Thanks very much for this Pranesh, indeed a topic that is complex and 
hits many of our activities.  Reading this with interest.

cheers Stephanie Perrin


On 2016-06-29 5:17, Pranesh Prakash wrote:
> Dear all,
> In CIS's submissions to the WSIS process, to the ICG, to the 
> CCWG-Acct, we have raised the multi-faceted issue of jurisdiction, and 
> why dealing with that now (before the transition) is important.  Given 
> that it hasn't been dealt with as part of WS1, I believe the "IANA 
> transition" ends up being meaningless in terms of what it set out to 
> achieve, and what were the goals laid down in the Montevideo Statement 
> and in the NETmundial Statement.
>
> I believe civil society actors ought to discuss our positions on the 
> topic of jurisdiction, which frankly hasn't really happened on this list.
>
> To instigate debate, I've written a long-ish piece on the topic:
> http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/jurisdiction-the-taboo-topic-at-icann 
>
>
> Regards,
> Pranesh
>
>
>
> Jurisdiction: The Taboo Topic at ICANN
> ======================================
>
> In March 2014, the [US government announced] that they were going to 
> end the contract they have with ICANN to run the [Internet Assigned 
> Numbers Authority] (IANA), and hand over control to the “global 
> multistakeholder community”. They insisted that the plan for 
> transition had to come through a multistakeholder process and have 
> stakeholders “across the global Internet community”.
>
> Why is the U.S. government removing the NTIA contract?
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> The main reason for the U.S. government’s action is that it will get 
> rid of a political thorn in the U.S. government’s side: keeping the 
> contract allows them to be called out as having a special role in 
> Internet governance (with the Affirmation of Commitments between the 
> U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN, the IANA contract, and the 
> cooperative agreement with Verisign), and engaging in unilateralism 
> with regard to the operation of the root servers of the Internet 
> naming system, while repeatedly declaring that they support a 
> multistakeholder model of Internet governance.
>
> This contradiction is what they are hoping to address. Doing away with 
> the NTIA contract will also increase — ever so marginally — ICANN’s 
> global legitimacy: this is something that world governments, civil 
> society organizations, and some American academics have been asking 
> for nearly since ICANN’s inception in 1998. For instance, here are 
> some demands made [in a declaration by the Civil Society Internet 
> Governance Caucus at WSIS, in 2005]:
>
>> “ICANN will negotiate an appropriate host country agreement to 
>> replace its California Incorporation, being careful to retain those 
>> aspects of its California Incorporation that enhance its 
>> accountability to the global Internet user community.”ICANN’s 
>> decisions, and any host country agreement, must be required to comply 
>> with public policy requirements negotiated through international 
>> treaties in regard to, inter alia, human rights treaties, privacy 
>> rights, gender agreements and trade rules. … “It is also expected 
>> that the multi-stakeholder community will observe and comment on the 
>> progress made in this process through the proposed \[Internet 
>> Governance\] Forum.”
>
> In short: the objective of the transition is political, [not 
> technical]. In an ideal world, we *should* aim at reducing U.S. state 
> control over the core of the Internet’s domain name system.[^1]
>
> It is our contention that **U.S. state control over the core of the 
> Internet’s domain name system is *not* being removed** by the 
> transition that is currently underway.
>
> Why is the Transition Happening Now?
> ------------------------------------
>
> Despite the U.S. government having given commitments in the past that 
> were going to finish the IANA transition by “September 30, 2000”, (the 
> [White Paper on Management of Internet Names and Addresses] states: 
> “The U.S. Government would prefer that this transition be complete 
> before the year 2000. To the extent that the new corporation is 
> established and operationally stable, September 30, 2000 is intended 
> to be, and remains, an ‘outside’ date.”) and later by “fall of 
> 2006”,[^2] those turned out to be empty promises. However, this time, 
> the transition seems to be going through, unless the U.S. Congress 
> manages to halt it.
>
> However, in order to answer the question of “why now?” fully, one has 
> to look a bit at the past.
>
> In 1998, through the [White Paper on Management of Internet Names and 
> Addresses] the U.S. government [asserted it’s control over the root], 
> and asserted — some would say arrogated to itself — the power to put 
> out contracts for both the IANA functions as well as the ‘A’ Root 
> (i.e., the Root Zone Maintainer function that Network Solutions Inc. 
