[governance] New dot com agreement changes USG-ICANN relationship

[William Drake]

Hi,

I've not seen an official statement, but David Gross is quoted in an IHT
piece on the Plenipot, nothing surprising.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/03/technology/btitu.php

Clearly there will be continuing work on security issues (which the US has
supported), now additionally framed as enhanced cooperation.  Whether such
cooperation will be construed as also including the development of
globally-applicable principles on public policy issues concerning names and
numbers is another story.   One suspects there will be calls for that from
some quarters, but it's hard to see how a consensus could be reached.

Cheers,

Bill



On 12/3/06 6:45 PM, "Wolfgang Kleinwächter"
<wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> wrote:

> 
> Is there any offcial comment by the USG on the ITU Resolution 102 from
> Antalya? Is there some interpretation what means what? US Government obviously
> has supported (or watered down and when yes what was the earlier version?) the
> text. You will find in the adopted text seven times "enhanced cooperation",
> half a dozen times "domain names and IP addresses" but ICANN is not mentioned
> at all. Is this a new US double-strategy? Or a farewell to "private sector
> leadership"?
> 
> wolfgang
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Milton Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu]
> Sent: Sun 12/3/2006 6:37 PM
> To: aizu at anr.org; governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] New dot com agreement changes USG-ICANN relationship
>  
>>>> aizu at anr.org 12/2/2006 2:34:09 PM >>>
>> I naiively had thought that USG/DOC has had the ultimate authority
>> over .com and any other resources, despite, or in addition to ICANN's
>> authority which is under the mercy of USG anyway with the MoU.
>> 
>> Is there any really new element between DOC and VeriSign to the
> existing
>> cooperative agreement?
> 
> Yes. 
> 
> VeriSign's control of .com began with a National Science Foundation
> "cooperative agreement" starting in 1991, which was switched to the
> Commerce Dept in 1997. But the whole idea of ICANN was that assignment
> and regulation of gTLD registries, including VeriSign, would be
> delegated to ICANN.
> 
> The Nov. 30 decision is quite significant because Commerce is giving up
> on using ICANN to renew .com, it asserts that it must have final say on
> any aspect of the registry contract. Nothing like that formally existed
> before. 
> 
>> Does VeriSingh have more "freedom" than before?
> 
> No, it has less in some respects.
> 
>> Has ICANN really been undermined (looks like)?
> 
> Yes, because its registry agreement for .com is now formally reviewed
> and approved by Commerce, rather than the decision being fully delegated
> to ICANN. If you are VeriSign, you negotiate primarily with Commerce
> about .com, not ICANN.
> 
>> Are these change very clear, or subject of interpretation?
> 
> Oh, anything can be "interpreted" in different ways, that's what you
> pay PR flaks for, and that's why certain apologists will never concede
> anything. 
> 
> Just read the agreement, to me it's very clear that this is (yet
> another) significant departure from the concept of an independent,
> globalized Internet governance authority and a another step toward
> stronger US control.
> 
> 
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*******************************************************
William J. Drake  drake at hei.unige.ch
Director, Project on the Information
  Revolution and Global Governance/PSIO
  Graduate Institute for International Studies
  Geneva, Switzerland
http://www.cpsr.org/Members/wdrake
*******************************************************



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