Showing posts with label Stewardship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stewardship. Show all posts

2016-05-22

News Review: ICANN, IANA Transition, Capitol Hill Reality Check

DomainMondoShiningLight ©2013domainmondo.com All Rights Reserved
Domain Mondo's review of the past week and look ahead [pdf here]:

In the IANA stewardship transition:

 • May 16, 2016: "... NTIA received the stewardship transition proposal on March 10 and has set a target of 90 days to complete its review ... The ICANN Board is expected to vote on whether these draft Bylaws adequately represent the recommendations of the proposal on or around May 27. In addition, ICANN has stated that in the event of NTIA’s approval of the stewardship transition proposal, ICANN would produce an implementation report by August 15, certifying that it is prepared for contract expiry on September 30, 2016. NTIA maintains the flexibility to extend its contract with ICANN if necessary. NTIA recognizes that Congress has a strong interest in this proposal, and we expect Congress to closely monitor and review the proposal, as well as our evaluation of the plan. NTIA will continue to provide timely updates to Congress in addition to quarterly written reports ..." - Sixth Quarterly Report on the IANA Transition (pdf) from NTIA (emphasis added).

• May 18, 2016: "U.S. Senator John Thune (R-S.D.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, has announced a full committee hearing titled “Examining the Multistakeholder Plan for Transitioning the Internet Assigned Number Authority” on Tuesday, May 24, 2016, at 10:00 a.m. ET in the Senate Russell Building 253, Washington, D.C." Read more here.

Section of the U.S. House Appropriations bill barring use of funds for IANA transition (pdf) (highlighting added)
• May 18, 2016:  "A House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday advanced a funding bill for Commerce, Justice and Science that included a provision barring the government from using funds to make the [IANA] transition through 2017 [see graphic above] ... On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) appears to be circulating a letter to colleagues pressing the head of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) to delay the handoff amid concerns." --TheHill.com (emphasis added)

• May 19, 2016: "... we respectfully request that you extend NTIA's IANA functions contract with ICANN." Letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and NTIA's Larry Strickling from U.S. Senators Cruz, Lankford and Lee (read more here) (emphasis added).

• May 19, 2016: Former ICANN staff member, Kieren McCarthy, writing in theregister.co.uk:
"... the concern over whether the reforms to ICANN will prove sufficient are all too real. ICANN has been through no less than eight reviews into its lack of accountability and transparency in the past decade ... in every case, the same corporate culture has managed to re-impose itself and undermine the very changes that were designed to cause a turnaround in its behavior. If Marco Rubio is asking for a delay until this latest set of reforms can be seen to be working, he's not acting irrationally, he's simply noting history."
* * * * * * *
ICANN's Interlocutory Appeal of .AFRICA Preliminary Injunction
•  New gTLD .AFRICA: In the DotConnectAfrica Trust case (see above graphic), ICANN has filed an unopposed motion (pdf) for extension of time through June 29, 2016, to file its appellant's brief in view of the June 6th hearing in U.S. District Court on co-defendant ZACR's "motion to reconsider the preliminary injunction order from which this appeal is taken." More on .AFRICA.

 •  More from ICANN FY15 Form 990: In FY15 (ending June 30, 2015) ICANN contributed over $200,000 to the World Economic Forum (WEF).  ICANN's President & CEO at that time, Fadi Chehade, is now senior advisor to the Executive Chairman of WEF (hat tip: @EyeOnICANN).

•  Comments close this coming week at ICANN on only one issue: Proposal for Khmer Script Root Zone‬ Label Generation Rules (LGR) - comments close 28 May 2016 23:59 UTC.

•  ICANN finally "Enhancing Openness and Transparency – Board Deliberations" and it only took 18 years! See also The ICANN Chairman's Blog: An Update From the May 2016 Board Workshop in Amsterdam. It's a start but every ICANN Board meeting should be open to observers via Adobe Connect (except executive sessions to discuss confidential matters such as personnel, litigation, etc.).

•  More of ICANN's 'shady' new gTLDs anyone?--Paul Vixie on the glibc bug, Internet crime and more | techtarget.com: "... [the internet] has, unfortunately, also put the world's wealth more at risk to criminals than it has ever been in the history of humanity." See also SEC warns cybersecurity is biggest threat to financial system | theregister.co.uk and The Internet Is Broken - MIT Technology Review | technologyreview.com.

•  A Culture of Hype and Spin - Silicon Valley is becoming like ICANN: "I get lied to by entrepreneurs every day," says Bob Kocher, a venture capitalist who specializes in health IT ... "If you sell me a dream, you’ll have to be stuck with this upset crazy person who doesn’t trust you for a decade," says Kocher. But far more concerning is when startups begin to believe their own hype and start making short-cuts to ramp up faster than the market typically allows ... We’re likely to see many more examples of companies like Theranos and Zenefits unless the startup world makes a big shift to a whole lot more honesty, transparency ...  Inside Silicon Valley's Culture of Spin | Fast Company.com.

•  This week in tech: 
  • The BIG news out of Google I/O 2016: Google Home. Remember when Google used to copy Apple? Well, "Amazon is the new Apple" --My Echo | Lefsetz.com. "Google Home not avail until later this yr. Meanwhile, Echo continues to add features & connect w/products. Is Amazon's head start too big?" asks @KatieBoehret; The BEST news was Google adding Android apps and Play Store to Chrome OS (Chromebooks).
  • FinTech Disaster--in spite of all the right "connections" and "funding"-- How Wall Street Led LendingClub.com Into Crisis | Bloomberg.com: "“Many people expected the wheels to come off at some point,” said Robert Wardrop, executive director of the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, which studies funding systems that don’t depend on regulated banks and capital markets. “The big surprise, clearly, was that this was an event that happened at a top performer.”"
•  Q1 2016 Earnings Season postscript: "... In Q1, according to FactSet.com, the companies in the DJIA that “adjusted” their earnings inflated them on average by 28.9% over their earnings under GAAP ... we doubt that the media and Wall Street analysts will “self-correct.” They’re the main perpetrators in the propagation of these fairy tales. If they’d wanted to, they could have stopped long ago featuring these fairy tales in their headlines and reports, but no way, that might have tripped up stock prices ..." - WolfStreet.com