> then performed, and continues to perform to date in its current avatar 
> as Verisign). The IANA functions contract — a periodically renewable 
> contract — was awarded to ICANN, a California-based non-profit 
> corporation that was set up exclusively for this purpose, but which 
> evolved around the existing IANA (to placate the Internet Society).
>
> Meanwhile, of course, there were criticisms of ICANN from multiple 
> foreign governments and civil society organizations. Further, despite 
> it being a California-based non-profit on contract with the 
> government, domestically within the U.S., there was pushback from 
> constituencies that felt that more direct U.S. control of the DNS was 
> important.
>
> As Goldsmith and Wu summarize:
>
>> “Milton Mueller and others have shown that ICANN’s spirit of 
>> “self-regulation” was an appealing label for a process that could be 
>> more accurately described as the U.S. government brokering a 
>> behind-the-scenes deal that best suited its policy preferences … the 
>> United States wanted to ensure the stability of the Internet, to fend 
>> off the regulatory efforts of foreign governments and international 
>> organizations, and to maintain ultimate control. The easiest way to 
>> do that was to maintain formal control while turning over day-to-day 
>> control of the root to ICANN and the Internet Society, which had 
>> close ties to the regulation-shy American technology industry.” 
>> \[footnotes omitted\]
>
> And that brings us to the first reason that the NTIA announced the 
> transition in 2014, rather than earlier.
>
> ### ICANN Adjudged Mature Enough
>
> The NTIA now sees ICANN as being mature enough: the final transition 
> was announced 16 years after ICANN’s creation, and complaints about 
> ICANN and its legitimacy had largely died down in the international 
> arena in that while. Nowadays, governments across the world send their 
> representatives to ICANN, thus legitimizing ICANN. States have largely 
> been satisfied by participating in the Government Advisory Council, 
> which, as its name suggests, only has advisory powers. Further, unlike 
> in the early days, there is [no serious push for states assuming 
> control of ICANN]. Of course they grumble about the ICANN Board not 
> following their advice, but no government, as far as I am aware, has 
> walked out or refused to participate.
>
> ### L’affaire Snowden
>
> Many within the United States, and some without, believe that the 
> United States not only plays an exceptional role to play in the 
> running of the Internet — by dint of historical development and 
> dominance of American companies — but that *it ought to* have an 
> exceptional role because it is the best country to exercise 
> ‘oversight’ over ‘the Internet’ (often coming from [clueless 
> commentators]), and from dinosaurs of the Internet era, like [American 
> IP lawyers] and [American ‘homeland’ security hawks], Jones Day, who 
> are ICANN’s lawyers, and other [jingoists] and those policymakers who 
> are controlled by these narrow-minded interests.
>
> The Snowden revelations were, in that way, a godsend for the NTIA, as 
> it allowed them a fig-leaf of [international][] [criticism][] [with 
> which] to counter these domestic critics and carry on with a 
> transition that they have been seeking to put into motion for a while. 
> The Snowden revelations led Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil, to 
> state in September 2013, at the 68th U.N. General Assembly, that 
> Brazil would “present proposals for the establishment of a [civilian 
> multilateral framework for the governance and use of the Internet]”, 
> and as [Diego Canabarro] points out this catalysed the U.S. government 
> and the technical community into taking action.
>
> Given this context, a few months after the Snowden revelations, the 
> so-called [I\* organizations] met — seemingly with the blessing of the 
> U.S. government[^3] — in Montevideo, and put out a [‘Statement on the 
> Future of Internet Governance’] that sought to link the Snowden 
> revelations on pervasive surveillance with the need to urgently 
> transition the IANA stewardship role away from the U.S. government. Of 
> course, the signatories to that statement knew fully well, as did most 
> of the readers of that statement, that there is no linkage between the 
> Snowden revelations about pervasive surveillance and the operations of 
> the DNS root, but still they, and others, linked them together. 
> Specifically, the I\* organizations called for “accelerating the 
> globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in 
> which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an 
> equal footing.”
>
> One could posit the existence of two other contributing factors as well.
