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-------