Tech Hearings Thursday: FinTech, Virtual Currency, Comey, NTIA Nominee

Disrupter Series: Improving Consumer's Financial Options With FinTech

Scheduled for Thursday, June 8, 2017, at 10am EDT #SubDCCP -- The U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on financial technology (FinTech), part of its Disruptors Series on how emerging technologies are disrupting various industries.

Witnesses:

Ms. Jeanne Hogarth
Vice President, Center for Financial Services Innovation
Witness Statement and Truth in Testimony and CV

Mr. Javier Saade
Managing Director, Fenway Summer Ventures
Witness Statement and Truth in Testimony and CV

Ms. Christina Tetreault
Staff Attorney, Consumer Union
Witness Statement

Mr. Peter Van Valkenburgh
Research Director, Coin Center
Witness Statement and Truth in Testimony and CV

Documents: Hearing Notice and Hearing Memo

Also on Thursday, June 8, 2017, at 10:00 a.m. EDT:

• Hearing entitled “Virtual Currency: Financial Innovation and National Security Implications” | House Committee on Financial Services. This will be a one-panel hearing with the following witnesses: • Jerry Brito, Executive Director, Coin Center • Scott Dueweke, President, The Identity and Payments Association • Kathryn Haun, Lecturer, Stanford Law School • Jonathan Levin, Co-Founder, Chainalysis • Luke Wilson, Vice President, Business Development-Investigations, Elliptic. This hearing will explore terrorists and illicit use of financial technology (FinTech), the national security implications of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, and the use of “blockchain” technologies to record transactions and uncover illicit activities. Witnesses will provide testimony about the exploitation of virtual currency by terrorists and transnational criminal groups, as well as provide risk assessments and policy considerations to mitigate illicit financing but not to impede the development of FinTech innovations.

• US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing
UPDATE June 8, 2017, video--President Trump's lawyer Marc Kasowitz (kasowitz.com) responds to Comey testimony:

Streamed live June 8, 2017: President Trump's lawyer Marc Kasowitz holds a press conference following the testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing: Former FBI Director James Comey testifying:

WATCH LIVE: Fired FBI Director James Comey testifies about alleged Russian hacking and interference in the U.S. election--this is the media circus extravaganza upon which all of Washington, D.C. and most of  "liberal media" (e.g.,Washington Post, New York Times, et al) has been obsessed--Comey is a real prima donna with a grudge against President Donald Trump who fired Comey after receiving a recommendation from the U.S. Attorney General that Comey be terminated due to his violations of U.S. Department of Justice protocols and policies in the course of the investigation of Hillary Clinton last year. Expect fireworks! But be prepared for a complete lack of actual evidence on "Russia interfering with the 2016 election" that would stand up in a court of law--actual facts supporting the hysteria, innuendo, anonymous source "leaks," rumors, and other #FakeNews published by the Washington Post, New York Times, et al. [Editor's tip: If you're not obsessed with the "Washington D.C. media circus over Russia and Trump," you might want to skip this and catch the highlights via Twitter]. Here's Comey's opening statement (pdf)(no 'smoking gun' there either).

• Committee Chairman: Richard Burr (R-NC) 
• Vice Chairman: Mark Warner (D-VA)
• Other members of the Senate Intelligence Committee  

• Senate Commerce Committee hearing on nominee David Redl to be Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the Department of Commerce. If confirmed, Redl will be in charge of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and serve as President Trump's top telecom adviser, including how to expand the nation's broadband infrastructure. Trump has mentioned broadband buildout in his fiscal 2018 budget proposal, as part of infrastructure spending. Redl is currently chief counsel at House Committee on Energy and Commerce, advisor to Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and panel Republicans on communications and technology matters, and previously was a registered lobbyist and director of regulatory affairs at CTIA, a trade association representing wireless companies such as AT&T, Dish and Verizon. Redl sees the top three challenges facing the NTIA as maximizing how agencies effectively use spectrum, improving broadband reliability – particularly in rural places, and better addressing the needs of the U.S. digital economy.

