ICANN Seeks to Distance Itself from Commerce, Beckstrom Says
The Department of Commerce is 11 years late in transitioning Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to the private sector, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom told the department in a letter Friday. ICANN’s contract with NTIA has remained “essentially unchanged” since the 2000 agreement and should be revised to ensure the stability and security of Internet functions, wrote Beckstrom. The letter was written in response to NTIA’s notice of inquiry last month about the renewal of ICANN’s IANA contract, which is to expire Sept. 30 (WID Feb 28 p2). Comments are due by the end of this week.
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The IANA agreement should be modified to reflect a cooperative agreement rather than a procurement contract, Beckstrom told NTIA. Furthermore, Commerce should extend the procurement contract time frame from a one-year commitment to a longer term in order to “provide assurance to the global community that these functions will be performed in a secure and stable environment,” Beckstrom said. Nearing the end of its fourth IANA contract, ICANN is the only private company to have managed IANA functions since DARPA ended its Terranode Network Technology research project with the University of Southern California in 2000. Current IANA functions include coordination of the assignment of technical Internet protocol parameters, administration of certain responsibilities associated with Internet DNS root zone management, allocation of Internet numbering resources, and other services related to the management of the .ARPA and .INT top-level domains.
Beckstrom urged NTIA to narrow the scope of the IANA functions framework in order to promote global public interest. Specifically the management of .ARPA and port and protocol parameter registry functions should be performed under a separate agreement between ICANN and the Internet Architecture Board/Internet Engineering Task Force, the letter said. Also Commerce should limit any new technical functions such as RPKI/signing of numbering resources, wrote Beckstrom. “There is no logical reason for these functions to be performed under a U.S. Government procurement contract.”
The department should also remove administrative oversight and contract management review processes, Beckstrom said. “The efficiency and transparency of these functions could be significantly improved for the benefit of global stakeholders if DOC’s administrative oversight and contract management review processes for these separate functions were removed,” he said. Furthermore, Commerce should not attempt to try to split ICANN’s three primary functions among separate organizations because it would decrease efficiency and resiliency while increasing the cost to industry organizations that fund IANA functions, wrote Beckstrom.
Beckstrom’s letter was not a surprise, said Steve DelBianco, executive director at NetChoice. “Ever since the CEO took the reigns he has been lobbying for full custody of the IANA functions,” he said. “Whether it’s a procurement contract or a cooperative agreement, I know one thing for sure: ICANN’s role in IANA should disappear if it ever walked away from the Affirmation of Commitments. The Affirmation is cancelable with 120 days notice, which ought to give enough time to find another independent entity who can manage the IANA functions,” said DelBianco.
"ICANN has not been a very good trustee,” said Michael Palage, a former ICANN board member. “They have been disappointing and alienating governments. They talk about how they want to maximize the openness and transparency in connection with IANA agreement but it’s hard to reconcile what they say and what they do.” The U.S. government needs to determine whether ICANN should be an operator, regulator, or a coordinator, said Palage. “Serving in an operational role is inconsistent in its mission as operating in a regulatory role. That’s where the driving focus needs to be.”