[governance] IANA contract to be opened for competitive bidding on November 4

[John Curran]

On Oct 24, 2011, at 2:03 PM, Norbert Bollow wrote:

> John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:
>>   If someone can point out another organization (other than the USG)
>>   which has been consciously releasing its control over the Internet in
>>   preference to multistakeholder mechanisms, I'd love to hear about it.
> 
> I think the key question is whether this "IANA contract" event is
> a continuation of that USG policy of "consciously releasing its control
> over the Internet", or whether it is a change of policy aiming at
> asserting and protecting some (greater?) degree of control, possibly
> in reaction to demands to strengthen the UN role in Internet Governance.

Is there any evidence to support such a question, or is this purely a
rhetorical exercise?

> RFC 2850 says the following:
> 
>   The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) administers various
>   protocol parameters used by IETF protocols, delegating this
>   administration as appropriate. The IAB must approve the appointment
>   of an organization to act as IANA on behalf of the IETF. The IANA
>   takes technical direction on IETF protocols from the IESG.
> 
> I understand this as an indication that eleven years ago when this was
> written, IANA was seen as "acting on behalf of the IETF", not as
> acting on behalf of the USG.

The relationship between the IAB and ICANN's IANA tasking is specified
in RFC 2860. The IAB gives leave for ICANN and its constituent bodies to 
attend to the assignment of domain names and IP address blocks, noting 
such matters present "policy issues" beyond technical considerations.

Yes, it was quite convenient that both DoC and the IAB recognized ICANN 
as a reasonable party to perform IANA functions, as misalignment on this
point would have been rather challenging during ICANN's formative period.

/John

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