Hi all, Pardon the very late response (and the slightly-off-topic-for-this-list posting) (and the excessively long diatribe), but I have been discussing the IANA contract issues with NTIA and ICANN/IANA substantially in recent days here at ICANN Costa Rica. Firstly, I am very sure the issues have nothing whatever to do with the new gTLD process. Larry Strickling (NTIA head-honcho) said in his most recent speech about upholding ICANN's multistakeholder-made decisions: "There is an equally large concern with maintaining the consensus once it has been reached. Nowhere is this point better demonstrated than in the criticism that surfaced in December regarding the expansion of top level domain names by ICANN. For the last six years, ICANN and its many stakeholders have debated the rules to govern this program. ICANN’s process involved global stakeholders from the business community, civil society, registries, registrars, and governments. Nonetheless, we saw parties that did not like the outcome seeking unilateral action by the U.S. government to overturn or delay the product of ICANN’s six-year multistakeholder process that engaged folks from all over the world. It is important to separate the concerns some industry members have from the process they wish us to employ to change the decisions and compromises ICANN reached with stakeholders around the world. To the extent that some members of industry believe there are a number of unintended and unforeseen consequences that could jeopardize the success of the expansion program, we are sympathetic to those concerns. We have urged ICANN to mitigate concerns and issues related to the perceived need for defensive gTLD applications and to improve communication with stakeholders and potential new applicants. But one thing that I did not do was demand that ICANN abandon its multistakeholder processes to deal with these concerns. And that brings me to my final point—defining the role of governments within the multistakeholder process and responding to the threats of some governments to bring Internet policy issues under government control. Each challenge to the multistakeholder model has implications for Internet governance throughout the world. When parties ask us to overturn the outcomes of these processes, no matter how well-intentioned the request, they are providing “ammunition” to other countries who would like to see governments take control of the Internet. " See http://www.ntia.doc.gov/speechtestimony/2012/keynote-address-assistant-secre... Secondly there are all sorts of rumours that also don't carry any weight (for e.g. delayed the contract so that the departing CEO wouldn't be able to claim the credit for having achieved a renewal of the contract for his CV) So why then? NTIA went to the global internet community with a Notice of Inquiry and then a Further Notice of Inquiry, and from the inputs received from that community, issued an RFP for the IANA contract renewal that very well encapsulated a host of changes and additional requirements that came from the global community. Virtually all the InternetNZ submission points to NTIA were taken up by US Government as requirements for the IANA contractor. I would therefore contest that the US Government is merely the conduit for a multistakeholder process, rather than a unilateral imperialist government - although I would argue that in other policy areas like copyright and IP rights protection, the US Government is extremely imperialist, top-down and bullying. I suppose the strength that can continue for ccLTDs like .nz, facing competition from the potential large number of new gTLDs, is that we remain completely at arms length from US law enforcement and politics, and have policies and procedures that follow NZ due process, and are built through consensus based, open and transparent decision making of the local internet community. Finally then - the reason why US Government rejected ICANNs response was because ICANN did not respond with the full detail required in the RFP. I am pleased the US Government took this action, as I want ICANN to acknowledge and commit to the requirements of the contract, so that ICANN becomes contracturally bound to fulfil the obligations that InternetNZ saw as critical requirements in its earlier submissions. Apologies again for the long and off topic rave, but I think the original post required greater clarification. Cheers Keith On 11/03/2012 11:19 p.m., Tristram Cheer wrote:
Hey All,
Has anyone else seen the NTIA playing chicken with ICANN over the IANA? NTIA came out about 12 hours ago saying that it had not received a proposal that it deemed to fit it’s criteria for the IANA RFP, It sounds like they are still annoyed at the new gTLD policies and the .xxx gTLD saga. Does anyone here believe that the IANA contract might move to someone else or is just posturing while waiting for a new CEO at ICANN who might work with NTIA better? From what I can understand the heart of the issue is NTIA want ICANN to prove that any new gTLD is in the best public interest but also be “approved” by the GAC
I have to wonder how much longer the rest of the world will tolerate US interference in the DNS system such as the many recent examples of domain takedowns before action is taken, As messy as a “fork” would be of DNS the US government seems to be hell bent on putting any domain anywhere in the world under US law, Which I’m sure most can agree is bad thing.
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*Tristram Cheer* Network Architect- /Most problems are the result of previous solutions.../
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