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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DISCLAIMER

US Congressman Tells ICANN CEO To 'Abandon' IANA Transition

UPDATE: ICANN President & CEO Fadi Chehade has replied to Congressman Duffy by letter (pdf) dated February 11, 2016, embedded below:

U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy

In a letter (pdf) to ICANN President & CEO, Fadi Chehadé, dated January 13, 2016, U.S. Congressman Sean P. Duffy (Rep, Wisconsin 7th District), expressed his displeasure with the ICANN CEO's recent interview on NPR about the IANA stewardship transition proposal being prepared by ICANN for submittal to the U.S. government (U.S. Department of Commerce, NTIA). Congressman Duffy notes in his letter "the widespread opposition in Congress to your efforts" and concluded his letter (emphasis added):

"I urge you to abandon your plans to weaken the Internet for users in the United States and around the world. The Commerce Department has no money to consider your proposal and I will continue to do everything in my power to ensure that it never does." --Congressman Duffy, January 13, 2016 Letter to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé 

Full text:

Congressman Duffy has an interesting biography, according to Wikipedia--

"... Duffy started log rolling at age five and speed climbing (sprinting up 60 and 90 foot poles) at 13. He holds two speed-climbing titles. Television career--Duffy has been an ESPN color commentator for televised competitions and in 2003 appeared as both a competitor and commentator on ESPN's Great Outdoor Games. He was named Badger State Games Honorary Athlete of the 2004 Winter Games. In 1997, Duffy appeared on The Real World: Boston, the sixth season of the MTV reality television show, and on Road Rules: All Stars in 1998, where he met his future wife Rachel. Duffy later appeared on Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Seasons, which aired in 2002. Both appeared in a filmed segment on 2008's The Real World Awards Bash, while Duffy served as district attorney ..." 

Sounds like he could give the real Donald J. Trump a run for his money!  Caveat ICANN!

As for the IANA Transition timetable, here's the latest (Feb 2, 2016) from the CCWG Co-Chairs:

Leading into Marrakech: An Update from the CCWG-Accountability co-Chairs - ICANN: "... Our goal is to distribute the supplemental report to our Chartering Organizations in time for consideration and approval on all Work Stream 1 Recommendations at ICANN55 [March 5-10, 2016] in Marrakech. Keeping in mind the working methods for the various Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, we ask that this be into account as the Chartering Organizations plan their discussions and schedules leading into and during ICANN55..."


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DISCLAIMER

ICANN Not Ready for IANA Stewardship Says House Judiciary Chairman

"ICANN must have accountability and transparency measures in place before such a [IANA stewardship] transition could occur and they simply are not there now."

US House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte Applauds Funding Prohibition on Internet Domain Name System Transfer - Judiciary Committee Press Release (June 3, 2015):

"House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) issued the following statement upon House passage of the Fiscal Year 2016 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Act (H.R. 2578), which includes a prohibition on funds to transition oversight over the Internet’s domain name system away from the Department of Commerce.

“The Obama Administration’s proposal to transition stewardship in overseeing the management of the Internet away from the U.S. and to an international body has kicked off high-profile debates involving many far-reaching questions that relate to the future security, stability, resiliency and integrity of the global Internet’s continued operation.

“While the proposed transition has raised numerous questions, the Administration has been less than forthcoming with answers. The Obama Administration maintains that the International [sic] Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is capable of such a transition but the evidence indicates that this is simply not the case.

“As the House Judiciary Committee’s recent hearing further demonstrated, ICANN must have accountability and transparency measures in place before such a transition could occur and they simply are not there now.

“Given all the concerns over the proposed transition of the Internet domain name system to ICANN, the funding prohibition included in the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill is necessary to halt this flawed policy from the Obama Administration.”

"Background: The House Judiciary Committee’s Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet Subcommittee recently held an oversight hearing in order to hear directly from a wide range of stakeholders on the status and impact of the proposed transition as well as other important issues that relate to whether ICANN is trustworthy, accountable and transparent." (emphasis added)

source: US House Judiciary Committee Press Release

see also on Domain Mondo:

• Two Congressional Hearings Wednesday on ICANN and IANA Transition
• US Hearing Wednesday: ICANN, .SUCKS, IANA Transition, Accountability
• US Congressional Hearing LIVE 2 pm, ICANN, IANA Stewardship Transition
• Video Replay of Congressional Hearings on ICANN, IANA May 13th, Tweets
• ICANN, IANA functions, Ultimate Mechanism of Accountability, A New Root

see also: ICANN: IANA Stewardship Transition | Enhancing ICANN Accountability


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What Is The US Government's Claim to the Internet Root?

