[atlarge-discuss] U.S. Will Renew ICANN's Authority

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, September 13, 2002; 5:41 PM 


The U.S. government will renew a California nonprofit's authority to manage 
the Internet's global addressing system, a top Commerce Department official 
said today. 

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the 
Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) under agreements with the U.S. government 
that are up for renewal at the end of this month. 

"At this point we do anticipate that there will be an extension" of ICANN's 
authority, Commerce Department Undersecretary Nancy Victory told reporters in 
a conference call. Victory is the head of the Commerce Department's National 
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which oversees 
ICANN. 

ICANN, based in Marina del Rey, has been criticized for failing to involve 
the online public in its decisions, but Victory said she has been encouraged 
by internal ICANN reforms. She added that new agreements with ICANN would 
include provisions "designed to ensure that we continue progress forward with 
the reform effort." 

Victory did not say when the renewal of ICANN's authority would be completed, 
nor did she indicate how long it would run. 

ICANN President Stuart Lynn said the group is "in discussions with the 
Commerce Department right now about the precise shape" the agreements will 
take. 

He added that ICANN would continue pushing to enact internal reforms. "We've 
made good progress, but we haven't completed it. There's still work to be 
done," Lynn said. 

Formed in 1998, ICANN was commissioned by the U.S. government to inject 
competition into the domain name industry, which had been monopolized by 
Internet addressing giant Network Solutions Inc. Networks Solutions owned a 
government contract to operate the technical backbone of the DNS, which was 
originally created by government-funded U.S. scientists. 

ICANN has accredited more than 100 new address retailers and approved seven 
new globally available Internet domains that compete with dot-com, dot-net 
and dot-org. 

Earlier this year, ICANN embarked on an internal reform effort, but critics 
still complain that the reform plans don't give a meaningful voice to 
ordinary Internet users. 

Victory said that the ICANN "experiment" needs more time to succeed, adding 
that while she is pleased with ICANN's reform efforts thus far, but she is 
not yet fully satisfied. 

University of Miami Law Professor Michael Froomkin said he is not surprised 
that the Commerce Department opted to renew the contract. "They don't want to 
rebuild ICANN from scratch," he said. 

Froomkin, editor ICANNWatch.org, a Web site often critical of ICANN, said it 
will be more interesting to see how much pressure the Commerce Department 
exerts on ICANN to reform itself. 

Center for Democracy and Technology Policy Analyst Robert Courtney agreed. 
"We've always sort of anticipated that the [memorandum of understanding] 
would be renewed. We continue to hope for and continue to push for some new 
provisions to be included in the MOU," Courtney said. The agreement should 
clearly outline steps ICANN must take to improve its openness and 
transparency, Courtney said. 

Froomkin said that Victory's resolve will be key to ICANN's future. "What 
matters is the will of the NTIA, what they put in the agreement is less 
important," he said. "What matters more than anything else is when NTIA is 
willing to draw a line in the sand and really mean it." 

Later this month, Victory will be part of the U.S. delegation at a meeting of 
the International Telecommunications Union in Marrakech, Morocco. The United 
States intends to oppose the ITU's efforts to participate more in Internet 
regulation, Victory said. 

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