[Chapter-delegates] Internet Society Calls for Greater Autonomy for Key Internet Organization

[ISOC Notice]

INTERNET SOCIETY CALLS FOR GREATER 
AUTONOMY FOR KEY INTERNET ORGANIZATION

Reston, VA and Geneva, Switzerland - 26th July 2006 - Speaking during
today's US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA) public meeting on the transition of the
Internet's domain name system (DNS) to the private sector, ISOC President
and CEO Lynn St. Amour outlined how key Internet organizations need to
have enough autonomy to respond appropriately to the
fast-changing technical and operational environment of the Internet.

ISOC's comments come as the current Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
between the US Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) concerning administration of the DNS
approaches expiry at the end of September 2006.

ISOC has always promoted the self-regulation model of the Internet, and
supports ICANN and the role it plays in coordinating certain aspects of
the "collaborative" Internet management model. Furthermore, ISOC
believes that ICANN along with its related organizations and their
supporting processes are now ready to take the next step in the move to
support the Internet’s management and development in a private sector
model, just as envisioned by the US Government in 1998.

"While we recognize and applaud the 'light hand' the US Government has
always taken with respect to the Internet, we believe it is time to move
to a minimal, transitional MOU where the US Government plays a
'backstop' role that would only come into play in the event of a serious
organizational failure," said Ms. St. Amour. "We consider the MOU in its
present form no longer necessary or appropriate at this stage of the
Internet and ICANN’s development. ISOC believes a clear unambiguous signal
needs to be made internationally that we are entering a new phase and
taking steps to move to the private sector model per the original vision
of the US Government."

ISOC believes the success of the Internet lies in the fact that it is a
"network of networks" characterized by distributed management and a
minimum of regulation with operational and governance mechanisms being
implemented as locally as possible using bottom-up community based
processes built on publicly developed principles. These principles and
processes have enabled the Internet to grow rapidly and adapt to new
demands and opportunities - and this is where the strength and stability
of the Internet model lies.

-----------------------Text of ISOC's NTIA Statement-----------------------

NTIA meeting July 26, 2006
 
Introductory comments:
 
"Thank you.
 
Founded in 1992, the Internet SOCiety (ISOC) is a not-for-profit 
membership organization that provides leadership in addressing 
issues that confront the future of the Internet, through support of 
open standards, education, and policy. With offices in 
Washington, DC, and Geneva, Switzerland, we are dedicated to
ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet 
for the benefit of people throughout the world.  ISOC has roughly 
100 organizations, 80 International Chapters and greater than 
24,000 individual members in over 180 countries.
 
ISOC is the organizational home for the groups responsible for 
Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering 
Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and the
 Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).  These organizations 
together play a critical role in ensuring the Internet develops in 
a stable and open manner. For over 14 years ISOC has run 
international network training programs for developing countries 
and these have played a vital role in setting up Internet 
connections and networks around the globe.
 
For completeness and transparency, in 2002, ISOC was awarded 
the .ORG registry as a result of a competitive open bid process 
conducted by ICANN; and a Sole Member  corporation, called 
Public Interest Registry (PIR), was established for this purpose.
 
My comments today build on the statement we submitted to the 
NTIA several weeks ago 
(http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/ISOC_NTIA_response_060707.pdf).  
We trust that the ISOC statement will be taken into account as there 
are points there we feel strongly about (namely the IAB IANA, and 
root server comments) that I may not touch upon today due to time 
constraints.  
 
ISOC believes that the success of the Internet lies in the fact that 
it is a “network of networks” characterized by distributed 
management and a minimum of regulation. Operational and 
governance mechanisms are implemented as locally as possible 
using bottom-up community based processes built on publicly 
developed principles.  These principles and processes have also 
enabled the Internet to grow rapidly, adapt to new demands and 
opportunities (and as such is an organic development model), 
and this is where the strength and stability of the Internet model 
lies.  It has also meant that no one entity or indeed any one 
government can "own" or “control” the Internet, and this is still 
true today.  