This is part 2 of the post: The Day Jon Postel Freed The Internet Root From US Government Control

So what exactly is the U.S. Government's claim of authority to, or over, the Internet or its highest domain in the hierarchy of the DNS, the Internet Root Zone?

Current List of the 13 Named  Root Zone Authorities - source: IANA

Slide from Root Server Operators Presentation to GAC in 2003

Today the authoritative name servers that serve the Internet DNS root zone, commonly known as the “root servers,” are in fact a network of hundreds of servers in many countries around the world. They are configured in the DNS root zone as 13 named authorities, as shown above but no single organization (neither commercial nor governmental) controls the entire system. The root zone is the information created by IANA and distributed by Verisign to all root servers. The 13 named authorities in the DNS root zone are operated by 12 independent organizations - 10 located in the United States, and 1 each in Sweden, the Netherlands and Japan. Hundreds of machines respond to DNS queries sent to the root server IP addresses through a technique known as "any cast." This technique ensures global accessibility of root zone data. Changes to the root zone are currently administered by ICANN through the IANA function pursuant to the contract administrated by NTIA. VeriSign performs the related root zone management functions pursuant to a cooperative agreement with NTIA which ensures that the procedure of making changes to the root zone is properly followed and observed.

"Governance of the root zone has been one of the most controversial issues in the international Internet policy debate. The main point raising divergent views has been about the historical role of the United States in the stewardship of changes to the root zone as administered through the IANA process by ICANN." Mapping of international Internet public policy issues, pp.16-17, April, 2015 (emphasis added).

Therefore, it was no surprise that in the course of the IANA stewardship transition, specifically, within the CCWG on ICANN accountability, a question was raised as to the US government's "claim" to the Internet root. The very same US government official quoted in part one in the Washington Post excerpt about the Postel root server incident in 1998, J. Beckwith Burr a/k/a Becky Burr (now Chief Privacy Officer and Deputy General Counsel of NeuStar, Inc.), is a member of the CCWG-Accountability group and wrote a lengthy, detailed response to that question which one can read in full here. Domain Mondo has edited and abbreviated it below (emphasis and links added):

"The answer to your question re USG [US government] “claim” to the root is – as I’m sure you know – somewhat convoluted ... The USG entered into a “cooperative agreement" with Network Solutions in 1993, under which Network Solutions operated the authoritative root, and also provided both registry and registrar services to TLDs other than ccTLDs. Until he died in 1998, Jon Postel was in charge of IANA functions through a contract between the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute and DARPA. As far as I know, during that period, Jon delegated ccTLDs and Network Solutions added them to the root at Jon’s direction. We have no record of the terms and conditions under which these delegations occurred prior to 1994, when RFC 1591 was issued. "The Cooperative Agreement was somewhat ambiguous about “ownership” and “authority.” In 1993, when the Cooperative Agreement was signed, there were some 7500 registered domain names.... The situation was complicated by the fact that the IANA functions – so presumably the authority to modify the authoritative root – was performed by USC/ISI under a regular government procurement contract with DARPA. Did that mean DARPA had authority to control changes to the authoritative root? I don’t think anyone really knows. Maybe the answer lies in the Postel archives, which have not been made available by USC. And finally, it should be noted that throughout this period there were no formal agreements with the root server operators in the US and elsewhere ... As a practical matter, it is the root server operators who determine which root is authoritative (as Jon once demonstrated). So, call the situation murky....

"Your question about whether or not the USG has a basis for its “claim” of authority over the root is a bit metaphysical. The USG clearly has the right to prevent Verisign from modifying the authoritative root. Whether or not it had the right before Amendment 11, Verisign gave the DOC [Department of Commerce] that right by contract in that amendment. The USG’s authority to determine which root serves as the authoritative root and who operates that root is not spelled out in black and white anywhere that I know of – it is something that happened along the way, a byproduct of contract and the passage of time, and certainly not an inherently governmental function. To the extent there ever was “property” - e.g., in the form of USG funded root server hardware, for example, I am confident that such property is long past its useful life and no longer in service. What we know for sure is that Verisign operates the authoritative root and the DOC has the contractual authority to tell Verisign not to make a change to the root. That right reflects a contractual agreement between two parties, and does not seem to me to be a delegation of authority over USG “property.” Accordingly, I think the USG has the right to transfer authority for changes to the root in the manner contemplated here. To be sure, this transfer was in fact contemplated expressly in Amendment 11, when the DOC and Verisign agreed that the USG had the right to direct Verisign to follow the directions of “Newco” (which subsequently became ICANN)...."

