Community continues to drive IANA Transition forward
Not yet implemented, but with good progress made in recent months, the transferal of the administration of the Domain Name System root zone away from US supervision to the ICANN community – the IANA Stewardship Transition – continued to be a defining topic at the 56th ICANN Meeting in Helsinki last month.
IANA Transition going into the next phase
After all, on the one hand, on 9 June 2016 the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) of the US Department of Commerce announced that the criteria formulated by the NTIA are fully met by the ICANN-Community proposal submitted on 10 March 2016. On the other hand, the former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, among others, found it necessary to warn that, with the IANA Stewardship Transition, the US Government would be reckless in giving up their supervision.
A detailed analysis by Monika Ermert, with an assessment of the situation by Thomas Rickert, Director of Names & Numbers at eco – Association of the Internet Industry and Co-Chair of the working group focusing on ICANN accountability, can be found here.
Since 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has carried out the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as a contractual partner of the US Department of Commerce’s NTIA. In future, the so-called “empowered community” of ICANN should take over supervision of these tasks. With this, ICANN will take on the role of self-regulating administrator of one of the central resources of the Internet.
New meeting format
Despite the new, shortened format of the meeting, which is designed to provide more space for and encourage discussions and exchanges between the individual communities, comprised of technical experts, governments and groups from the civil society, this meeting – with its 1,400 participants, was only a little smaller than previous ICANN meetings.
The new format centered around the Cross-Community Sessions, which were carried out between the individual Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees. Above all, this allowed room for direct and largely positive feedback from the community on the central issues on the ICANN agenda. It is really only a matter of time before ICANN adds CCS to their already long list of abbreviations.
CCWG Accountability continues its work
After the sustained discussion on the improvement of accountability and transparency of ICANN in conjunction with the IANA Stewardship Transition at the last meeting in Marrakech, the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) focused more intensively this time on the details of how people can involve themselves in the processes of the “empowered community”. But other topics which have until now not been at the top of the agenda were also given more room – one example being the question of a possible liberalization of country names and country codes. An interesting aspect in this discussion is the still to be clarified definition of “public interest”, which can speak both for and against a liberalization of these abbreviations.
Despite all the uncertainties which could theoretically emerge, the ICANN community, and with it the CCWG Accountability, are continuing their work. After the so-called “Workstream 1” was completed in Marrakech, “Workstream 2” was begun in Helsinki. This process deals with all aspects which, on the one hand, need to take effect from Day 1 of the Transition, and on the other hand are absolutely necessary for the improvement of the organization.
The Cross-Community Working Group on enhancing ICANN’s accountability, with the co-chairs Mathieu Weill, León Felipe Sanchez and Thomas Rickert, therefore planned a whole day for working on Workstream 2.
Here, it is necessary to examine whether the jurisdiction of the ICANN headquarters should be applicable for contracts or conflicts. Added to this are questions of the specific formulation of the transparency, diversity and jurisdiction of ICANN, its employees and the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees. The future role of the ombudsman will also be discussed, and a policy will be drawn up for the application of human rights in the context of ICANN’s activities.
These topics will be worked through in working groups, whose results will then be examined by the CCWG. There will be the possibility to comment publically on the results of all points. Furthermore, anyone can become involved in the working groups and contribute to the process of shaping the future role of ICANN. Interested people should contact Thomas Rickert.
Outlook & German Night
From a networking perspective, the German Evening hosted jointly by DENIC and eco was a highlight of the ICANN meeting in Helsinki. The historic cannon ball warehouse was the ideal place to combine the live broadcast of the European Cup quarter final involving the German national team with networking between the members of eco and DENIC and the German ICANN community. The ICANN meeting in Helsinki was also the first meeting for Göran Marby in his role as the new CEO of ICANN.
The next ICANN meeting will take place from 3 – 9 November 2016 in Hyderabad .
