Thursday, 01 March 2012 11:53 David Goldstein
ICANN is facing a real test of confidence as the Commerce Department weighs whether to renew the contract under which it performs technical functions that help make the Web run smoothly, says a report on NextGov. "This contract, under which ICANN runs the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, expires at the end of March. The contract covers such tasks as doling out the pool of Internet protocol numbers connecting computers to the Web. But on a more basic level, the IANA contract is the only concrete leverage the U.S. government still has over ICANN, which it picked in 1998 to take over management of the Internet’s domain-name system.""It is the one clear area that the Department of Commerce, without question, has authority in regard to ICANN," Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of government relations for the Association of National Advertisers, told NextGov.The controversy is accentuated by those who have been pushing for the new generic top level domain programme to be scrapped, such as Jaffe and his organisation that began lobbying against new gTLDs after ICANN approved the applicant guidebook at its June 2011 meeting in Singapore.Despite this, NextGov reports most ICANN-watchers say they expect that Commerce will once again give ICANN the IANA contract, given that few, if any, other organisations would be in a position to take on the no-pay job."I can predict ICANN will get the contract," said Josh Bourne, president of the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse.Bourne and others say, according to the report, that the bigger question is how long any ICANN contract will last and what requirements Commerce will impose. ICANN has been pushing for a longer contract, but many groups have urged the department to impose a short-term renewal to allow for closer monitoring as ICANN implements the new domain program and other policies.
To read this NextGov report in full, see:
www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120229_8464.php
