielly backed a transition delay during a Tuesday International Bar Association conference. “All details of the transition must be worked out, fully considered and all questions answered before this transition goes any further,” O'Rielly said in prepared remarks.
ICANN General Counsel John Jeffrey disputed former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz's criticisms of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority changeover, saying in a letter to the editor released Thursday that ICANN “is not, and never has been exempted from” U.S. antitrust laws. Crovitz wrote in a column that ICANN had an “antitrust exemption.” Crovitz’s column “disregards the diligent work of the ICANN Community, including U.S. businesses, academia, technical experts, end users and civil society, who developed a plan for the transition that specifically ensures the role of [the Department of Commerce] is not replaced by another government or intergovernmental organization,” Jeffrey said. If the IANA transition occurs as planned Oct. 1, “ICANN will have no mandate, need or reason to seek to be overseen by another governmental group for protection,” Jeffrey said. Americans for Limited Government, which has been critical of the IANA transition, claimed last week that NTIA “failed to consider the antitrust ramifications” of the transition based on the results of a Freedom of Information Act request. The agency said its review of transition plans didn’t find “any significant competitive issues” (see 1608290047).
The internet industry continues to support the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition because it “aligns the interests of internet users, prevents capture by any one stakeholder group or government such as China or Russia, and lays the foundation for a stable and secure internet,” said Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman in response to questions. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, had sent follow-up questions about Beckerman’s testimony during a May Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the IANA transition. Rubio backed delaying the IANA transition during the hearing, in which Beckerman and several others strongly backed going forward with the transition as planned for Oct. 1 (see 1605240067). Beckerman responded to Rubio’s concerns about ICANN’s commitment to mitigate Domain Name System abuse via contract enforcement, saying IA “firmly supports the ability of ICANN to enforce its contracts with registries and registrars.” It's in IA’s interest “to prevent abusive behavior in” the DNS, Beckerman said: “Because the ICANN community is now empowered to challenge action or inaction by the [ICANN board] and is developing additional accountability mechanisms” via the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability’s, work on a second set of accountability mechanism changes will make it “possible to ensure that the Board is exercising oversight that results in ICANN’s proper execution of its enforcement role according to ICANN’s bylaws.” Beckerman also said aspects of a set of changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms for the IANA transition preserved the entity's ability to enforce its existing contracts: “ICANN has a narrow technical remit and, as ICANN CEO Göran Marby recently pledged, does not have the authority or capability to ‘interpret or enforce laws regulating websites or website content.’”
NTIA’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request on its analysis of ICANN’s Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition-related plans indicates the agency “failed to consider the antitrust ramifications” of the transition before it signed off on ICANN’s plans in June (see 1606090067), said Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning in a statement Friday. ALG, a vocal IANA transition critic, filed a FOIA request in June for NTIA records on any legal or policy notice of the transition plans “concerning antitrust issues” that could occur post-transition. NTIA “found no records responsive” to ALG’s request, Chief Counsel Kathy Smith said in a letter released Friday. NTIA noted in a transition FAQ that its review of ICANN’s plans, which included input from the DOJ, “did not identify any significant competitive issues relating to the proposed transition.” U.S. competition laws would still apply to ICANN and its Public Technical Identifiers subsidiary’s administration of the IANA functions post-transition “to the same extent as those laws now apply to other private entities, and thus these laws can serve to discourage ICANN and its constituent groups from engaging in anticompetitive conduct that would harm Internet users,” NTIA said. The agency’s failure to consider antitrust issues in its analysis “is simply stunning,” Manning said. He said that President Bill Clinton’s administration explored the possible antitrust issues involved in an IANA transition in 1998, “yet somehow the politically blinded Obama Administration missed the obvious point that ICANN loses its anti-trust shield should the government relinquish control over the property to them. This, even as NTIA has in essence been preparing to create a global monopoly over the Internet’s domain name system.” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and two other GOP lawmakers jointly urged DOJ’s Antitrust Division earlier this month to do a competition review of ICANN’s proposed extension of Verisign’s current .com registry agreement through 2024 before the transition (see 1608150052). Congress “has no choice but to deny” President Barack Obama’s “attempt to giveaway [sic] the Internet governance functions through any means necessary including filing suit over the Executive Branch’s abrogation of Congress’ Article One power of the purse,” Manning said. “NTIA was so busy figuring out how it would turn over the Internet domain name system, apparently nobody stopped to ask if it could legally create such a monopoly.” ALG was among 25 groups that jointly asked Congress to file suit against NTIA to enforce and extend an existing rider in the Department of Commerce's budget that prohibits the use of federal funding on the transition. An extension of the funding ban rider through FY 2017 would effectively delay the transition another year (see 1608110062). NTIA didn't comment.
ICANN transmitted a largely positive report to NTIA Friday on its progress in implementing governance changes required before the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition, as expected (see 1608110062). All of the tasks ICANN needs to perform before the transition were already completed, awaiting approval or in a final review stage as of Friday, ICANN said in the report. Three of NTIA’s recommendations from its June assessment of ICANN’s transition-related plans won’t be addressed before the transition because they require the post-transition Public Technical Identifiers subsidiary in charge of administering the IANA functions “to be in active operation, or coordination with community structures in place only after the transition,” ICANN said. Those tasks still in final review or awaiting approval “will be complete in advance of September 30, 2016 to allow the IANA functions contract to expire,” ICANN said.
