Reining in ICANN

A _very_ interesting development for Internet policy geeks. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, runs key aspects of the Internet domain name system, mixing together the highly technical with the highly political. It has many opponents, running the gamut from Internet activists through commercial operators like Verisign, to the International Telecommunications Union, which has been ginning up a series of UN conferences to try to grab authority away from ICANN (the ITU is seeing its policy domain disappear from beneath its feet as telcos move _en masse_ to the Internet). One of the key uncertainties surrounding ICANN has been its relationship with the US government. Formally, ICANN runs the Domain Name System under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding with the US Department of Commerce. While ICANN was supposed in theory to be more-or-less self regulatory, its exact relationship with the US government was both unclear and controversial, leading the US government to suggest that it would renounce control over ICANN when the Memorandum lapses “next year”:http://dcc.syr.edu/miscarticles/MM-Prepcom2.pdf . Now the US government seems to have backtracked on that commitment.

The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration has just published a bland sounding “Statement of Principles”:http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/USDNSprinciples_06302005.htm, which announces that “Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains,” that “ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS,” and that “The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.” I’m looking forward to seeing what the real ICANN experts like Michael Froomkin and Milton Mueller have to say on this (we may have to wait; unfortunately, “ICANNWatch”:http://www.icannwatch.org seems to be down for technical reasons). In my (entirely personal and perhaps flawed) interpretation, the US government is saying three things. First, that it intends to maintain oversight of ICANN, and thus indirect control over the domain name system, contrary to what it was saying a few weeks ago. Second, that the multilateral elements of DNS management (which were being touted in this “speech”:http://www.wgig.org/docs/StatementJune-ICANN.pdf two weeks ago by the President of ICANN) will be more or less limited to a right for governments to decide how their country-level domain names (.uk for Britain, .ie for Ireland etc) is managed. This is very small beer; country level domain names aren’t that important. Finally, that international debates are all very well and good, but that the US doesn’t intend to let go of the domain name system to the UN or to any other multilateral body.

It’ll be interesting to see what the various people involved in the ICANN debates make of this – there are a lot of different interests ranging from lunatic fringers like Declan McCullagh through civil liberties types, to governments and big commercial actors. One thing which seems clear is that this outcome conforms quite well with the predictions made by IR types such as “Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/research/egovernance.pdf (and indeed “myself”:http://www.henryfarrell.net/internet.pdf ), who argue that big states still call the shots in Internet governance, and that private actors generally play a governance role only when powerful states want them to. The US doesn’t seem to have any intention of relinquishing its power or influence in the forseeable future (what is perhaps surprising is that the US suggested at one point that it would).

Update: “Michael Froomkin”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/06/us_drops_icanndns_bombshell_on_wsis.html has more.