>
> Given political realities in the United States, a transition of this 
> sort is probably best done before an ultra-jingoistic President steps 
> into office.
>
> Lastly, the ten-yearly review of the World Summit on Information 
> Society was currently underway. At the original WSIS (as seen from the 
> civil society quoted above) the issue of US control over the root was 
> a major issue of contention. At that point (and during where the 2006 
> date for globalization of ICANN was emphasized by the US government).
>
> Why Jurisdiction is Important
> -----------------------------
>
> Jurisdiction has a great many aspects. *Inter alia*, these are:
>
> -   Legal sanctions applicable to changes in the root zone (for 
> instance, what happens if a country under US sanctions requests a 
> change to the root zone file?)
> -   Law applicable to resolution of contractual disputes with 
> registries, registrars, etc.
> -   Law applicable to labour disputes.
> -   Law applicable to competition / antitrust law that applies to 
> ICANN policies and regulations.
> -   Law applicable to disputes regarding ICANN decisions, such as 
> allocation of gTLDs, or non-renewal of a contract.
> -   Law applicable to consumer protection concerns.
> -   Law applicable to financial transparency of the organization.
> -   Law applicable to corporate condition of the organization, 
> including membership rights.
> -   Law applicable to data protection-related policies & regulations.
> -   Law applicable to trademark and other speech-related policies & 
> regulations.
> -   Law applicable to legal sanctions imposed by a country against 
> another.
>
> Some of these, but not all, depend on where bodies like ICANN (the 
> policy-making body), the IANA functions operator (the proposed 
> “Post-Transition IANA”, insofar as the names function is concerned), 
> and the root zone maintainer are incorporated or maintain their 
> primary office, while others depend on the location of the office 
> \[for instance, Turkish labour law applies for the ICANN office in 
> Istanbul\], while yet others depend on what’s decided by ICANN in 
> contracts (for instance, the resolution of contractual disputes with 
> ICANN, filing of suits with regard to disputes over new generic TLDs, 
> etc.).
>
> However, an issue like sanctions, for instance, depends on where 
> ICANN/PTI/RMZ are incorporated and maintain their primary office.
>
> As [Milton Mueller notes], the current IANA contract “requires ICANN 
> to be incorporated in, maintain a physical address in, and perform the 
> IANA functions in the U.S. This makes IANA subject to U.S. law and 
> provides America with greater political influence over ICANN.”
>
> He further notes that:
>
>> While it is common to assert that the U.S. has never abused its 
>> authority and has always taken the role of a neutral steward, this is 
>> not quite true. During the controversy over the .xxx domain, the Bush 
>> administration caved in to domestic political pressure and threatened 
>> to block entry of the domain into the root if ICANN approved it 
>> (Declaration of the Independent Review Panel, 2010). It took five 
>> years, an independent review challenge and the threat of litigation 
>> from a businessman willing to spend millions to get the .xxx domain 
>> into the root.
>
> Thus it is clear that even if the NTIA’s role in the IANA contract 
> goes away, jurisdiction remains an important issue.
>
> U.S. Doublespeak on Jurisdiction
> --------------------------------
>
> In March 2014, when NTIA finally announced that they would hand over 
> the reins to “the global multistakeholder community”. They’ve laid 
> down two procedural condition: that it be developed by stakeholders 
> across the global Internet community and have broad community 
> consensus, and they have proposed 5 substantive conditions that any 
> proposal must meet:
>
> -   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; and,
> -   Maintain the openness of the Internet.
> -   Must not replace the NTIA role with a solution that is 
> government-led or an inter-governmental organization.
>
> In that announcement there is no explicit restriction on the 
> jurisdiction of ICANN (whether it relate to its incorporation, the 
> resolution of contractual disputes, resolution of labour disputes, 
> antitrust/competition law, tort law, consumer protection law, privacy 
> law, or speech law, and more, all of which impact ICANN and many, but 
> not all, of which are predicated on the jurisdiction of ICANN’s 
> incorporation), the jurisdiction(s) of the IANA Functions Operator(s) 
> (i.e., which executive, court, or legislature’s orders would it need 
> to obey), and the jurisdiction of the Root Zone Maintainer (i.e., 
> which executive, court, or legislature’s orders would it need to obey).