•  Five most popular posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this week on DomainMondo.com:
• Other Reading Recommendations (some with a tease of content or my commentary):
  1. Now Available Globally: Fast.com, a New Tool to Check Your Internet Speed | netflix.com: go to fast.com on any device and check your internet connection speed wherever you are.
  2. GoDaddy to buy FreedomVoice for up to $47M | SeekingAlpha.com (Tucows & Ting)
  3. Yahoo's Fire Sale - Deal Could Still Derail | SeekingAlpha.com: "The core business is failing, the company's stake in Alibaba can be questioned ... and like everything else under her regime, we don't expect a shareholder friendly deal to get done with [Marissa] Mayer involved."
  4. Now you can embed Reddit posts on other websites | TechCrunch.com: "If you’re an online writer or publisher, that means you can start including live Reddit content in your stories. If you’re a reader, that means you might start to see more Reddit posts on other sites, the same way you can see embedded tweets and YouTube videos."
  5. Stop Faxing | JDSupra.com: "... In addition to the many reasons faxes are antiquated and annoying, the SEC has just provided us another reason to avoid them: they encourage violations of Reg. S-P ..."
  6. Do You Love Music? Silicon Valley Doesn’t | NYTimes.com: "YouTube, which is owned by Google, is now the world’s dominant audio streaming platform, dwarfing Spotify and virtually every other service." Actually, the best music service right now, based solely on my own personal experience, is Amazon.com Prime Music.
  7. Russia Frets about Risk of “Recession” in China | WolfStreet.com: "... a slowdown in China from super-hot growth to just-hot growth, which is the official story coming out of China ... risk of an actual contraction, the risk of a recession, which would slam China’s demand for oil and other commodities. And that sort of economic development would not only send shock waves through Russia but the global economy ... There are already repercussions ... Money from Chinese investors “has dried up,” a real-estate broker in San Francisco said ..."
  8. Election 2016 UPDATE: Trump Now Leads Clinton by 5 - RasmussenReports.com: "Trump earns 42% support to Clinton’s 37% when 'Likely U.S. Voters' are asked whom they would vote for if the presidential election were held today. But Rasmussen Reports’ latest national telephone survey finds that 13% prefer some other candidate, while seven percent (7%) are undecided." Gender gap? "Clinton appears to have a bigger problem with men than Trump does with women. Trump leads by 22 points among men, compared to Clinton’s 11-point advantage among women." Watch out for Bernie: see How Bernie Sanders WILL Win the Democratic Nomination and Sanders delegates brace for Philadelphia convention fight (Hat tip: @UnderMyPalm | Election2016).
Have a great week!

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo



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2016-05-14

Domain Names, New gTLDs, DNS Abuse, ICANN as Chief Abuser

Why New gTLDs + IANA Transition May Be The Undoing of ICANN

Comments are now scheduled to close 20 May 2016 23:59 UTC (extended from May 13) on ICANN's Draft Report: New gTLD Program Safeguards to Mitigate DNS Abuse.You can read all comments submitted here.

Below is the comment submitted by the Editor of Domain Mondo, which is also here (pdf).

May 13, 2016
To ICANN:

As a domain name registrant, and editor of DomainMondo.com, I am submitting this comment to Draft Report: New gTLD Program Safeguards to Mitigate DNS Abuse.

For the new gTLDs mania, we are now entering the repudiation phase – a moment where “all the lies that had been built up alongside the excess are aired out in public.”

Your “draft report” misses the mark.

You claim your purported purpose was, and is, “to examine the potential for increases in abusive, malicious, and criminal activity in an expanded DNS and to make recommendations to pre-emptively mitigate those activities through a number of safeguards.”

Abusive, malicious, and criminal activity in an expanded DNS happens most frequently at the second level or registrant level, not at the first level or TLD which is controlled by the registry operator. Exceptions may be extortionate or other abusive practices, pricing, etc., by registry operators, which ICANN’s own Business Constituency and IPC can, and have, well advised you concerning, and which may be remediated through contractual terms and conditions, and effective Contract Compliance, which has been lacking at ICANN.

When ICANN unwisely decided to expand the global internet DNS and add more than 1000 new gTLDs (from just 22 gTLDs and 200+ ccTLDs), you exponentially increased the potential and actual opportunities for “abusive, malicious, and criminal activity“ in the global DNS without any safeguards for the global internet community which has suffered as a result, just so ICANN, and the domain name industry, could “make money.” You have not been a good steward of the global DNS.

In the absence of responsible stewardship of the global DNS by ICANN, you have left it to others, from sovereign nations like China (which essentially is now running its own DNS inside China via the ‘Great Firewall’ and legal requirements imposed upon registry operators, registrars, and registrants), to companies and individual consumers which are deploying TLD blockers on their own networks.

Contrary to what you apparently believe, less is often more, and excessive competition can be destructive, to markets, to companies, and to individual consumers.

