In response to the questions about the political costs of delay (below), I think that nobody on this list (or anywhere else) has the faintest idea what US government policy (Pres + House + Senate) towards the transition (or anything else) might look like a year or two from now.  I certainly agree that delay would be a big mistake, if the goal is to achieve the transition at all costs.

But that's not the goal, in my eyes. The goal is to create an institution that can manage these resources in a reasonable way, for the next [many] years.  The CCWG reached a consensus on the structure of an institution that it believes will do that - although to be fair, it's actually just a sketch of that institution, with critical pieces yet to be fleshed out and added into the mix.

I don't pretend to understand anything about politics, but I do know that this is not only a "political" problem, it's also an "engineering" problem - corporate engineering.  The CCWG has designed a machine that it believes will be able to check its own excesses, and that will operate transparently, taking the views of all interested communities into account in making its decisions. It's astonishingly complicated, and it has never been tried before.  IT MIGHT WORK VERY WELL - I'm not disputing that, perhaps requiring only tweaking here and there, as Avri suggested. 

But it might not.  Astonishingly complicated machines have an annoying habit of not functioning as advertised - at least, not at first, before they have been put through their paces.  It seems to me that it is ordinary prudence, to demand proof that the whole new infrastructure works before signing off on it.  The consequences if this machine fails could be very severe.   

All I'm suggesting is that it would hardly seem unreasonable, to me, if the USG took the position that while it is signing off on the transition, it is doing so subject to a kind of probationary period that will enable us all to understand better whether and how it actually works. Perhaps other countries will view that as a terribly untrustworthy move, perhaps they won't - I do think it helps that it is, fundamentally, quite a reasonable position to take.

David


Mueller, Milton L wrote:
MM  Do we know who the next NTIA and Congress will work, in practice, on the ground? The question answers itself. To push this off to the next administration is to introduce a completely new and unknown set of factors into the situation – without in any way improving the reforms.  [SNIP] And US Commerce Dept approval? How revocable is that once we lose this opportunity to get rid of it? Have you given that any thought?

William Drake wrote:
WD:  Respect your views on the outstanding issues, but am still concerned about the larger political consequences.  So I have a couple simple questions, if the transition is delayed as you suggest:
1.  If Hillary somehow manages to get elected, when do you expect the further process you want would be completed and the political ducks would be lined up in DC for the US to finally relinquish its role?
2.  If Hillary somehow manages to lose to Il Donald, in what decade do you expect the US would relinquish its role?
3.  What do you think the “rest of the world” governments that have been screaming about the imperative to end the US role being the number one Internet issue on the global agenda will be doing in the meanwhile as we go through the many cycles of community tweaking and US politics involved?

Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:
May I add two questions:

1. If the IANA Transition is delayed what do you expect from governments in the UNCSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation which will start in September 2016 and will deliver a report to the UN General Assembly (via CSTD and ECOSOC) in fall 2017?

2. If the IANA Transition is delayed what do you expect from the next ITU Plenipot scheduled for fall 2018 in Dubai?


*******************************
David G. Post
Volokh Conspiracy Blog http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/david-post
Book (ISO Jefferson's Moose)  http://tinyurl.com/c327w2n  
Music https://soundcloud.com/davidpost-1/sets
Publications & Misc. http://www.ssrn.com/author=537 http://www.davidpost.com
*******************************