>
> However, Mr. Larry Strickling, the head of the NTIA, in his [testimony 
> before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology], 
> made it clear that,
>
>> “Frankly, if \[shifting ICANN or IANA jurisdiction\] were being 
>> proposed, I don’t think that such a proposal would satisfy our 
>> criteria, specifically the one that requires that security and 
>> stability be maintained.”
>
> Possibly, that argument made sense in 1998, due to the significant 
> concentration of DNS expertise in the United States. However, in 2015, 
> that argument is hardly convincing, and is frankly laughable.[^4]
>
> Targetting that remark, in ICANN 54 at Dublin, we asked Mr. Strickling:
>
>> “So as we understand it, the technical stability of the DNS doesn’t 
>> necessarily depend on ICANN’s jurisdiction being in the United 
>> States. So I wanted to ask would the US Congress support a 
>> multistakeholder and continuing in the event that it’s shifting 
>> jurisdiction.”
>
> Mr. Strickling’s response was:
>
>> “No. I think Congress has made it very clear and at every hearing 
>> they have extracted from Fadi a commitment that ICANN will remain 
>> incorporated in the United States. Now the jurisdictional question 
>> though, as I understand it having been raised from some other 
>> countries, is not so much jurisdiction in terms of where ICANN is 
>> located. It’s much more jurisdiction over the resolution of disputes.
>>
>> “And that I think is an open issue, and that’s an appropriate one to 
>> be discussed. And it’s one I think where ICANN has made some movement 
>> over time anyway.
>>
>> “So I think you have to … when people use the word jurisdiction, we 
>> need to be very precise about over what issues because where disputes 
>> are resolved and under what law they’re resolved, those are separate 
>> questions from where the corporation may have a physical headquarters.”
>
> As we have shown above, jurisdiction is not only about the 
> jurisdiction of “resolution of disputes”, but also, as Mueller reminds 
> us, about the requirement that ICANN (and now, the PTI) be 
> “incorporated in, maintain a physical address in, and perform the IANA 
> functions in the U.S. This makes IANA subject to U.S. law and provides 
> America with greater political influence over ICANN.”
>
> In essence, the U.S. government has essentially said that they would 
> veto the transition if the jurisdiction of ICANN or PTI’s 
> incorporation were to move out of the U.S., and they can prevent that 
> from happening *after* the transition, since as things stand ICANN and 
> PTI will still come within the U.S. Congress’s jurisdiction.
>
> Why Has the ICG Failed to Consider Jurisdiction?
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> Will the ICG proposal or the proposed new ICANN by-laws reduce 
> existing U.S. control? No, they won’t. (In fact, as we will argue 
> below, the proposed new ICANN by-laws make this problem even worse.) 
> The proposal by the names community (“the CWG proposal”) still has a 
> requirement (in Annex S) that the Post-Transition IANA (PTI) be 
> incorporated in the United States, and a similar suggestion hidden 
> away as a footnote. Further, the proposed by-laws for ICANN include 
> the requirement that PTI be a California corporation. There was no 
> discussion specifically on this issue, nor any documented community 
> agreement on the specific issue of jurisdiction of PTI’s incorporation.
>
> Why wasn’t there greater discussion and consideration of this issue? 
> Because of two reasons: First, there were many that argued that the 
> transition would be vetoed by the U.S. government and the U.S. 
> Congress if ICANN and PTI were not to remain in the U.S. Secondly, the 
> ICANN-formed ICG saw the US government’s actions very narrowly, as 
> though the government were acting in isolation, ignoring the rich 
> dialogue and debate that’s gone on earlier about the transition since 
> the incorporation of ICANN itself.
>
> While it would be no one’s case that political considerations should 
> be given greater weightage than technical considerations such as 
> security, stability, and resilience of the domain name system, it is 
> shocking that political considerations have been completely absent in 
> the discussions in the number and protocol parameters communities, and 
> have been extremely limited in the discussions in the names community. 
> This is even more shocking considering that the main reason for this 
> transition is, as has been argued above, political.