Even worse, you have adopted the extortionate business model in-house at ICANN, by, in effect, forcing established trademark owners, to pay $185,000 plus annual fees, plus operating expenses, for a gTLD used primarily for defensive blocking, at the top-level, their trademark in the global DNS:

“ … closed and predominantly defensive .Brand TLDs account for roughly one-third of all new gTLD applications. Put another way, it would appear that .Brand TLDs are being disproportionately relied upon for ICANN revenue, even though they represent a tiny proportion of second-level domain names under management. For example, .Brand TLD registry operators, such as Apple Inc. or Yahoo! Inc. have activated only a mandatory minimum number of second-level domain names, yet they pay ICANN precisely the same fixed quarterly fees as certain open TLD registry operators, such as Vox Populi, which currently has over seven-thousand domain names under management.2 It is the latter category of TLD registry operators that are more likely to be controversial and thus ultimately more costly to ICANN in terms of political, administrative, compliance and legal resources.3…” --IPC Comment on Draft ICANN FY17 Operating Plan & Budget and Five-Year OperatingPlan Update, p.2 (pdf)

Accordingly, the hard truth is that ICANN, itself, is today probably the chief “abuser” of the global DNS. Now that ICANN is irrevocably committed to this ever downward spiral of irresponsible management and stewardship of the global DNS, I, like many others, have pretty much given up on ICANN. As a registrant, I am now in a defensive mode in response to ICANN’s failed stewardship, and have little confidence that ICANN will survive long-term once the IANA transition is complete. Most likely, the model proposed by China and others, of a government-led multistakeholder institution to replace ICANN, will eventually prevail due to demands of the global internet community for safety, stability, and security of the internet, and responsible stewardship in the global public interest, of a global public resource.

Respectfully submitted,
John Poole
Domain Name Registrant, and Editor, DomainMondo.com

References:
UPDATE: see also Lack of Trust in Internet Privacy and Security May Deter Economic and Other Online Activities | Department of Commerce - NTIA: "NTIA’s initial analysis only scratches the surface of this important area, but it is clear that policymakers need to develop a better understanding of mistrust in the privacy and security of the Internet and the resulting chilling effects."




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2016-03-20

News Review: ICANN, IANA, NTIA, Congress, the American People

DomainMondoShiningLight ©2013domainmondo.com All Rights Reserved
Domain Mondo's review of the past week and look ahead to the coming week [pdf of this post here]: The IANA transition and ICANN accountability proposal is currently being assessed by the U.S. Department of Commerce's NTIA, while implementation work proceeds within ICANN and Cross-Community Working Groups.

"As NTIA embarks on its work, I want to reiterate what I have been saying throughout this entire process. This IANA transition is far too important to be rushed by any artificial deadline. Much work still remains, and if needed, NTIA should take the steps to extend the contract. It is more important to get this done right, than to simply get it done. Lastly, while we await the analysis of the proposal from NTIA, it is important to stress the important role that Congress plays during this process. The bipartisan work reflected in the DOTCOM Act maintains our oversight authority to ensure the requirements of a transition established by NTIA are met by the proposal." --Chairman Greg Walden, March 17, 2016, Opening Statement - Communications and Technology Subcommittee Hearing “Privatizing the Internet Assigned Number Authority” (emphasis added).

 "... Unfortunately, much of the ICANN community has been acting in haste and urgency based on a belief that the transition will not occur if the process extends beyond the expiry of the Obama administration. In reality, this haste and the inevitable imprecision and pressure-induced compromises that result is probably the greatest threat to the transition. The best prospect for the transition being approved is if it is sound, complete, and addresses the concerns of NTIA and Congress. The NTIA has emphasized over and over again, the U.S. government “has not set any deadline for the transition.”... ICANN accountability and insulation from undue government influence is critically important to the future vitality, stability, and openness of the Internet. It is far better to get this process done right than it is to get it done on time."--Congress Should Reject ICANN Transition Proposal Unless Significant Changes Are Made | The Daily Signal (written by Brett Schaefer and Paul Rosenzweig (CCWG-Accountability participants) December 22, 2015, emphasis added). UPDATE March 20: see also ICANN and the IANA Transition -- Proceed With Caution - Lawfare (Rosenzweig) and Stop Obama’s Internet Giveaway - WSJ (Gordon Crovitz)

 "The [multistakeholder] process is an ugly process ... the fact that everyone is dissatisfied with this [IANA Transition & ICANN Accountability] proposal is a testament to its success ... there is no one that is happy with everything in this proposal."-- Jonathan Zuck  (CCWG-Accountability participant), President, ACT, The App Association, speaking March 17, 2016, at ITIF

"The devil is in the details"-- Victoria Sheckler, Sr. V.P and Deputy General Counsel, RIAA, speaking March 17, 2016, at ITIF

 "... no consensus was reached about the proper role of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) ... it is key that any amendments to the ICANN bylaws be carefully crafted ... This may be the most critical time of the process..."-- J. Scott Evans, Trademark Director and Associate General Counsel at Adobe, writing in CircleID.com (emphasis added).

Congress held an introductory hearing on the IANA stewardship transition proposal (IANA transition + ICANN Accountability WS1) on Thursday. Witnesses were a select group of participants from the ICANN community in support of the Proposal. Issues raised included questions about timing for implementation--can this all be accomplished prior to September 30, 2016? The witnesses all testified "yes" even though in reality the Cross Community Working Groups have missed every deadline in this whole process thus far.

Work Stream 2 (WS2) issues such as jurisdiction, human rights, ICANN staff accountability, accountability of AC/SOs to the global internet community, and transparency of ICANN (corporate, management, staff, Board of Directors), were barely touched upon. Ranking member, California Congresswoman Eshoo, asked about “vulnerabilities” of the proposal, Illinois member of Congress Shimkus asked about who the IANA functions operator would be if  the community selected a provider other than ICANN (or its PTI), and Chairman Walden asked about transparency regarding ICANN’s dealings with foreign governments. There were no clear answers given by the witnesses to those questions, part of the problem being that the Proposal is still incomplete, not yet implemented, with many details yet to come ("the devil is in the details"), untested, unproven, and as I pointed out last week, critical and fundamental accountability issues were postponed to a later WS2 stage, to be completed after  the U.S. has given up all oversight. As I wrote last week:
"... there is always the possibility that Congress--both Democrats and Republicans--will realize it is in the best interests of not only the American people, but also the global internet community, to insist upon the completion and implementation and a subsequent evaluation of both Work Stream 1 (WS1) and Work Stream 2 (WS2) accountability mechanisms, and whether they are actually effective and working, and then decide whether ending U.S. oversight is appropriate and in the best interests of both the American people and the global internet community."
Why would Congress be concerned about the global internet community? Because the U.S. government is ceding its role as steward of the global internet to ICANN: "No government owns or controls the root level of the Internet. Nor does ICANN or any other single entity .... In effect, ICANN serves as a trustee of the Internet’s unique names and numbers in service to all Internet users." --source: Weinstein et al v Iran and ICANN - U.S. Amicus Curiae Brief (pdf).

