NTIA’s IANA Transition Proposal Seen Likely to Color Governance Debate at Many International Forums

Singapore “is going to the first meeting where specifics are discussed” about the IANA transition, said Statton Hammock, vice president-legal affairs at domain registry Rightside. Hammock said he wasn’t sure “how the multistakeholder model should be developed” for the IANA transition, but was headed to Singapore “with open eyes.” ICANN “has been very open and receptive to stakeholders in the policy development process,” he said. The multistakeholder process “focuses on policy,” but it’s “too early to speculate” on the IANA transition, Hammock said. “Coming out of Singapore, we're hoping to have more concrete proposals.”

"The biggest issue in Singapore is just going to be about ICANN,” said Michael Berkens, managing director at Right of the Dot, a consulting firm specializing in top-level domain strategy. The interests of governments, domain name holders, trademark holders, registrars and registries that make up the multistakeholder model will have their “place at the table,” he said. If ICANN were to make “really weird decisions” that might “jeopardize the Internet or Internet freedom,” not having the U.S. government as “final overseer” doesn’t bode well for Internet governance, said Berkens. “If that right no longer belongs to the U.S., who does it belong to?” he asked. Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill may “take a look at that,” he said.

The IANA transition is “kind of exciting” for the ICANN community, because “we get to come together” as stakeholders, rather than having proposals “thrust in a top down fashion,” said Jon Nevett, co-founder of domain registrar Donuts. The transition solution is something that “remains to be answered” and will be a “big part” of Singapore, he said. What the multistakeholder model looks like and how it will “build consensus on the transition plan” are among the questions ICANN needs to address, Nevett said. The “point is to get all facets to try to weigh in and reach consensus,” he said.

The NTIA announcement “completely changes” the Singapore meeting, said Eli Dourado, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and a member of the U.S. delegations to the World Conference on International Telecommunications and the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum. Singapore likely would have differed from other ICANN meetings because it so closely precedes the NetMundial Internet governance meeting April 23-24 in São Paulo, Brazil, but now NTIA’s announcement will color the entire conference, Dourado said. ICANN will still be able to complete its stated agenda, but virtually all “hallway conversations” will focus on the NTIA announcement, he said.

There won’t be “significant movement” in the generic top-level domain (gTLD) arena in Singapore, but Internet governance will have “much more activity,” said CEO Nao Matsukata of domain consultancy firm FairWinds Partners. The central focus of the IANA transition and the larger conversation about Internet governance should be defining what one means “by multistakeholder or multiprocess,” he said. The NTIA’s announcement to transition IANA has “given over the idea of ICANN to the global community,” he said. “How do we define the people who are going to determine the fate of ICANN,” he asked. The multistakeholder process “emphasizes conversation over accountability” and isn’t a “system that allows for decision making,” he said. Creating the kind of sound policy necessary for the IANA transition is “difficult in an environment that is promoting process,” he said. “The real question is between now and 2015, who’s going to put structure into this process?”

The new gTLD rollout is “pretty close to the finish line,” and domain stakeholders are “looking to level the playing field” in Singapore to enhance competition, said Donuts’ Nevett. To date, there have been more than 300,000 registrations for new gTLDs, said Right of the Dot’s Berkens.

'Game Changer’ at ITU, Other Forums

The NTIA proposal is likely to be a “game changer” for Internet governance discussions at the International Telecommunication Union and in other international meetings dealing with the issue, said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute. The NTIA proposal changes a longstanding dynamic at ITU meetings, in which some stakeholders have proposed an ITU takeover or government takeover of the functions ICANN currently performs, McDowell said. Proponents of government-led Internet governance have argued that ICANN is too closely associated with the U.S. government, he said. The NTIA proposal “puts the U.S. on record as saying they don’t think governments of any kind should be involved, including the U.S. government,” McDowell said.

The “first glimpse” of foreign governments’ reaction to the NTIA proposal is likely to occur at the ITU-led World Telecommunication Development Conference, said Danielle Coffey, Telecommunications Industry Association vice president-government affairs. The WTDC, which will be March 30-April 10 in Dubai, is a more technical conference than other ITU forums, so it “won’t be formally addressed and won’t be something on the agenda, but it will certainly turn rhetoric into reality and will color conversations on where we want to go,” Coffey said. The NTIA proposal has received early support from ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré, she said.

The WTDC is the “first opportunity that government officials responsible for this area of policy will be getting together as a group since the NTIA announcement,” said Nick Ashton-Hart, the Computer & Communications Industry Association’s Geneva representative. “People will be comparing notes, I'm sure.” ITU stakeholders in Geneva are “already comparing notes,” Ashton-Hart said. “This has now put the onus on people to say what they want. They can’t just complain that the U.S. has this alleged control. Now people have to decide what they want, which has always been the problem."

McDowell and others said the NTIA proposal will have a more profound effect on the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (Plenipot) Oct. 20-Nov. 7 in Busan, South Korea. Internet governance “would have been the hottest, most contentious topic of discussion at the Plenipot regardless,” he said. “But this hopefully changes the dynamic of the debate and gives the pro-Internet freedom crowd something positive and constructive to talk about, rather than just saying no.” The NTIA proposal “raises the pressure on the ITU to accept some reforms,” Dourado said. “The case for ITU oversight has always been that the U.S. has a ’special role,’ so all governments should have equal oversight. The U.S. is effectively neutering that argument.”

"Middle-ground” ITU members who aren’t ardently in favor of either multistakeholder Internet governance or government-led Internet governance are likely to welcome the NTIA proposal, Ashton-Hart said. “That will make the Plenipot a little less tense in some respects,” he said. The Internet governance dynamic is unlikely to change in other ways, except that “instead of countries erroneously complaining that the U.S. controls these technical functions, they will complain that they are not yet free of the U.S.,” Ashton-Hart said. “But that probably won’t resonate to nearly the same extent. That said, the atmosphere is febrile because of the [National Security Agency surveillance programs] situation and it will be a difficult meeting."

The NetMundial conference is occurring independent of ICANN, but many of the stakeholders attending that meeting are also longtime ICANN participants, “so there will inevitably be some discussion about people’s views on what the post-U.S. framework looks like,” Ashton-Hart said. “I suspect the Brazilians and ICANN will try and say the discussion isn’t really about that since ICANN and the Internet registries have to design some kind of process to come up with a formula that everyone would buy into."

The NTIA proposal is also likely to color the work of the ICANN-created Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms, said McDowell, a member of the panel. The panel plans to issue recommendations in May on the future of multistakeholder Internet governance. “The mission of that panel is to come up with ideas for modernizing the multistakeholder structure while preserving it, so our recommendations will probably speak directly to how the IANA function should be managed by private sector nonprofit groups,” McDowell said. “Governments can have a seat at the table, they just can’t own the table.” The panel submitted a contribution to NetMundial earlier this month that is essentially a draft form of the recommendations it plans to formally issue in May, he said (http://bit.ly/1ftTWJb).