NTIA is awaiting ICANN's report on the status of its implementation of governance and technical work related to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition as the agency evaluates whether the transition can proceed as planned, NTIA said in a report to Congress released Thursday. ICANN's report, due Aug. 12, will help NTIA assess “whether ICANN can complete all of the transition-related planning work” prior to the current Sept. 30 end-date for NTIA's current contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions, the agency said. NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling told Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and four other GOP senators in late June that the agency sees “no tangible benefit” to seeking a delay of the transition absent a request from ICANN (see 1606280062).
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling defended ICANN’s Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition plans during an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators set to have been televised this weekend. He cited successful completion of a joint ICANN-Verisign 90-day test of a parallel version of the root zone file to ensure the file would remain reliable after the IANA transition. ICANN and Verisign began testing the parallel version of the root zone file in late April to verify that data contained in the Root Zone Management System-produced (RZMS) file will remain reliable after the IANA transition (see 1604110038). ICANN confirmed Thursday that the parallel testing period concluded successfully earlier this month. The test resulted in “zero unexplained differences” between the live version of the root zone file and the parallel testing version of the file that didn’t include NTIA’s authorization, ICANN said in a news release: “This result confirms that the production RZMS and parallel test system produce an identical output for every root zone file published, which was a key step to ensuring the continued security and stability of the Internet's root zone” after the IANA transition. The success of the parallel testing shows the “new system by which ICANN will transmit changes to the root zone directly to Verisign has now been proven to work exactly the same as the current system does,” Strickling said. “The one technical change that has to occur as part of the transition has now been proved to be fully operational and implementable.” Strickling recently pushed back against proposals to delay the IANA transition to allow for further evaluation of the governance changes resulting from ICANN’s transition plans. He said a transition delay not sought by ICANN stakeholders has the potential to damage U.S. credibility and international support for multistakeholder internet governance (see 1606280062 and 1607140084).
ICANN sought comment by Aug. 7 on three documents on governance of the post-transition Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (PTI). The documents include PTI's code of conduct, conflict of interest policy and expected standard of behavior. All three governance documents are “modeled off the versions already in force” at ICANN, it said in a Friday notice.
ICANN is working to address areas of its Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plans that NTIA flagged as requiring improvements, said ICANN Global Domains Division President Akram Atallah in a Monday blog post. NTIA said the IANA transition plans flagged yellow under 11 of the 70 areas included in Treadway Commission Committee of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) Internal Control Framework Assessment. NTIA in part evaluated the transition plans using the COSO framework after the GAO recommended use of the framework as an evaluation tool (see 1509180065). The 11 areas needing improvement involved governance of the post-transition IANA (PTI), the PTI Audit Committee, PTI operations and ICANN’s new investigatory process, Atallah said. “Although NTIA does not require that any of the recommendations flagged as yellow be resolved as a pre-condition for the completion of the transition, we are confident that there is a clear path forward to address every item,” Atallah said. “We reviewed each of the items against NTIA’s recommended action, and implementation notes have been developed where further work is needed.”
Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker urged the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Wednesday to remain committed to the group's 2011 Principles for Internet Policy Making as it continues its Ministerial on the Digital Economy in Cancun, Mexico, this week. The OECD's Principles for Internet Policy Making emphasize a flexible policymaking approach based on the multistakeholder Internet governance model. OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría warned Wednesday that legislation on a variety of issues isn't keeping up with changes in the digital economy. “Too many countries are taking a 20th century approach to a 21st century technology that is moving faster than any other the world has seen,” Gurría said during the ministerial. “The internet is profoundly transforming the way we live and work, but we could be getting a lot more out of it. The longer we dither on the digital economy, the less benefit we will get out of it as societies.” The OECD's digital economy ministerial “is an opportunity to ask ourselves, as the representatives of governments and the leaders of nations, if we are living up to those principles,” Pritzker said in a prepared version of her speech to the ministerial: “Too often, well-intentioned efforts to address legitimate concerns over issues like privacy and security lead to unintended consequences” via the enactment of data localization laws and "onerous" technical standards designed to restrict trade. Such policies “undermine our vision of a free, open and truly global internet,” Pritzker said. “We expect such policies from authoritarian regimes that want to isolate their people -- not from nations that welcome the global exchange of ideas and commerce.” Pritzker warned against the “alarming trend” toward internet fragmentation, which she said “should concern us all. Our ability to empower entrepreneurs, build long-term prosperity, and drive innovation hinges on our collective commitment to a global, free and open internet.” Pritzker also noted a new Commerce report that chronicles efforts during President Barack Obama's administration to expand the digital economy. The report shows Commerce's commitment to OECD principles on stakeholder cooperation on cybersecurity issues, privacy and multistakeholderism, she said.