ISOC has always supported the self-regulation model of the Internet, 
and strongly supports ICANN and the role it plays in coordinating 
certain aspects of the “collaborative” Internet management model. 
The Department of Commerce states that the milestones in the 
6th amendment to the MOU are “intended to ensure ICANN is 
a sufficiently stable, transparent, representative, efficient, and 
sustainable management organization capable of handling the 
important DNS tasks well into the future.”  ISOC believes that 
ICANN has made commendable progress in meeting these 
milestones and that its operations are sufficient vis-à-vis the 
6th Amendment.  While there is always room for improvement, 
we believe that ICANN, related organizations and their 
supporting processes are ready to take the next step in the 
move to support the Internet’s management and development 
in a private sector model, just as envisioned by the 
US Government in 1998.  We believe it is time to move to a 
minimal, transitional MOU where the US Government plays 
a “backstop” role that would only come into play in the 
event of a serious organizational failure.
  
We continue to be concerned about attempts to politicize the 
Internet and its management.   As long as the US Government 
has a role in ICANN’s governance and management, organizations 
and other governments have an incentive to try to leverage political 
channels to their favor, rather than allowing the Internet to evolve 
organically through the proven, bottom-up, need driven, 
community processes that have clearly served it well.
 
Further, given the purpose of the MOU was to transition the 
US Government’s responsibilities to the private sector we do 
not believe that the DOC should be in the position of repeatedly 
evaluating and directing ICANN’s performance.  The longer this 
continues the more difficult it will be to break out of this “oversight” 
model, as the Internet and the organizations involved in its 
development are constantly changing, meaning there will 
always be yet more “tasks” to be completed.  
 
ISOC believes the MOU as it is currently constructed, is no longer 
necessary or appropriate at this stage of the Internet and ICANN’s 
development.  The current MOU puts the DOC in an affirmative 
position of involvement in, and to some extent in a position of 
needing to dictate specific ICANN activities.  This can hamper 
ICANN and other organizations and can be seen as competing 
with the established principles.  These principles are important, 
but no longer need to be codified in an MOU. Further, the task 
list approach currently employed risks locking in approaches and 
constraining the ability of the Internet community to develop 
responses to complex and evolving issues.    And as new 
technological developments occur, whether in the underlying 
infrastructure, in the development of new ways to navigate on 
the Internet, or in ways yet unforeseen, the role today's Domain 
Name System plays will change over time.  We need to ensure 
that ICANN and the other organizations in the Domain Name 
space have enough autonomy to respond appropriately, following 
the models of development and management that have been used 
for the last thirty years.   These processes allow all parties 
(including governments) the chance to participate in the Internet’s 
development and management and have stood the Internet very 
well to date.  Again, these “tasks” are important but they will 
change over time and should not be codified in an MOU, even 
though they will be addressed inside the ICANN framework.  
ICANN needs room to develop processes that suit the Internet’s 
continual evolution and it is time to take this next step.
 
Finally, as the MOU has become a symbol internationally of US 
control over the DNS, it can be argued that the MOU, which was 
originally designed to support and shore up ICANN in its early 
days, is now actually hampering ICANN's continued development 
and their legitimacy in the eyes of many. 
 
In summary, while we recognize and applaud the “light-hand” the 
US Government has always taken with respect to the Internet, the 
time has come for the DOC to take another step toward its intended 
final state and move to an even more hands-off "backstop" role.  This 
will allow the DOC to focus on more appropriate interests such as 
the long-term stability of ICANN ­ which is also a legitimate 
international interest.  ISOC believes a clear unambiguous signal 
needs to be made internationally that we are entering a new phase 
and taking steps to move to the private sector model per the 
original vision of the US Government.    We do not believe it is 
necessary to extend the MOU as it is currently structured, and
 we believe ICANN is ready to take the next step in its transition, 
assuming the US Government moves to a role where they act 
as a true “backstop” and not operational overseer.
 
Thank you for the opportunity to comment."