>
> It can be also argued that the certain IANA functions such as Root 
> Zone Management function have a considerable political implication. It 
> is imperative that the political nature of the function is duly 
> acknowledged and dealt with, in accordance with the wishes of the 
> global community. In the current process the political aspects of the 
> IANA function has been completely overlooked and sidelined. It is 
> important to note that this transition has not been a necessitated by 
> any technical considerations. It is primarily motivated by political 
> and legal considerations. However, the questions that the ICG asked 
> the customer communities to consider were solely technical. Indeed, 
> the communities could have chosen to overlook that, but they did not 
> choose to do so. For instance, while the IANA customer community 
> proposals reflected on existing jurisdictional arrangements, they did 
> not reflect on how the jurisdictional arrangements should be 
> post-transition , while this is one of the questions at the heart of 
> the entire transition. There were no discussions and decisions as to 
> the jurisdiction of the Post-Transition IANA: the Accountability 
> CCWG’s lawyers, Sidley Austin, recommended that the PTI ought to be a 
> California non-profit corporation, and this finds mention in a 
> footnote without even having been debated by the “global 
> multistakeholder community”, and subsequently in the proposed new 
> by-laws for ICANN.
>
> Why the By-Laws Make Things Worse & Why “Work Stream 2” Can’t Address 
> Most Jurisdiction Issues
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>
>
> The by-laws could have chosen to simply stayed silent on the matter of 
> what law PTI would be incorporated under, but instead the by-law make 
> the requirement of PTI being a California non-profit public benefit 
> corporation part of the *fundamental by-laws*, which are close to 
> impossible to amend.
>
> While “Work Stream 2” (the post-transition work related to improving 
> ICANN’s accountability) has jurisdiction as a topic of consideration, 
> the scope of that must necessarily discount any consideration of 
> shifting the jurisdiction of incorporation of ICANN, since all of the 
> work done as part of CCWG Accountability’s “Work Stream 1”, which are 
> now reflected in the proposed new by-laws, assume Californian 
> jurisdiction (including the legal model of the “Empowered Community”). 
> Is ICANN prepared to re-do all the work done in WS1 in WS2 as well? If 
> the answer is yes, then the issue of jurisdiction can actually be 
> addressed in WS2. If the answer is no ­— and realistically it is — 
> then, the issue of jurisdiction can only be very partially addressed 
> in WS2.
>
> Keeping this in mind, we recommended specific changes in the by-laws, 
> all of which were rejected by CCWG’s lawyers.
>
> The Transition Plan Fails the NETmundial Statement
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> The [NETmundial Multistakeholder Document], which was an outcome of 
> the NETmundial process, states:
>
>> In the follow up to the recent and welcomed announcement of US 
>> Government with regard to its intent to transition the stewardship of 
>> IANA functions, the discussion about mechanisms for guaranteeing the 
>> transparency and accountability of those functions after the US 
>> Government role ends, has to take place through an open process with 
>> the participation of all stakeholders extending beyond the ICANN 
>> community
>>
>> \[…\]
>>
>> It is expected that the process of globalization of ICANN speeds up 
>> leading to a truly international and global organization serving the 
>> public interest with clearly implementable and verifiable 
>> accountability and transparency mechanisms that satisfy requirements 
>> from both internal stakeholders and the global community.
>>
>> The active representation from all stakeholders in the ICANN 
>> structure from all regions is a key issue in the process of a 
>> successful globalization.
>
> As our past analysis has shown, the IANA transition process and the 
> discussions on the mailing lists that shaped it [were neither global 
> nor multistakeholder]. The DNS industry represented in ICANN is 
> largely US-based. 3 in 5 registrars are from the United States of 
> America, whereas less than 1% of ICANN-registered registrars are from 
> Africa. Two-thirds of the Business Constituency in ICANN is from the 
> USA. While ICANN-the-corporation has sought to become more global, the 
> ICANN community has remained insular, and this will not change until 
> the commercial interests involved in ICANN can become more diverse, 
> reflecting the diversity of users of the Internet, and a TLD like .COM 
> can be owned by a non-American corporation and the PTI can be a 
> non-American entity.
