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

[Shatan, Gregory S.]

Steve,

You are correct.  The "assignment" of the IANA contract may be a useful paradigm to isolate what responsibilities and obligations NTIA is transitioning,  but the NTIA statement does not call for the NTIA to be replaced by an organization (new or existing) performing the NTIA's role (though it could be) or for the NTIA's role to be performed or enforced pursuant to a contract (though it could be).  The drawing board is actually fairly open when it comes to mechanisms and solutions, and the focus should be on issues (what needs to be fixed) and principles (what needs to be maintained) at this stage.

As for whether this list can focus on the functions covered by the current IANA contract, I tend to doubt that will happen.  While I haven't been a fan of the previous attempts or suggestions to split this list,  perhaps the time has come to either (a) split the list into two lists, one to discuss this transition, and another for everything else, or (b) at the least, tag all emails on this subject with, e.g., [IANA Transition] to distinguish them from all the other topics under discussion here.

Greg Shatan

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Crocker [mailto:steve at shinkuro.com] 
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2014 1:33 PM
To: Shatan, Gregory S.
Cc: discuss at 1net.org; governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [discuss] [governance] U.S. to Give Up Oversight of Web Policymaking Body

Greg, et al,

I do not read NTIA's announcement as calling for the creation of a new organization nor the movement or replacement of the current contract with another contract.  Instead, I believe NTIA is asking for the community to think through how to replace the role the NTIA has performed, which is only a review of the root zone update actions and ICANN's processes and reporting.

I think it would be very helpful to everyone to focus first on coming up with a list of *issues* and *principles* before suggesting specific mechanisms or solutions.  By "issue" I mean a problem that needs to be solved or an aspect of the current arrangement that is not satisfactory in some fashion.  And the focus here really needs to be on the functions covered by the current IANA contract.  Issues related to gTLD contractual matters, overall organization of ICANN, non-ICANN matters such as network surveillance by various governments, etc. are quite far outside the scope.  There are other venues for discussing those topics.

By "principles" I mean qualities that need to be preserved going forward.

If the community can agree on a set of issues and principles, I think the path forward will be much clearer.  If the issues and principles are in place, choosing a specific mechanism becomes, to use the tongue-in-cheek phrasing from the technical community, just an implementation detail.

Steve




On Mar 16, 2014, at 12:59 PM, Shatan, Gregory S. <GShatan at ReedSmith.com> wrote:

> 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
> --------------------------
> Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device
> 
> 
> ----- 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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