Dear Friends

Greetings. I personally support the statement.

FYI, NPOC is currently consulting its members and its PC on its own 
statement and if it wants to endorse the draft NCSG statement.  I think 
we can expect some comments and answers over the next 6 hours.

Yours

Klaus


  On 3/17/2014 2:52 AM, Rafik Dammak wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> (cc NCSG-PC)
>
> Milton volunteered and drafted this statement regarding the NTIA 
> announcement. we should be able to discuss (commenting here 
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VAkGj39ou5YkypFt0Vwqvyd1FTK31Ojm29s_gX-Ugrw/edit?usp=sharing 
> ) and endorse it asap before Singapore meeting to show support and 
> indicate our initial positions .
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Rafik
>
>
> ----------statement----------------
>
> NCSG Statement on the globalization of the IANA functions
>
> The Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) welcomes the 13 March 2014 
> statement from the U.S. Commerce Department announcing its intention 
> to “transition key Internet domain name functions to the global 
> multistakeholder community.” We support this move because an Internet 
> governance regime that gives one national government exclusive powers 
> over a global resource is bound to be politically biased, divisive and 
> promote tendencies toward Internet fragmentation. This change is long 
> overdue.
>
> NCSG supports all 5 of the principles NTIA proposed to guide the 
> transition. We agree that the transition should:
>
> • Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
>
> • Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
>
> • Meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners 
> of the IANA services;
>
> • Maintain the openness of the Internet;
>
> • Not replace the NTIA role with a government-led or an 
> inter-governmental organization.
>
> It is very important to replace the current system with a carefully 
> considered, well-designed alternative. We note that noncommercial 
> stakeholders have been leaders in developing plans for the proposed 
> transition. Submissions to the Netmundial conference from two NCSG 
> members, the Internet Governance Project and Avri Doria, have set out 
> specific blueprints for the transition.
>
> Consistent with both of these proposals, NCSG proposes an additional 
> principle to guide the transition. The transition should:
>
> • Enhance the accountability of ICANN through structural separation of 
> the DNS root zone management functions from ICANN’s policy making 
> functions
>
> The root zone management functions, which are currently performed by 
> Verisign, Inc. and IANA under contracts with the U.S. government, are 
> clerical, technical and operational, The policy making functions of 
> ICANN, on the other hand, are highly political. NCSG believes that 
> those two aspects of DNS governance must be kept apart, in separate 
> organizations. Separating them ensures that those with policy and 
> political objectives must win support for their ideas in a fair and 
> open policy development process, and cannot arbitrarily impose them 
> upon Internet users and service providers by virtue of their control 
> of the operational levers of the global domain name system.
>
> The existing IANA contract attempts to keep the two separate; however, 
> if ICANN simply absorbs the IANA and Verisign functions without any 
> oversight from the U.S. government, there is a danger that the two 
> could become integrated and intermingled in unhealthy ways. That is 
> why the NCSG, along with supporters from other stakeholder groups, 
> will insist on this new principle of separation during the transition 
> process.
>
> The Department of Commerce has asked ICANN to “conven[e] stakeholders 
> across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate 
> transition plan.” Unfortunately, ICANN’s management seems to have 
> interpreted this as a mandate to implement its own transition plan, in 
> which it would simply take over the IANA functions with no oversight. 
> NCSG wishes to remind ICANN that it has been charged with convening a 
> process, not with controlling it. The transition will not work unless 
> ICANN runs a truly open and deliberative process that allows the all 
> ideas to be considered and the best ideas to win.
>
> NCSG is the voice of civil society and nonprofit organizations in 
> ICANN’s domain name policy making organ, the Generic Names Supporting 
> Organization. It is composed of two constituencies, the Noncommercial 
> Users Constituency (http://ncuc.org) and the Non-Profit Operational 
> Constituencies (http://www.npoc.org)
>
> ----------end of statement-------
>
>