further info:
root-servers.org
ICANN | NSI-NSF Cooperative Agreement | 1 January 1993
Verisign Cooperative Agreement | NTIA
IANA Functions and Related Root Zone Management Transition Questions and Answers | NTIA

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The Day Jon Postel Freed The Internet Root From US Government Control

Jon Postel in 1994, with hand-drawn map of Internet top-level domains. Photo By Irene Fertik, USC News Service. © 1994, USC. [used with permission]

This post is about Jon Postel a/k/a the "god of the internet," the U.S. Government and its claim on the Internet Root, as well as IANA, ICANN, the Root Zone Maintainer Verisign, successor to Network Solutions (NSI), and the IANA Stewardship Transition. [UPDATE: Part 2 of this post is now What Is The US Government's Claim to the Internet Root?]

"In the Domain Name System (DNS) naming of computers there is a hierarchy of names. The root of system is unnamed. There are a set of what are called "top-level domain names" (TLDs). These are the generic TLDs (EDU, COM, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT), and the two letter country codes from ISO-3166. It is extremely unlikely that any other TLDs will be created."--Jon Postel, March 1994, RFC 1591

On January 28, 1998, Jon Postel emailed eight of the [then] twelve operators of the Internet's regional root nameservers, instructing them to change the authoritative Internet root zone server from Network Solutions NSI's A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET (198.41.0.4) to DNSROOT.IANA.ORG (198.32.1.98). The operators complied with Postel's instructions, thus dividing control of the Internet between 8 non-government operators and the 4 remaining U.S. Government roots at NASA, DoD, and BRL with NSI. Though usage of the Internet was not interrupted, Postel soon heard from senior US government officials who threatened him to undo this change--

"According to news reports at the time, Postel made the switch without approval from anyone. Some said it was merely a “test” meant to show that the internet’s directory infrastructure could be repositioned as needed. But others said that Postel was making a statement — that he was trying to show the White House that it couldn’t wrest control of the internet from the widespread community of researchers who had built and maintained the network over the previous three decades. The White House was just days away from revealing a plan to reorganize the way the internet’s directory system was governed."--Remembering Jon Postel — And the Day He Hijacked the Internet | WIRED

Washington Post - Saturday, January 31, 1998 - Page H01:   "... Internet community leaders affiliated with Postel spent the week embroiled in tense negotiations with the Clinton administration over the government's  future role in controlling some of the network's key operating functions ... Some computer user groups, including those affiliated with Postel, had urged the government to end its oversight of the network sooner. "It's very hard to believe the timing was entirely coincidental," said one senior government official familiar with the incident. Postel did not return phone calls seeking comment yesterday, but in a statement he said the reconfiguration would result in "no change to the data" in the directory-information computers, called "root servers." He said that "once this test is completed, [the servers] will revert to the previous arrangements."... One of the reconfigured servers is located at the University of Maryland at College Park ... Gerry Sneeringer, the assistant director for networking for the university's Academic Information Technologies Service, said he received an e-mail message last week from Postel asking that the change be made. "If Jon asks us to point somewhere else, we'll do it," Sneeringer said. "He is the authority here." Akira Kato, a researcher at the University of Tokyo who runs another root server, said in a telephone interview that he, too, reconfigured his server after getting an e-mail from Postel. J. Beckwith Burr, a [U.S. government] Commerce Department official who co-authored the administration's report, said the incident "caused a lot of concern ... We have asked that the system be returned to the situation it was in before and that no such tests are to be undertaken without consultation again." (emphasis added)

Within a week, the US NTIA issued a proposal to "improve" technical management of Internet names and addresses, including changes to authority over the Internet DNS root zone, which ultimately, and controversially, increased U.S. control over the Internet. On October 16, 1998, Postel died of heart problems in Los Angeles, nine months after the DNS Root Authority incident. 
All of which would be an interesting footnote in the history of the Internet, but for the US Government's Department of Commerce, NTIA, March, 2014, announced "intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community," including NTIA's procedural role of administering changes to the authoritative [Internet] root zone file; its historic stewardship of the DNS--the Internet Domain Name System, including its roles in the IANA functions and the Internet root zone management functions--see: NTIA Q&A, March 2014.