Although NTIA said in its March, 2014, announcement, it was transitioning its stewardship role to the global multistakeholder community, in reality, this whole process has been about NTIA transitioning its stewardship role to ICANN, the California corporation. Note that sole control of the Internet root zone will soon be ICANN's alone--ICANN is currently drafting a new contract for Verisign, the current Root Zone Maintainer (RZM), that will allow ICANN to make changes in the future, including taking over that additional role itself. That is an unprecedented concentration of power that NTIA is proposing to give to ICANN, the California corporation, in perpetuity. Why shouldn't the operators of the ccTLDs (ccNSO), and gTLDs (Registries Stakeholder Group), as well as the Root Name Server Operators (there are 12 including Verisign and ICANN), the IETF and RIRs, select the Root Zone Maintainer (RZM)? What happens, if and when, the "community" decides to change the IANA functions operator (IFO) from ICANN (or its PTI), to a new third party, only to discover that ICANN, in its new future role as Root Zone Maintainer, is now blocking or overwriting the work of the new IFO? Note also that ICANN has been aggressively expanding the number of its L Root Server sites, which according to this map now total 143 globally, far exceeding the number of sites of any other Root Server Operator which range from only 1 (ISI "B") to 109 (Verisign "A"+"J"). Whether or not it is ICANN's intention (now or in the future) to not only replace Verisign as Root Zone Maintainer, but also become sole operator of the Internet's root servers, once this transition is completed, ICANN will have that capability, thanks to the Obama administration, the bureaucrats at NTIA, a complacent and compliant Congress, and this flawed IANA Transition process.

Recall that this whole process started with the NTIA announcement in March, 2014, which only covered U.S. oversight of the IANA functions via the IANA contract. At that time, ICANN directors and officers were confident that a proposal could be delivered within a year, obviating any need to extend the IANA contract beyond September 30, 2015. In the summer of 2014, at the insistence of the "ICANN community," ICANN accountability was added as a separate, but equal, component of the whole IANA transition process. Today, ICANN accountability issues are the sticking points in the whole process. In comparison, the elimination of the U.S. government role in the IANA functions is a piece of cake, after all, the IANA functions used to be run by just one person, Jon Postel (see this pdf, p.5), and, as testified this week before Congress, the IANA functions are clerical in nature, not "rocket science."

One thing is now clear, Larry Strickling, and indeed, all of NTIA and the U.S. Department of Commerce, were, apparently, clueless about the extensive problems the "ICANN community" had with ICANN--the California corporation, its directors, officers, and staff--which is somewhat hard to understand since NTIA had threatened to remove ICANN as the IANA functions operator in 2012:
The New York Times March 18, 2012: "A boardroom dispute over ethics has broken out at the organization that maintains the Internet address system after its most important supporter, the United States government, reproached the group for governance standards said to fall short of “requirements requested by the global community.”..."
Part of the systemic and continuing problems at ICANN is the failure of both ICANN, and the "ICANN community," to understand their respective roles and responsibilities. ICANN is not an example of a multistakeholder-run organization and never has been. ICANN is an example of a California non-profit corporation controlled by a Board of Directors that have legal fiduciary duties including the duty to act in the global public interest, albeit in an environment where various designated stakeholder groups have policy-making roles, and some of those groups have a right to elect some of the corporation's directors. This leads to tensions, e.g., when special interests, such as the domain name industry, dominate and control the GNSO and advocate for policies that may not be in the global public interest, or disagree with other Board decisions. While bringing the Advisory Committees, particularly ALAC and GAC, into the "empowered community" may improve ICANN, the CCWG-Accountability, unfortunately, completely neglected issues concerning selection and qualification of ICANN Directors, other than removal.  This is tragic because so many of the problems at ICANN stem from a Board of Directors whose members appear to be passive, or lacking in an understanding of their important and vital legal role within ICANN's corporate governance structure, or their fiduciary duty to the global internet community. In particular, the failure of the ICANN Board of Directors to hold ICANN officers and staff accountable, has been striking. Just one example (of many): Why would any competent ICANN director allow an ICANN President to spend his, and ICANN staff time, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in ICANN funds, to establish and bankroll organization(s) outside the scope of ICANN's mission? For more see: ICANN President & CEO Fadi Chehade's Last Letter to Dilma Rousseff.

In any event, that is where we are now, more to come. See below the tentative timeline going forward (source: from the prepared testimony at this week's Congressional hearing):

• March 11 – June 11: NTIA assesses transition plan
• April 15: Draft revisions to ICANN bylaws released
• April 15 – May 15: Public Comment on ICANN bylaw revisions
• Mid – April: Root Zone testing begins
• April – May: Public review period on the RZM Contract (ICANN & Verisign)
• May 31: ICANN Board approves draft bylaw revisions
• June 15: NTIA submits plan to Congress for review
• June 16: Congressional review begins
• August – September New agreements are executed:
o Relationship agreements for the IANA including establishment of the PTI
o New RZM Contract
• October 1 Transition complete

 Week ahead: Subject to future editorial changes, coming up on Domain Mondo:
  • Fintech Startup, Investment App, Millennials
  • Mobile Connectivity, Internet of Things
  • Massive Revaluation: Tech Valuations
  • Digital Currency, Blockchain Technology

 Five most popular posts at DomainMondo.com this past week (# of pageviews Sun-Sat):

1. News Review [March 13]: ICANN, IANA Transition Plan, NTIA, and U.S. Congress
2. U.S. House Subcommittee, IANA Transition Hearing, March 17th Video
3. ICANN President & CEO Fadi Chehade's Last Letter to Dilma Rousseff
4. Brazil Insulted by ICANN President & CEO Fadi Chehade Farewell Letter
5. WIPO: Domain Cybersquatting Cases Up in 2015, Driven by New gTLDs

 Final Note: Don't miss Domain Mondo's post yesterday: NTIA's Larry Strickling Et Al: Internet Governance in a Post-American World (video)

Have a great week!