>
> What We Need: Jurisdictional Resilience
> ---------------------------------------
>
> It is no one’s case that the United States is less fit than any other 
> country as a base for ICANN, PTI, or the Root Zone Maintainer, or even 
> as the headquarters for 9 of the world’s 12 root zone operators 
> (Verisign runs both the A and J root servers). However, just as having 
> multiplicity of root servers is important for ensuring technical 
> resilience of the DNS system (and this is shown in the uptake of 
> Anycast by root server operators), it is equally important to have 
> immunity of core DNS functioning from political pressures of the 
> country or countries where core DNS infrastructure is legally situated 
> and to ensure that we have diversity in terms of legal jurisdiction.
>
> Towards this end, we at CIS have pushed for the concept of 
> “jurisdictional resilience”, encompassing three crucial points:
>
> -   Legal immunity for core technical operators of Internet functions 
> (as opposed to policymaking venues) from legal sanctions or orders 
> from the state in which they are legally situated.
> -   Division of core Internet operators among multiple jurisdictions
> -   Jurisdictional division of policymaking functions from technical 
> implementation functions
>
> Of these, the most important is the limited legal immunity (akin to a 
> greatly limited form of the immunity that UN organizations get from 
> the laws of their host countries). This kind of immunity could be 
> provided through a variety of different means: a host-country 
> agreement; a law passed by the legislature; a U.N. General Assembly 
> Resolution; a U.N.-backed treaty; and other such options exist. We are 
> currently investigating which of these options would be the best option.
>
> And apart from limited legal immunity, distribution of jurisdictional 
> control is also valuable. As we noted in our submission to the ICG in 
> September 2015:
>
>> Following the above precepts would, for instance, mean that the 
>> entity that performs the role of the Root Zone Maintainer should not 
>> be situated in the same legal jurisdiction as the entity that 
>> functions as the policymaking venue. This would in turn mean that 
>> either the Root Zone Maintainer function be taken up Netnod 
>> (Sweden-headquartered) or the WIDE Project (Japan-headquartered) \[or 
>> RIPE-NCC, headquartered in the Netherlands\], or that if the IANA 
>> Functions Operator(s) is to be merged with the RZM, then the IFO be 
>> relocated to a jurisdiction other than those of ISOC and ICANN. This, 
>> as has been stated earlier, has been a demand of the Civil Society 
>> Internet Governance Caucus. Further, it would also mean that root 
>> zone servers operators be spread across multiple jurisdictions (which 
>> the creation of mirror servers in multiple jurisdictions will not 
>> address).
>
> However, the issue of jurisdiction seems to be dead-on-arrival, having 
> been killed by the United States government.
>
> Unfortunately, despite the primary motivation for demands for the IANA 
> transition being those of removing the power the U.S. government 
> exercises over the core of the Internet’s operations in the form of 
> the DNS, what has ended up happening through the IANA transition is 
> that these powers have not only not been removed, but in some ways 
> they have been entrenched further! While earlier, the U.S. had to 
> specify that the IANA functions operator had to be located in the 
> U.S., now ICANN’s by-laws themselves will state that the 
> post-transition IANA will be a California corporation. Notably, while 
> the Montevideo Declaration speaks of “globalization” of ICANN and of 
> the IANA functions, as does the NETmundial statement, the NTIA 
> announcement on their acceptance of the transition proposals speaks of 
> “privatization” of ICANN, and not “globalization”.
>
> All in all, the “independence” that IANA is gaining from the U.S. is 
> akin to the “independence” that Brazil gained from Portugal in 1822. 
> Dom Pedro of Brazil was then ruling Brazil as the Prince Regent since 
> his father Dom João VI, the King of United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil 
> and the Algarves had returned to Portugal. In 1822, Brazil declared 
> independence from Portugal (which was formally recognized through a 
> treaty in 1825). Even after this “independence”, Dom Pedro continued 
> to rule Portugal just as he had before indepedence, and Dom João VI 
> was provided the title of “Emperor of Brazil”, aside from being King 
> of the United Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves. The “indepedence” 
> didn’t make a whit of a difference to the self-sufficiency of Brazil: 
> Portugal continued to be its largest trading partner. The 
> “independence” didn’t change anything for the nearly 1 million slaves 
> in Brazil, or to the lot of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, none of 
> whom were recognized as “free”. It had very little consequence not 
> just in terms of ground conditions of day-to-day living, but even in 
> political terms.
