Political Windows Open And Close, Says ICANN President; Seeks End Of Prep For IANA Transition

At the opening of this week’s 52^nd meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Singapore, the ICANN leadership supported by former President Bill Clinton aide Ira Magaziner, pushed for urgency in finalising the proposal for the future oversight of the private names and numbers regime.

The ICANN Singapore meeting is here.

Eleven months ago, the US Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced it would transition out of its final oversight role over the Internet Numbers Assigning Authority (IANA), a set of core functions for the administration of domain names, IP numbers and protocol parameters. IANA is currently managed by ICANN under contract with the NTIA.

For 16 years, ICANN has been waiting for that specific “window of opportunity” to open in order to allow for the final transition of the internet identifier management from the US administration, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade said during the opening press conference in Singapore.

Chehade warned: “Those who are genuinely committed to the quality of the proposal for the US government, are correct that we should not put deadlines. But those who for their own purposes try to delay the process, should make no mistake that we know that the most powerful tool to kill something is to delay it.”

While the IP address and the protocol community have finalised their proposals, the much more diverse group developing the proposal for domain names has not come to a final compromise over questions of how to fill the NTIA’s different roles.

Many discussions during the Singapore meeting will be devoted to the IANA transition. Magaziner, speaking during the welcoming ceremony, recounted the development of ICANN in the mid-1990s. At that time, the former academic stewards of the systems wanted to get out because of a growing number of lawsuits, while commercial companies and the UN International Telecommunication Union announced they would be interested in taking over.

Magaziner, who also asked the ICANN community not to be too slow, delivered four recommendations.

ICANN, the Scotty of Star Trek (Not Kirk)

ICANN should stick to the narrow, technical tasks, he said, joking, “They’re Scotty in the boiler room of Star Trek,” and not Captain Kirk.

Secondly, the organisation must further improve participation of developing countries, which is still too low.

Third, ICANN should stick to its internet roots and not try to dominate, staying true to the bottom-up principle.

And finally, it should not “build up too big a stockpile of money” and try to become the next Apple, because that would make ICANN a target.

Despite the reinforced call from ICANN to get on with the transition, accountability is still a matter of discussion during the Singapore week.

Experts like Syracuse University (US) professor Milton Mueller warn against being “lured” by the “siren song of simplicity” and an all-out ICANN internal solution. Enforceable rights after the end of the US government contract through some sort of service level agreement with ICANN’s IANA department could be beneficial for the names community.