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo

UPDATE March 29: News Review: France Blasts IANA Proposal, Berkman to Assess ICANN | DomainMondo.com (March 27, 2016)



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2016-03-11

ICANN Board Transmits IANA Transition Plan, What Happens Next?

Now that the IANA stewardship transition plan has been transmitted by the ICANN Board of Directors to the U.S. Department of Commerce (NTIA), what will happen once the plan is received in Washington, D.C.? Read the remarks of Larry Strickling, NTIA (excerpt and in full below), at the ICANN-GAC Meeting, Marrrakech--

Lawrence E. Strickling, NTIA
Remarks of Larry Strickling, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, at the ICANN GAC High Level Governmental Meeting, Marrakech, Morocco, on March 7, 2016, (emphasis added)--

"I am pleased to be here today at the third GAC High Level Governmental Meeting ... Assuming final approval of the plan by chartering organizations in the next couple of days, we expect the [ICANN] Board to transmit the proposal to us this week. Once we receive the transition proposal, we will review it, hopefully within 90 days, to ensure it meets the criteria we outlined when we announced the transition. Let me remind all of you of the specific conditions that we said that the plan must satisfy. First, the proposal must support and enhance the multistakeholder model of Internet governance, in that it should be developed by the multistakeholder community and have broad community support. More specifically, we will not accept a transition proposal that replaces the NTIA role with a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution. Second, the proposal must maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the domain name system. Third, it must meet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA services. And finally, it must maintain the openness of the Internet. As promptly as we can, we will carefully evaluate the proposal and measure it against the criteria. In this effort, we will be joined by other agencies of the U.S. government that will be impacted by the transition. We will also follow the recommendations of the U.S. General Accountability Office. The U.S. Congress has a strong interest in this proposal and we expect Congress to closely monitor and review the proposal as well as our evaluation of the plan...."

Full remarks of Ass't Sec. Strickling:



Note: Implementation has already started within ICANN in anticipation the plan will be approved--read more at ICANN: IANA Stewardship Transition Implementation.

Also note the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee's Communications and Technology Subcommittee has scheduled an IANA Transition Hearing for March 17.


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2016-03-09

ICANN55: GAC Letter on ICANN Accountability Final Proposal

The ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has responded to the CCWG's Supplemental Final Proposal (part of the IANA stewardship transition plan) which is scheduled to be approved and transmitted by the ICANN Board of Directors on Thursday, March 10, 2016, to NTIA: 

"... The GAC has considered the CCWG's proposal and supports Recommendations 1 to 10 and 12. However, there is no consensus on Recommendation 11 and the “carve-out” provision contained in Recommendations 1 and 2. As regards Recommendations 1 and 2, the GAC expresses its willingness to take part in the envisioned empowered community mechanism as a decisional participant, under conditions to be determined internally ... the GAC has no objection to the transmission of the proposal to the ICANN Board."  

Complete GAC letter embedded below:

See also on Domain Mondo:




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2016-03-08

ICANN a Steward? LOL! This Is How ICANN Wastes Registrants' Money

UPDATE (emphasis added) [CCWG-ACCT] See Photos from Last Night's AFRALO Showcase/Fadi Tribute in #ICANN55:

Dear Eberhard,
Thank you for your question. The Afralo showcase and tribute to Fadi was held on Monday night. The 2 purposes were combined so that they don’t conflict on the schedule and to save logistics and costs. The entire event cost approximately $106,000 to ICANN which was planned for 1200 people. The Afralo showcase (musicians, dancers,…) was paid for by Afralo. In case of interest, ICANN has previously held a community farewell cocktail for exiting CEOs at their last meeting. The cost of this is typically between $50,000 and $60,000. The additional $40,000 we had to pay this time was for the fitted out marquee including AV. This was required on this particular occasion as no other room large enough to accommodate the entire community was available. I hope this is helpful and addresses your question.
Best,
Xavier Calvez
CFO, ICANN

"Thank you very much.
I am shocked at the amount of money ICANN has to waste.
That does put the pressure being applied with regards to funding of WS2
into perspective.
greetings, el"  [Dr Eberhard W Lisse]

[--end of UPDATE--]

From the CCWG-Accountability public email list: [CCWG-ACCT] See Photos from Last Night's AFRALO Showcase/Fadi Tribute in #ICANN55:

"Xavier [Xavier Calvez, ICANN CFO],
I have received the below.
How much did this extravaganza cost ICANN?
greetings, el"
[Dr Eberhard W Lisse - CCWG-Accountability member, representing ccNSO, from the African Region]

"Camels, Drummers And Hundreds of ICANNers: Last Night's AFRALO Showcase And Fadi Tribute Was A Hit!
"Monday's night Tribute to Fadi was a lively affair. Hundreds of ICANN55 participants filled the Orion Tent at the Palmeraie Golf Palace and Resort to enjoy the food, hear traditional Moroccan music and honor Fadi Chehadé's legacy.  Many took to the stage during the evening's festivities including: El Mountassir Billah Azdine, Director General of the National Agency for Regulation of Telecommunications; Xiaodong Lee, CEO & CTO, China Internet Network Information Center; Demi Getschko, Member of the Board, Brazilian Internet Steering Committee; Rinalia Abdul Rahim, ICANN Board Member  and Board Chair Steve Crocker. If you didn't get a chance to take your own camel selfie, you can download last night's photos from ICANN's Flickr account here."--source: ICANN55 newsletter (links added)

The "Fadi" referred to is Fadi Chehade, ICANN's outgoing President & CEO, who gave notice last year that he was quitting ICANN with 2 years left on his contract, and after having served only 2 1/2 years (with a salary+benefits package in the range of $1,000,000+ annually).

