In a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet on Thursday, several lawmakers and an executive from Go Daddy, the world’s largest registrar, called on the U.S. Government to continue its oversight of ICANN after the Joint Project Agreement continues in September.
The hearing followed ICANN gaining some celebrity support this week from, among others, Vint Cerf and Al Gore.
“What we have all those years later is an organization that works,” Gore said reports Tech Daily Dose. “[ICANN] has security as its core mission, is responsive to all global stakeholders and is independent and democratic. We should make permanent those foundations for success,” he said.
Cerf, who long-served as ICANN’s chairman and is now Google’s chief Internet evangelist, argued the past decade has shown the ICANN model has worked further reported Tech Daily Dose. “The ICANN of today is larger, more capable, more international, and better positioned to fulfill its mandate.” ICANN has benefited from a joint project agreement with the U.S. government, which is slated to expire in September, but “the time has now come to conclude it,” Cerf said.
In testimony before the committee, Paul Twomey, ICANN’s CEO and president, argued ICANN is independent and has been since 1999, that the organisation will continue to have its headquarters in the U.S. and that they are “actively seeking more” accountability and an end to the an end to the cycle of renewing and revising the temporary agreements that have characterised ICANN’s relationship with the U.S. government for the last eleven years.
Twomey also said that “Whilst the JPA is not an oversight mechanism, what JPA conclusion could and should signal is in fact permanence and entrenchment of the good work done in building this successful model.”
“As an organization with international stakeholders we know that to extend JPA would be greeted with concern. It galvanizes other governments and government institutions to demand an additional role too. After 11 years of ‘testing’, renewing or extending JPA – the possibility of another “temporary” agreement (the 8th in a row) â causes those with an interest to ‘model shop’ as they wait for some further period for the original model to be confirmed.
“It is now time to end the 11 years of temporary MOUs and tentative acceptance of this model. In fact it is a unique time to show that the model within which stakeholders can address issues is the right one – and there are not other models, this is the one and it is designed to continuously improve.”
Twomey then suggested a better route would be “to enshrine the fundamental principles that have served all stakeholders so well as ICANN’s permanent charter going forward.”
Twomey also said that even if more independence was given, the U.S. Government would continue to have sway in the organisation’s operations through the IANA contract with the Department of Commerce.
Addressing concerns by trademark and intellectual property interests on the introduction of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), Twomey said ICANN has heard the concerns and they “will not open up the process until such concerns have been addressed.”
There were also criticisms of what were perceived to be ICANN’s inability to counter cybersquatting, with Florida Republican Cliff Stearns, upon noting the last balance sheet of ICANN, a not-for-profit organisation, showing a $7 million surplus.
“You should take that $7 million and make sure that cybersquatters are gone,” Stearns said. “I think your job should be not just developing a surplus but actually implementing — making it cheaper for consumers — and actually doing your mission.”