NTIA: Should the IANA Stewardship Transition be "unwound?"

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

The US NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration)
has published an inquiry as to whether its transfer of stewardship of
IANA to ICANN in 2016 should be "unwound." They are requesting comments
from interested parties to be sent to them by early July.

Quoting _The Register_:

"The US government has formally asked whether it should reassert
its control of the internet's administrative functions, effectively
reversing a handover to non-profit organization ICANN two years ago."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/05/us_government_icann_iana/

and

https://regmedia.co.uk/2018/06/05/ntia-internet-policy-noi-jun18.pdf

  - Brian

2

"should Uncle Sam regain ultimate control of IANA – the ICANN
department that oversees the planet's domain-name system, IP address
allocation, and network protocol number assignments?"

IANA is the Internet Assigned NUMBERS Authority. AFAIK, it does not
have stewardship over the domain-name system.

ICANN also does domains but not the IANA part. NTIA seems confused
about this too: the notice describes privatization of the DNS
happening in 2016.

3

OK, so looking at the actual notice in the Federal Register (Volume 83,
Number 108, Tuesday, June 5, 2018), the notice is quite lengthy and covers
a wide ranging set of topics.

The question about unwinding the stewardship transition is a single list item
in a rather large list of items which list is only subsection II of a 4-section series of areas of inquiry:

II. Multistakeholder Approach to Internet Governance

A. Does the multistakeholder approach continue to support an environment for the internet to grow and thrive? If so, why? If not, why not?

B. Are there public policy areas in which the multistakeholder approach works best? If yes, what are those areas and why? Are there areas in which the multistakeholder approach does not work effectively? If there are, what are those areas and why?

C. Are the existing accountability structures within multistakeholder internet governance sufficient? If not, why not? What improvements can be made?

D. Should the IANA Stewardship Transition be unwound? If yes, why and how? If not, why not?

E. What should be NTIA’s priorities within ICANN and the GAC?

F. Are there any other DNS related activities NTIA should pursue? If yes, please describe.

G. Are there barriers to engagement at the IGF? If so, how can we lower these barriers?

H. Are there improvements that can be made to the IGF’s structure,

organization, planning processes, or intercessional work programs? If so, what are they?

I. What, if any, action can NTIA take to help raise awareness about the IGF and foster stakeholder engagement?

J. What role should multilateral organizations play in internet governance?

The ones I find most amusing are G, H, and I, which apparently presume that the IGF is a somehow meaningful construct with credibility or ability to accomplish anything at all.

Owen