Domain Mondo is sure that all domain name registrants worldwide (who fund the bulk of ICANN's wasteful spending), and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz et al, will all be interested to see how ICANN is such a "good steward" of money. Wait until ICANN is no longer subject to U.S. government oversight when the IANA stewardship transition is finished!

Here is an ICANN tweet from last night's "Tribute to Fadi"--
Does anyone wonder what would happen if a government official in the U.S. spent taxpayer funds like ICANN officers and directors spend registrants' taxes fees? How about officers and directors of a publicly listed Fortune 500 corporation who engaged in this kind of corporate waste?
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2015-09-28

IANA Transition: Constitutionality, Letter to GAO, CCWG Meeting Sept 29

Screenshot of relevant portion of Verisign web page referenced by Sen. Cruz et al in letter to GAO
(Verisign Inc. is the Internet Root Zone Maintainer pursuant to a contract with US government)
 “Under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, Congress has the exclusive power ‘to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.’ If the contract governing U.S. oversight of the Internet is indeed government property, the Administration’s intention to cede control to the ‘global stakeholder community’ -- including nations like Iran, Russia and China that do not value free speech and in fact seek to stifle it -- is in violation of the Constitution and should be stopped.” --U.S. Senator Ted Cruz
As announced today via a press release from the office of  U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Sen. Cruz, along with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, have sent a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) requesting an affirmative determination of whether the Obama Administration’s plan to transfer U.S. oversight of the Internet violates the Constitution. The Wall Street Journal columnist, L. Gordon Crovitz, reported on the letter in his Information Age column, “Not Obama’s to Give Away.”

 Sen. Cruz recently filed the DOTCOM Act as an amendment to the highway reauthorization bill the Senate considered in July. Cruz's amendment is identical to the original version of the DOTCOM Act being considered by the Senate with one exception: it would require Congress to have an affirmative up or down vote on the Obama Administration's plan to give away the Internet.

Full text of the Cruz-Grassley-Goodlatte-Issa letter (pdf):
September 22, 2015

Mr. Gene Dodaro
Comptroller General
U.S. Government Accountability Office
441 G Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20548
Dear Mr. Dodaro:

On March 14, 2014, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (“NTIA”) announced its intent to relinquish oversight of Internet domain name functions to the “global stakeholder community.” This proposed transition raises questions about NTIA’s authority to transfer possession and control of critical components of the Internet’s infrastructure to a third party.

The Internet as we know it has evolved from a network infrastructure first created by Department of Defense researchers. One key component of that infrastructure is the root zone file, which the federal government currently designates as a “national IT asset.”[1] Creation of the root zone file was funded by the American taxpayer and coordinated by the Department of Defense, and the file has remained under United States control ever since.

Under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, Congress has the exclusive power “to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.” One question arising from NTIA’s decision to transfer its Internet oversight functions to a third party is whether NTIA may relinquish possession and control of the root zone file—or any other similar component of the Internet that was financed and developed by the United States—without authorization from Congress. This concern was raised in 2000 by the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”), which questioned whether NTIA could relinquish authority over the root zone file and concluded that it was “unclear whether such a transition would involve a transfer of government property to a private entity.”[2] The 2000 GAO report further detailed that the Department of Commerce advised the GAO at the time that “we have not devoted the possibly substantial staff resources that would be necessary to develop a legal opinion as to whether legislation would be necessary” to authorize transfer of the root zone file. Congress should be made aware of the legal status of the root zone file—or any other potential government property—before it makes any final decisions about whether to transfer the government’s Internet oversight functions to a third party.

Some observers and parties involved in the proposed transfer have asserted that the termination of NTIA’s contract with ICANN would not result in the transfer of United States Government property.[3] Others believe that termination of this contract would result in government property being transferred to ICANN and point to a number of factors that would indicate that the root zone file and other contractual deliverables are property of the United States. Supporters of this position point to the fact that the United States acquired title to the root zone file because it was invented pursuant to Department of Defense contracts.[4] In addition, the United States has long claimed ownership or control over the root zone file. For example, President Clinton’s Internet “czar” Ira Magaziner asserted United States ownership of the entire Domain Name System because “[t]he United States paid for the Internet, the Net was created under its auspices, and most importantly everything [researchers] did was pursuant to government contracts.”[5] Additionally the Commerce Department’s contract with ICANN explicitly declares that “[a]ll deliverables provided under this contract,” including the “automated root zone,” are “the property of the U.S. government.”[6] And Verisign and ICANN contracts make clear that changes to the root zone file cannot be made without approval of the Department of Commerce.[7] Congress has also been actively engaged in managing the root zone file. Recently, it enacted the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015, which explicitly prohibited the Commerce Department from using federal funds to relinquish stewardship of the domain name system, “including responsibility with respect to the authoritative root zone file.”[8]

Given this history, we are concerned that NTIA might potentially relinquish ownership of some form of United States property. To inform the Congress so that it may take any necessary and appropriate steps regarding NTIA’s planned transition of the IANA functions, we would like the GAO to conduct a review to address a number of specific questions.

1. Would the termination of the NTIA’s contract with ICANN cause Government property, of any kind, to be transferred to ICANN?

2. Is the authoritative root zone file, or other related or similar materials or information, United States government property?

3. If so, does the NTIA have the authority to transfer the root zone file or, other related materials or information to a non-federal entity?

Please include in this report a description and analysis of the relevant legal authorities and case law dealing with the transfer of United States Government property. We understand that to perform this work, GAO will need to conduct both significant audit work and complex legal analysis.