Part 2 of this post is now here: What Is The US Government's Claim to the Internet Root?
further info:
root-servers.org
ICANN | NSI-NSF Cooperative Agreement | 1 January 1993
Verisign Cooperative Agreement | NTIA
IANA Functions and Related Root Zone Management Transition Questions and Answers | NTIA
USC/ISI's Postel Center
http://www.postel.org/pr.htm

From Domain Mondo: Steve Crocker's Remembrance of Jon Postel Was The Best Thing That Happened at ICANN 51


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ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade's View of the IANA Transition is Shortsighted and Naive

"I think if we get rid of that contract [IANA contract] we will be free of the pressures"

                    -- ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehade, February 10, 2015 (infra)

I’m Just Now Realizing How Stupid We Are: "I've learned that short-term thinking is at the root of most of our problems, whether it's in business, politics, investing, or work" - Morgan Housel

The first quote above, in sum, is the narrative that ICANN's Fadi Chehade is selling, and apparently, naively believes. Domain Mondo has a few words of advice for Fadi Chehade and ICANN--be careful what you ask for--you apparently have no idea of the pressures you may be under once the IANA contract with the US government is gone. Domain Mondo predicts that within a few years after the transition is complete, ICANN and Fadi Chehadé (if he's still around) will look back fondly at the time when ICANN was under the immunity and protection of the US government, as a relatively stress-free time. Governments (totalitarian and otherwise), as well as well-resourced vested interests who are already powerful stakeholders within ICANN (and to whom Fadi, even now, readily panders) and other special interests, will then begin to really pressure ICANN in ways that apparently neither ICANN, Fadi Chehade (nor NTIA's Larry Strickling), have even begun to imagine nor contemplate. That is the principal reason this transition is a perilous time for the future of the Internet and the global Internet community, and also why CCWG-Accountability and CWG-Stewardship should not "hurry up and just hand everything over to ICANN." No, they should take as much time as they really need. They may have only this one chance "to get it right."

So, not only did NTIA and ICANN bungle the IANA transition process at the beginning (and afterwards), but they, apparently, are operating under naive assumptions of "what it will be like" once the IANA functions contract between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce is gone. Read the full portion of that part of the transcript for yourself--

ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehade (February 10, 2015):

“…. we made a very, very careful analysis that if we do not finish the work Ira [Magaziner] started that we're giving those governments who would like to come and put far more pressure on us, we're giving them farther to do that. They're very, very, including the Germans, including the French, including governments ... I am not speaking about China, Russia, and the countries that everybody lists. I am speaking about friends who are saying this regime has to go because if it doesn't, it's harder for us to stand up for the system. We wanted this [NTIA/US government IANA contract with ICANN] to go so people have less pressure on ICANN. Right now the political pressure comes from the fact, "You are a US agency." [foreign language] which is France's top newspaper, this is there Wall Street Journal, New York Times, whatever you call it, had a front page article linking ICANN to the NSA. Front page article, full analysis including [inaudible], one of ours who comes to our meetings write an article linking us directly to the NSA. It's crazy. It's just nuts. The environment is nuts. This is all because every time I go meet them they say, "You are under contract from the US government, you are a US agency. Let's end this line and let's take control as a community. Let's make sure the board stays under the control of the community through better accountability measures. This will put us in a better environment. Today we are politically charged because of this contract. I hope, frankly, I flip this, Jeff. I think if we get rid of that contract we will be free of the pressures I'm feeling now all of the time. "You're an American agent,"I was told walking into a European office of minister. "You guys are American agents." We're not American agents, we are a community of people, this is how we make decisions. You go through all of that and it comes back down to the silly contract with Vernita Harris. It's nothing. You and I know that contract is nothing. That's not how the American government works with us. It's simply a button that Vernita pushes, but it's causing us a lot of the pressure we're feeling now. Let's get rid of it. Let's get rid of these pressures and let's look these people in the eye, frankly as we did with the Chinese. The Chinese, we got them down to the point where we said, "This is all it is and you can scream all you want or you can work with us on the single [Internet] root." They did come to London and you know the rest of this. Finally the Chinese are not saying, "Who is ICANN?" At every international meeting. Every international meeting that's happening now, China is supporting the ICANN model of a single [Internet] root. That's a big advance. Why did they do it? Because the transition is coming. If the transition doesn't happen, a lot of these games we make to get people to keep the internet united. I went with Jack Ma to see the premier of China. Jack told the premier, he said, "I did a promotion on the internet on November 11th, it was. $9 billion of sales Mr. Premier, because the internet has a single root and I was able to reach customers in over 100 countries on the same day. Keep it open." I think we need to keep these governments tied to our model. The best way to do that is to remove this card they keep playing on us that we are an American agent...." (emphasis added)

Domain Mondo agrees that, yes, "the transition is coming"--but what is coming afterwards may be very different than what ICANN and Fadi Chehade naively believe today.

