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The future of ICANN. Should it stay under U.S control?

By Sean Michael Kerner on September 29, 2009 9:27 AM

From the 'Who Owns the Internet?' files:

Tomorrow (Sept. 30th) is a big day of the Internet. The Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the U.S Department of Commerce and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) expires.

ICANN has operated under a yearly JPA from the Department of Commerce since 1998. Will it be renewed again this year?

Here's what I know at this point. ICANN will make some kind of formal announcement on September 30th about the JPA, beyond that, details are few and far between (and yes I'll be speaking with ICANN first thing Wednesday morning..).

There are some people that think that ICANN, operating under contract from the U.S government. means that the U.S exerts unfair influence over ICANN and by extension, the Internet itself. Among those that don't like the U.S influence is a top European Union commissioner.

Truth is, even today (before whatever announcement is made tomorrow), there is multi-national input into the governance and operations of ICANN.

Rob Beckstrom the recently anointed CEO of ICANN said in a June press conference that, ICANN already has participation from over 80 countries by way of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which is an ICANN advisory body.

The other side of the argument, is the simple fact that control (however menial) is in the best interests of the U.S as ICANN and the Internet represent a strategic U.S interest. How could the U.S ever give that up?

The way I see it there are several layers to this situation. U.S oversight of ICANN, is marginal in the sense that I personally have not seen the government in recent years directly mandate any major ICANN decisions. Sure there is influence, but influence would be there with or without the JPA.

The other issue is control by way of the DNS infrastructure. Today VeriSign manages the root DNS zones for the Internet under contract from ICANN. How much influence does the U.S government have in that decision? Hard to say. But considering VeriSign's track record of uptime and the simple fact that they have the long-term (in Internet time) experience at managing and growing the system, I doubt that any change in the JPA would affect VeriSign in the near tearm.

So does the JPA matter?

Personally I think the concept of the JPA matters. That is that there is some form of government oversight of the governance of the Internet. What will undoubtedly change tomorrow are some of the specific terms. The Internet itself is changing, ICANN has a proposal out now for new Top Level Domains and there is a shift toward IPv6 and DNSSEC that ICANN can help influence.

ICANN will not disappear tomorrow and neither will government oversight. As for the JPA itself, we'll just have to wait until tomorrow AM to know for sure.

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