Please contact Jonathan Nabavi (Chairman Grassley), Sean McLean (Senator Cruz), Vishal Amin (Chairman Goodlatte), and Veronica Wong (Congressman Issa) of our staffs if there are questions regarding this request.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Ted Cruz
United States Senator

Bob Goodlatte
Chairman
House Committee on the Judiciary

Darrell Issa
Member of Congress

[1]See, Verisign Company Information: http://www.verisign.com/en_US/company-information/index.xhtml
[2]U.S. Government Accountability Office., GAO-B-284206, Department of Commerce: Relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (2000)
[3]Letter from Lawrence Strickling, Assistant Sec’y for Commc’ns and Info., U.S. Dep’t of Commerce, to Representative Sean Duffy & Representative James Sensenbrenner, U.S. House of Representatives (June 11, 2015)
[4]U.S. Congressional Research Service. Internet Governance and the Domain Name System: Issues for Congress (R42351; August 18, 2015), by Lennard G. Kruger
[5]Jack Goldsmith & Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World 41 (2006)
[6]Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Functions Contract between U.S. Department of Commerce and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Contract Number SA1301-12-CN-0035. October 1, 2012.
[7]See, Amendment 11 of the Cooperative Agreement NCR-9218742 between the U.S. Department of Commerce and Verisign, Inc. Also see, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Functions Contract between U.S. Department of Commerce and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Contract Number SA1301-12-CN-0035. October 1, 2012.
[8]Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, Pub. L. No 113-235, § 540, 128 Stat. 2130, 2217 (Dec. 16, 2014)
(emphasis added)
********
In a related note, the ICANN's CCWG-Accountability (Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN's Accountability, WS-1 required by the NTIA as part of the IANA Transition) is holding an online meeting Tuesday, September 29, 2015, with ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade attending:

Tuesday, 29 September from 19:00-21:00 UTC (time converter) 3pm ET (US), proposed agenda:
1. Welcome, Roll Call, SoI
2. Assessment of agreement areas, by Fadi Chehadé
3. Work plan to Dublin
4. Engagement plan with Chartering organisations and Board
5. AOB

Anyone may attend and observe the meeting online--"Adobe Connect Room is open to any and all silent observers"--icann.adobeconnect.com/accountability/

See also on Domain Mondo:

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2015-09-24

China (CAICT) Objects to ICANN CCWG Accountability 2nd Draft Proposal

Fiduciary Duty: "Definition: A fiduciary duty is a legal duty to act solely in another party's interests. Parties owing this duty are called fiduciaries. The individuals to whom they owe a duty are called principals. Fiduciaries may not profit from their relationship with their principals unless they have the principals' express informed consent. They also have a duty to avoid any conflicts of interest between themselves and their principals or between their principals and the fiduciaries' other clients. A fiduciary duty is the strictest duty of care recognized by the US legal system. Examples of fiduciary relationships include those between a lawyer and her client, a guardian and her ward, and a director and her shareholders." -- Legal Information Institute (link above) (emphasis added)
UPDATE September 24, 2015: CCWG-Accountability "On the Way to LA" to hijack the Global DNS from the Global Multistakeholder Community through their deceptively named CMSM or "Community Mechanism as Sole Member" Model which allows select groups of ICANN "stakeholders" to override ICANN Board decisions and disregard the ICANN Board's fiduciary duties to the global multistakeholder community including the Board's fiduciary duty to act in the global public interest at all times.

"... At least the USG (US government) offers some accountability. ICANN's primary active stakeholders are businesses making money off the DNS; most users are too busy elsewhere to pay much attention..."--comment of Esther Dyson, ICANN's founding Chairman, in The Guardian, Sept 22, 2015

 "Sole Member given reserved power under Bylaws to override Board decision directly, regardless of Board fiduciary duties." - Legal counsel for CCWG-Accountability (pdf) opinion on CCWG 2nd draft

China's CAICT has joined others in objecting to the power grab by the "ICANN community stakeholders" a/k/a ICANN insiders to the exclusion of the "global Internet community" in the most recent CCWG-Accountability 2nd Draft Report (pdf) which proposed a Single or "Sole Member" Model (comprised by only select ICANN stakeholder groups) to be "on top" over the ICANN Board of Directors and control ICANN, said Sole Member having no accountability to the global Internet community nor fiduciary duty to act in the global public interest--in fact one leading member of the CCWG has responded to an ICANN Board Member on the CCWG mail list and noted that with the "Sole Member Model" the ICANN Board will no longer have to worry about breaching "fiduciary duties" (to the global multistakeholder community a/k/a global internet community, e.g., or to act in the global public interest)--
"Members don't owe fiduciary duties generally speaking, just as the organisations that would comprise the member (the SOs and ACs) don't today. The [ICANN] Board's members do. The existence of a membership system modifies those duties for Board members - they do not breach fiduciary duties in implementing a decision a member has made. This could be a rabbit hole but the point is that the member option has more flexibility in determining matters and does not create impossibilities for the Board where it does so. That's a design feature of the choice of membership." -- Jordan Carter, CCWG-Accountability member (emphasis added)
Rabbit hole? "Down the rabbit hole" - a metaphor for an entry into the unknown, the disorientating or the mentally deranging, from its use in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. source: Rabbit hole - Wikipedia

Meanwhile, China's CAICT has joined with others and objects to the CCWG's 2nd Draft Report--
"... We believe, in designing a voting system, the most important element that need to be considered is the representation of the global Internet community, instead of the representation of the ICANN community. Therefore, geographical balance should be an important element in terms of allocating the votes in the community; users' representation and the interests of developing countries should be properly considered too. For instance, Internet users in Asia exceed 1.4 billion, accounting for 45% of the world users. If there's no votes or extremely limited votes for Asian representatives, then this voting system is not appropriate..." -- Comment (pdf) submitted by China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT), September, 2015, Beijing, China, in response to CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Report (emphasis added)