UPDATE: Internet governance: What if the sky really is falling? - The Washington Post: "Whoever controls the DNS – whether it’s the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or anyone else – will, as we put it in the paper, “inevitably be subject to intense pressure, from many directions, public and private,” to leverage its control over Internet technical infrastructure at one level of the protocol stack – the DNS – to enforce rules about message content at a higher level of the stack."--David Post, May 4, 2015

Caveat Emptor!


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ICANN Accountability, IANA Transition, Deadline Dysfunctionality

Remarks of Assistant Secretary Strickling at The Media Institute | NTIA: "... the current [IANA] contract expires at the end of September 2015. I want to emphasize that we did not set a deadline for this transition.  If for some reason the community needs more time, we have the option to extend the current contract for up to four years." (emphasis added)

Philip S. Corwin has written a thoughtful article published on circleid.com (link and excerpt below) which I commend for reading re: the Enhancing ICANN Accountability process, which also relates to the IANA Stewardship Transition process as both are now trapped in deadline dysfunctionality:

Accountability Group Charter Sets the Bar Too Low: ".... Unfortunately, and with all respect to the Drafting Team members who labored hard, fast, and in good faith to reach consensus on this proposed Charter, it fails to adequately capitalize on the opportunity created by the community's united actions over August and September, and should not be adopted by the chartering organizations absent strengthening revisions.

The Charter's major deficiencies are:

• Letting the arguably unrealistic goal of meeting a September 2015 deadline for transition of the IANA functions dominate its proposed timeline and approach to required deliverables.
• Adopting a dual work stream approach that almost surely puts off the major accountability issues and decisions until after the IANA transition takes place, at which point the community's unity may well dissipate and its leverage vis-à-vis ICANN will be permanently diluted.
• Preserving the ability of ICANN's Board to reject the most important accountability reforms by simply remaining intransigent...." (emphasis added)

My comment (also published on circleid.com):

"Thoughtful, well-written article, Phil. I do not understand the IANA ICG's and now the CCWG-Accountability's "rush" to meet an artificial September 2015 deadline when NTIA/Department of Commerce has repeatedly said there is no problem extending the time frame. Isn't it better to have a substantive end result which has lasting value and broad community support, than a top-down result with little community support? It appears that framing these processes by this "artificial time deadline" is being used as a way to manipulate the community into accepting outcomes which maintain the status quo because "we are running out of time" to consider better alternatives. Unless there is a sea-change, when all is done, the best that will be said of the IANA transition and ICANN Accountability processes is: "Well, they had to meet a deadline and did the best they could under the circumstances." -- John Poole"

It appears that both the IANA Transition and ICANN Accountability processes have now made the false deadline of September, 2015, the priority over everything else. Good luck getting anything of real lasting value substantively, from either process, with the "arguably unrealistic" deadline of September 2015 as The Priority! There's a wealth of literature on the subject of unrealistic deadlines and the resulting dysfunctionality, e.g., Managing projects with unrealistic deadlines - TechRepublic: "... the time constraint is not in alignment with the ... scope ..."


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ICANN .IR Response, IANA Functions Minefield Revealed

Kudos to Philip Corwin for the best and most insightful analysis thus far of the ICANN .IR response (at link below, excerpts follow):

