[discuss] [governance] U.S. to Give Up Oversight of Web Policymaking Body

Sun Mar 16 16:59:52 UTC 2014

At the most basic level, the NTIA is going to assign the IANA Contract to the new organization created by this process ("NewOrg"), so that NewOrg steps into the shoes of the NTIA.

Then the question becomes should the IANA Contract be "revised" or "renegotiated" as part of the process to add to, subtract from or modify the privileges and obligations of NewOrg and ICANN?  By what process and who will be involved?  And -- is this question set even on the table? Or is the contract being assigned "as is "?

Also, what will NewOrg look like? What form, what domicile, what governance? This is probably the question set more directly asked as a result of the NTIA announcement.

Greg Shatan
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----- Original Message -----
From: John Curran [mailto:jcurran at istaff.org]
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 09:24 AM
To: Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>
Cc: 1Net List <discuss at 1net.org>; <governance at lists.igcaucus.org> <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
Subject: Re: [discuss] [governance] U.S. to Give Up Oversight of Web    Policymaking Body

On Mar 15, 2014, at 12:25 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

> Furthermore, I would refer people back to the IGP plan, and the call to separate the globalization/reform of the IANA functions from the broader and more difficult reforms that must be made in ICANN's policy making process, domicile, etc. Parminder's comments confuse these two things.

The existing co-mingling of overall Internet identifier coordination role, DNS policy
development role, and IANA administration and implementation role (all within ICANN)
does make it difficult at times to keep track of which aspect we are talking about
at any given moment...

> Let's do one thing at a time, so that each can be done right. The distinction between ICANN's policy process, its corporate domicile, its contracts with registries, etc., with the globalization of the IANA functions has been reiterated many times on this list. We don't have to change everything about ICANN in one stage. Once the IANA functions are dealt with, a lot of options open up regarding the policy process.

I'd like to explore the various roles just a bit, so I can better understand what is
really proposed in "the IGP plan".  To do this, I'd like to consider the tasks performed
for the generic case of IANA protocol parameter registries and then for the specific
case of the DNS root zone registry, as revised per the IGP proposal.

(I'll spare repeating all of the IETF registry background, but one can refer to for
<http://1net-mail.1net.org/pipermail/discuss/2014-March/002434.html> for reference)

When the IETF specifies a protocol, there are often associated registries.  To a rough
approximation, the IESG is the policy development body (as it works with the community
via working groups and approves the registry creation via the "IANA Considerations'
section of an RFC) and the IAB is the registry authority.  Via the mechanisms in RFC
6220 and per an MOU with ICANN (RFC 2860), the IAB has arranged for ICANN to perform
the IANA registry administration and operations tasks.  In this role, IANA receives
requests from third parties to make entries in any IETF registry, and if they conform
with the established policy for the registry then the entry is made.  This approach
encourages both clarity of registry policy as well as fair and impartial administration
of the registry itself.

The IAB also noted that some general-propose registries (DNS names and IP addresses)
pose "policy issues", and per the MOU with ICANN recognizes that ICANN may have policy
which affect how those registries (such as the DNS root zone) are administered (and
this is a good thing because the the IANA function contract with NTIA specifically
calls for the IANA to follow ICANN policy when processing DNS root zone requests...)

With respect to DNS root zone, there is a significant difference being proposed in
the roles under the IGP proposal, in that you have ICANN-sans-IANA performing policy
development _and_ policy administration roles, i.e. from reading, it is hard to tell
if your new "DNSA" is only performing the clerical registry operations task, as opposed
to the actual administration of policy via processing of incoming requests for changes
from the community -

  "The DNSA would require a binding contract with ICANN regarding the conditions
   under which it would agree to implement changes in the root zone or other
   associated databases to reflect policies emerging from ICANN’s policy development
   processes. The contract should ensure that the DNSA has no policy authority but
   merely implements valid requests for additions or deletions emerging from ICANN’s
   policy process."

From the above, is the determination of a "valid request" performed first by ICANN
(and the result send to DNSA for processing), or does DNSA receive the "raw" request
and make the determination of validity in accordance with the established policy?
I believe you intended the former: ICANN-sans-IANA would the body which performs
policy administration and it then sends only clerical direction for registry update
to the DNSA, but could potentially read the proposal either way.

Thoughts?
/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.

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