The above echoes other comments made, including the following submitted to the ICG mail list by Richard Hill on September 20, 2015:
Dear ICG,
A portion of the work of CCWG-Accountability is directly related to the transition proposal that you are coordinating. CWG-Accountability does not have, as far as I know, a public comments forum
such as the this one, and it does not accept comments from the general public, so I'm posting this message here and requesting that it be forwarded to CWG-Accountability. I refer to the draft summary of comments on the CWG-Accountability proposal published at: http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/attachments/20150915/8167a9d5/2nd-draft-CCWGtrends-v4-0001.pdf
I detail below my concerns.
1. Who are the stakeholders? [in other words, the Global Multistakeholder Community or just certain "ICANN stakeholders"?]
Slide 2 of the PDR referenced above presents a "Stakeholder Distribution of Comments Received". The identified categories of stakeholders are:
* Governments
* ccTLDs
* Advisors to the CCWG-Accountability
* Chartering Organizations
* CWG-Stewardship
* Technical Community
Does this imply that individuals and civil society organizations are not stakeholders? Does this imply that comments from individuals and civil society organizations were not considered?
2. Misleading statistics
Slides 8 ff. of the PDF present breakdowns of responses. For example, it is stated that 27 responses agreed that the CCWG-Accountability proposal enhances ICANN's accountability while 61 did not provide an answer. It may be correct that 61comments did not explicitly answer that question, but at least six responses did answer it negatively, albeit implicitly ... The statistics presented are misleading because they imply that "did not provide answer" implies support for the proposal, which is not necessarily the case ..."

Domain Mondo has previously noted the CCWG-Accountability publishing misleading representations of the public comments received to the 2nd Draft Report. The CCWG-Accountability is scheduled to meet with members of the ICANN Board this Friday and Saturday. Maybe the ICANN Board of Directors can at least do something about the CCWG leadership publishing "misleading statistics." The CCWG-Accountability is looking more and more like an "insider deal" favoring the vested self-interested special interests ("ICANN stakeholders" or "lobbyists") who have always wanted to totally control and financially benefit from ICANN policy-making, to the exclusion of "outsiders" (a/k/a global multistakeholder community or "global Internet community") and to the detriment of the "global public interest." With US (NTIA) stewardship in place, the lobbyists could never totally control ICANN--now is their chance.

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2015-09-18

NTIA Concurs With GAO Recommendation on IANA Transition Proposal

Background: In March, 2014, the US government's NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) announced its intention to transition its "stewardship" over the internet's IANA functions to the global multistakeholder community and asked ICANN, the California non-profit corporation which is the IANA functions operator under contract with US Department Commerce (NTIA), to convene a "stakeholder" process by which a transition plan would be developed and submitted to NTIA for approval. Subsequently, an "enhancing ICANN accountability" process was also initiated and added as a requirement to any transition plan to be implemented, if and when, NTIA approves. The US Congress had asked the US government's GAO (government accounting office) to review aspects of the US government's stewardship of the IANA functions and the transition. Today, September 18, 2015, the GAO made public its Report, GAO-15-642: Published: Aug 19, 2015. In short, 
"GAO recommends that NTIA review relevant frameworks for evaluation and use applicable portions to help evaluate the transition proposal. The Department of Commerce concurred with the recommendation." (emphasis added)
"NTIA plans to evaluate the [IANA Transition] proposal against core goals, such as maintaining the security and stability of the Internet domain name system and the openness of the Internet. However, NTIA has not yet determined how it will evaluate the proposal against the goals. The changes the working groups are considering could create a new organizational environment for the operation of the technical functions, such as new structures, contractual obligations, and governance models for ICANN. Given the extent of these potential changes, GAO identified frameworks for evaluation that could provide tools to guide NTIA's evaluation.

"These frameworks incorporate leading practices to help organizations obtain reasonable assurance that their goals and objectives will be met or that they will meet certain requirements. For example, key components of one framework include the organizational environment, risk assessment, and monitoring.

"In prior work, GAO has considered such frameworks in relationship to accountability challenges at a variety of organizations. These types of frameworks could help NTIA evaluate whether the transition proposal meets its core goals, and could also be helpful in considering accountability mechanisms that are included in the proposal. For example, one framework's risk assessment component could help NTIA consider the multistakeholder community's efforts to identify and manage risks.

"These frameworks are intentionally flexible, so that NTIA could select elements that are applicable to the scope of the proposed transition. Without a framework as a tool to systematically review the proposal and its various new structures and processes, NTIA may not be assured that its goals for the transition have been fully addressed and embedded over the long term.

 "Recommendation: To ensure that NTIA's evaluation of the Internet multistakeholder community's transition proposal fully considers whether the proposal provides reasonable assurance that NTIA's core goals for the transition will be met, the NTIA Administrator should review relevant frameworks for evaluation, such as the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) framework and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) quality management principles [pdf], and use the relevant portions of the frameworks to help evaluate and document whether and how the transition proposal meets NTIA's core goals." (emphasis and links added)

More information:
U.S. GAO - Internet Management: Structured Evaluation Could Help Assess Proposed Transition of Key Domain Name and Other Technical Functions:
Recommendation for Executive Action: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-642
Additional Materials:
Highlights Page: (PDF, 1 page)
Full Report: (PDF, 65 pages)
Accessible Version: (PDF, 72 pages)

Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) http://coso.org/
Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission - (Wikipedia): "COSO admits in their report that while enterprise risk management provides important benefits, limitations exist. Enterprise risk management is dependent on human judgment and therefore susceptible to decision making. Human failures such as simple errors or mistakes can lead to inadequate responses to risk. In addition, controls can be circumvented by collusion of two or more people, and management has the ability to override enterprise risk management decisions. These limitations preclude a board and management from having absolute assurance as to achievement of the entity's objectives."




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