ICANN Wants To End Commerce Dept. Oversight In 2009

Ian Lamont writes "ICANN's current Joint Project Agreement with the US Commerce Department is set to expire in September of 2009, and ICANN wants to become more autonomous and switch to a global governance model, says ICANN's executive officer. The agreement between the nonprofit ICANN and the Commerce Department has been in place since 1998, and was renewed in 2006 despite international protests. A few US-based groups named in the article — including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the trade group TechNet and a conservative think tank iGrowthGlobal — would like the agreement with the Commerce Department to continue, in part to provide 'accountability.' The ICANN officer quoted in the article says expiration of the Commerce Department agreement would not remove accountability, as ICANN still has a contract with the US to operate the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority and must follow California law governing nonprofits. The Register is running a related story about why some people are uncomfortable with the United States' influence on ICANN. We discussed ICANN's request for independence a few months ago."

Comments

Accountability

[Toonol]

The trouble is that there is no way for ICANN to avoid the oversight of some nation... or nations, in the case of the UN. There will always be some sort of accountability to some governing body. Although the United States may be known to screw up from time-to-time (no, really, sometimes they do), I think the free speech laws in the US are as strong as anywhere in the world, and I have far more confidence that right will continue under the US than that it will under the UN.

Re:Accountability

[rtb61]

All too complicated. It would be far simple to completely break up ICANN and simply replace it with mirrored domains and cooperative treaties between nations. ICANN is completely unnecessary it really is a pointless waste sucking up money and seems to be do into doing nothing more than creating a cloak of non-profitability, whilst those wholesaling the services gain control of it and seek monopoly driven unlimited profit.

There is absolute no reason each country can create their own core domain and then simply based upon treaties with other countries mirror which ever registered names they choose, where another country abuses the system, the simply override the mirror with their own names/IP entries.

If the internet balkanises it makes it more expensive for business so they will seek to keep the system under control, of course for business it again is showing signs of becoming expensive with one centralised group having total control. So a brohen up and distributed between nations ICANN makes more sense, no UN required at all, just a system of database mirrors and treaties.

If ICANN is released, who will control it?

[karl.auerbach]

ICANN is already costing you and me - the people who buy domain names - something on the order of $500,000,000 every year in hyper-inflated fees that go directly into the bank account Verisign and the lesser registries. ICANN also requires you and me to path a tithe of about $0.20 to ICANN every time we register a domain name.

And ICANN has created a regime that restricts DNS on behalf of the trademark industry in ways that RIAA can only envy and wish they had such restrictions over music distribution on the net.

And despite that, ICANN has no means for the public to engage in its decision processes beyond remotely observing and trying joining an ICANN approved committee that, in turn joins another ICANN approved committee, that, in turn gets a seat on another ICANN committee, that gets to nominate members of the board of directors. Even citizens of the old USSR had a more representative system.

Once upon a time ICANN did have directors elected by the public - I was the one for North America - but when I wanted to look at ICANN's financial records, a thing quite proper for a director to do, ICANN reacted by erasing all elected seats.

So, if the US government drops its oversight, limited and self-interested as it might be, where will oversight come from?

Do we really trust that ICANN will be any more self-responsive to the community of internet users than was Enron or MCI/Worldcom to their shareholders?

It does seem that the quid pro quo that the US ought to require as the price of freedom is that ICANN adopt mechanisms that really and truly make it responsible to the public.

There is, of course, the further question of where ICANN might obtain immunity against anti-trust laws should the US gov't drop its protective cloak - ICANN does shape the domain name marketplace, set prices and product terms, determine who may and who may not be vendors in that marketplace, and in other ways restrains trade in the world's only viable marketplace of domain names. Several experts in the field feel that ICANN may be vulnerable as a combination that acts in restraint of trade.

Better the US than some backwater hole

[ThoreauHD]

I would think that Russia, China, Pakistan, and wow, just pick a country- overseeing ICANN would be pretty much insane. Even the UN in their current configuration would be prone to make entire countries disappear without much thought. While the US has made mistakes I'm sure, it's better that than an Isamic(Kill all Jews) republic or a Communist(Oh, was that called Tibet?) nation. In an insane world, the USA is the most sane option. And don't get started on how Finland, Sweden, or some other cute Eurospherian nation could do it. They have to back it with a military that can match those other countries stated above.

I wish there was a better way at this point, just to be distribute the load. But I'm not seeing it. No, I'd rather the US protect my domain names than some great firewall of China derivative.