>
> Such is the case with the IANA Transition: U.S. power over the core 
> functioning of the Domain Name System do not stand diminished after 
> the transition, and they can even arguably be said to have become even 
> more entrenched. Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.
>
> [^1]: It is an allied but logically distinct issue that U.S. 
> businesses — registries and registrars — dominate the global DNS 
> industry, and as a result hold the reins at ICANN.
>
> [^2]: As Goldsmith & Wu note in their book *Who Controls the 
> Internet*: “Back in 1998 the U.S. Department of Commerce promised to 
> relinquish root authority by the fall of 2006, but in June 2005, the 
> United States reversed course. “The United States Government intends 
> to preserve the security and stability of the Internet’s Domain Name 
> and Addressing System (DNS),” announced Michael D. Gallagher, a 
> Department of Commerce official. “The United States” he announced, 
> will “maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or 
> modifications to the authoritative root zone file.”
>
> [^3]: Mr. Fadi Chehadé revealed in an interaction with Indian 
> participants at ICANN 54 that he had a meeting “at the White House” 
> about the U.S. plans for transition of the IANA contract before he 
> spoke about that when [he visited India in October 2013] making the 
> timing of his White House visit around the time of the Montevideo 
> Statement.
>
> [^4]: As an example, [NSD], software that is used on multiple root 
> servers, is funded by a Dutch foundation and a Dutch corporation, and 
> written mostly by European coders.
>
>    [US government announced]: 
> https://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition-key-internet-domain-name-functions
>    [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority]: https://www.iana.org/
>    [in a declaration by the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus 
> at WSIS, in 2005]: 
> https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/pc3/contributions/sca/hbf-29.doc
>    [not technical]:
>    [White Paper on Management of Internet Names and Addresses]: 
> https://www.icann.org/resources/unthemed-pages/white-paper-2012-02-25-en
>    [asserted it’s control over the root]: 
> http://www.icannwatch.org/archive/mueller_icann_and_internet_governance.pdf
>    [no serious push for states assuming control of ICANN]: 
> http://www.internetgovernance.org/2012/05/24/threat-analysis-of-itus-wcit-part-1-historical-context/
>    [clueless commentators]: 
> http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303563304579447362610955656
>    [American IP lawyers]: 
> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20140316_if_the_stakeholders_already_control_the_internet_netmundial_iana/
>    [American ‘homeland’ security hawks]: 
> http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/03/who-controls-the-internet-address-book-icann-ntia-and-iana/
>    [jingoists]: 
> http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/cummings.nextto.html
>    [international]: 
> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4529516c-c713-11e3-889e-00144feabdc0.html
>    [criticism]: 
> https://www.rt.com/usa/nsa-fallout-relinquish-internet-oversight-002/
>    [with which]: 
> https://twitter.com/carolinegreer/status/454253411576598528
>    [civilian multilateral framework for the governance and use of the 
> Internet]: 
> https://gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/68/BR_en.pdf
>    [Diego Canabarro]: https://icannwiki.com/Diego_Canabarro
>    [I\* organizations]: https://www.apnic.net/community/ecosystem/i*orgs
>    [‘Statement on the Future of Internet Governance’]: 
> https://www.apnic.net/publications/news/2013/montevideo-statement-on-future-of-internet-cooperation
>    [Milton Mueller notes]: 
> http://content.netmundial.br/contribution/roadmap-for-globalizing-iana-four-principles-and-a-proposal-for-reform-a-submission-to-the-global-multistakeholder-meeting-on-the-future-of-internet-governance/96
>    [testimony before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Communications and 
> Technology]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v-yWye5I0w&feature=youtu.be
>    [NETmundial Multistakeholder Document]: 
> http://netmundial.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NETmundial-Multistakeholder-Document.pdf
>    [were neither global nor multistakeholder]: 
> cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/global-multistakeholder-community-neither-global-nor-multistakeholder
>    [he visited India in October 2013]: 
> http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-22/news/43288531_1_icann-internet-corporation-us-centric-internet
>    [NSD]: https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/projects/nsd/
>
>