ICANN’s .IR Response Opens Legal Can of Worms - InternetCommerce.org: ".... At the top of page 18 (p. 28 of the Ben Haim vs. Islamic Republic of Iran pdf), the memo makes the argument that, under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), Plaintiffs must show that the “property in the United States of a foreign state” is “used for a commercial activity in the United States”. While .IR and the other ccTLDs at issue have no commercial contacts in the U.S., this is not true for .CO and other ccTLDs that have been repurposed as quasi-gTLDs and are being administered by entities located within the U.S..... At p.20 (p.30 of the pdf) of the memo, it is noted that ICANN’s authority is limited to recommending a transfer of the ccTLD to the Department of Commerce (DOC) under the current IANA contract; that under that contract ICANN may only recommend re-delegation for narrow technical and ministerial reasons; and that DOC retains the ultimate authority on the matter... However, this argument immediately raises the question of what the situation will be for ccTLDs will be after the IANA transition, when DOC no longer possesses final authority on TLD re-delegations and when there may be no contract at all in place governing the conduct of the IANA functions. Ironically, terminating the IANA contract between DOC and ICANN may place ccTLDs at greater risk of being re-delegated pursuant to the judicial orders of U.S. courts because this fallback contractual argument will no longer be available!... while ICANN has done its best to quash the writs of attachment for the ccTLDs in question, its arguments raise multiple other questions and issues...." (read more at the link above, emphasis added)

They never thought about any of this in Washington at NTIA or at ICANN before the rushed IANA announcement--and of course this is just par for the course for ICANN which really doesn't think through much of anything--the disastrous new gTLDs being a prime example!

more info on the .IR case:
https://www.icann.org/resources/press-material/release-2014-07-30-en.

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/icann-various-2014-07-30-en.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_dOI5puxRA9M3hweE9Eel9mVTQ/edit?pli=1.

For background reading (2002):  von Arx and Hagen, Volume IX Issue 1, Richmond Journal of Law & Technology: SOVEREIGN DOMAINS - A Declaration of Independence of ccTLDs from Foreign Control

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ICANN role in IANA Functions is Clerical, Iran Will Not Lose .IR ccTLD

The "IANA Functions Operator" is ICANN--a clerical role, the Administrator is the US Department of Commerce, and the Root Zone Maintainer is Verisign

Kudos to John R. Levine for illuminating both Why Iran is not going to lose the .IR domain and how limited ICANN's current role in the IANA functions really is--

John R. Levine's blog - Internet and e-mail policy and practice: "... the lawyers completely misunderstand ICANN's relationship to country code domains (ccTLDs). A few ccTLDS have agreements to make voluntary contributions to ICANN, but Iran doesn't, so ICANN gets no money from them. ICANN's role in ccTLD management is easy to tell from this diagram [see above], which comes from their IANA Functions contract with the US Department of Commerce. In the figure the IANA Functions Operator is ICANN, the Administrator is the Department of Commerce, and the Root Zone Maintainer is Verisign. The Root Server Operators are a dozen separate organizations, three of which are outside the US and not subject to US law. So ICANN's only role is clerical. They get the change requests from the TLD Operator, which in Iran's case is the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences in Tehran. Once they have processed the change request, which means verifying that it really came from the proper party, and that it isn't technically defective (sometimes a problem with small less sophisticated countries), they pass it on to DoC for approval... DoC sends it along to Verisign who updates the root zone and distributes the zone file to the root server operators. From this it should be evident that ICANN has nothing to give the lawyers...." (read more at the link above)

So the litigation involving Iran's ccTLD again shows how limited ICANN's role in the IANA functions really is--only "clerical." And a staff of only 10 people. So is there any reason why IANA should not be separated from ICANN? Of course not! The only ones objecting to that are power-mad ICANN and its sycophants.


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Vint Cerf says Larry Strickling has preordained ICANN to be overseer of the internet (video)

Video: Who should oversee the Web? | Watch PBS NewsHour Online | PBS Video: "As the U.S. government relinquishes control, who should oversee the Web? (09:48)"

Assistant US Secretary of Commerce Larry Strickling, according to Vint Cerf (in video above), has preordained that ICANN be overseer of the internet - see transcript --

"VINT CERF:  The thing is that you keep referring to new entity. The entity is ICANN. The proposal is ICANN will continue to do what it’s been doing for the last 15 years.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, again, ICANN is this…

VINT CERF: And it will do so in such a transparent way, in a way that offers assurance that they haven’t done anything that’s harmful to openness. The whole idea is to create a process for oversight which is within the ICANN structure, not outside of it.

RANDOLPH MAY: Well, the Commerce Department announcement doesn’t say that, at the end of the day, it envisions that ICANN itself will be the entity that’s doing this. It doesn’t mention — it doesn’t say that. And I don’t think you…

VINT CERF: Larry Strickling has said that."

OK--so much for bottom-up multi-stakeholder decision making about internet governance. It's all coming from the top. We get it, Vint. But I wonder what NETmundial (and the rest of the world) will think about Larry Strickling's decree? 



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