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Dear members:

The CWG on IANA transition is going to collecting community feedback on the IANA transition this week. This exercise is very important because it will influence the CWG’s development of a proposal.

I have gone through the 9 questions they prepared and answered them, you all may be interested in my answers. Most of these answers will probably be uncontroversial on this list, but there may be some room for debate so  I would like to get your feedback on my proposed answers

 

1.      Do you believe that the transition from the NTIA should happen (Please provide the reasons for your answer)?

Yes. Unilateral US government control of the IANA functions contract is not compatible with the multistakeholder model

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2.      Are you comfortable with ICANN as policy-maker also being the IANA operator without the benefit of external oversight?

No.

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3.      Should registries, as the primary customers of the IANA functions, have more of a say as to which transition proposal is acceptable?

The NTIA has made it clear that all major stakeholder groups, including registries, need to accept the transition proposal. Registries should have an influential role in any oversight mechanisms of the naming-related IANA functions, but need not have a privileged role in the selection of proposals.

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4.      What does functional separation of IANA from ICANN mean to you? (this is not referring to having another operator than ICANN performing the IANA functions but rather the internal separation between ICANN and IANA in the context where ICANN is the IANA operator)

Functional separation means that IANA is a department of ICANN under the same management as the rest of ICANN and without a clearly separated budget or mission.

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5.      Do you believe the IANA function is adequately separated from ICANN under the current arrangements (internal separation)?

No.

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6.      In considering the key factors (such as security and stability, ease of separating the IANA function from ICANN, quality of services, accountability mechanisms etc.) for evaluating the various transition proposals what importance would you give to the ability to separate IANA from ICANN (separability) vs. the other factors?

Very high importance, because separability will have major beneficial effects on all the other factors, such as accountability, quality of service, security and stability. Separability increases the leverage of the customers of IANA over performance, security and stability.

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7.            Given the IANA functions could be separated from ICANN do you believe it would be important for the community to obtain from ICANN on an annual basis the costs for operating IANA including overhead costs?

 

Yes, very important.

o Would it be important to separate out the costs associated with address and protocol functions?

 

Less so than the IANA department as a whole

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8.            Could there be unforeseen impacts relative to selecting a new operator for the IANA functions vs the ICANN policy role (should ICANN determine that there will be another round of new gTLDs, how could it ensure that the new operator would accept this)?

 

No, a new operator could be contractually bound to accept changes from ICANN that were the product of legitimate policy making processes.

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9.            Are there other transition models which the CWG should be exploring?

 

Yes, the new structural separation model proposed by Brenden Kuerbis, Matt Shears, and Avri Doria

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Milton L Mueller

Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor

Syracuse University School of Information Studies

http://faculty.ischool.syr.edu/mueller/

Internet Governance Project

http://internetgovernance.org