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Blogs 

 

Most Recent Blog Update 

Author:  John Poole

Date:  01 October 2015 10 May 2016
Original LinkPost:  httphttps://www.domainmondoicann.comorg/2015news/10blog/iana-stewardship-transition-icann-accountability.html

IANA Transition, ICANN Accountability, "Has Always Been About POWER"

"... At least the USG (US government) offers some accountability. ICANN's primary active stakeholders are businesses making money off the DNS; most users are too busy elsewhere to pay much attention..."--Esther Dyson, ICANN's founding Chairman, Sept 22, 2015
"Sole Member given reserved power under Bylaws to override Board decision directly, regardless of Board fiduciary duties." - Legal counsel for CCWG-Accountability (pdf) opinion on 2nd draft
"WS1 has always been about power"--Jonathan Zuck, CCWG-Accountability participant, infra 

planning-update-volume-2

 

IANA Stewardship Transition Planning Update (Volume 2)
 

Root Zone Management

The Root Zone Management implementation planning track contains projects relating to changes to the Root Zone Management System (RZMS) to remove NTIA's authorization role, parallel testing of the production and parallel test RZMS systems; and the development, and execution of an agreement with Verisign as the root zone maintainer.

Root Zone Management System (RZMS) Parallel Testing

Status update:

It has been one month since the start of the parallel testing period and everything continues to go smoothly. Click here to view Verisign’s daily Parallel Operations Root Zone Management System Comparison Reports of all the root zone files generated.

In addition to Verisign’s daily reports, ICANN has posted the first of three Monthly Reports on RZMS Parallel Testing Progress during the testing period. The report is available on ICANN’s dedicated Parallel Testing landing page.

In the event that no unexplained differences in root zone files are identified between the production RZMS and the parallel test RZMS, the testing period will end successfully on 5 July 2016.

Documents/announcements posted:

Mailing list:

  • None.

Root Zone Maintainer Agreement (RZMA)

Status update:

Discussions between ICANN and Verisign to finalize details of the RZMA are continuing. The two parties have coalesced around many key elements of the agreement and hope to have a final draft by the end of the month.

Once the draft RZMA is finalized it will be made publicly available on icann.org.

Documents/announcements posted:

  • None.

Mailing list(s):

  • None.

 

Stewardship Transition

The Stewardship Transition planning track contains projects to prepare relationship documentation with the operational communities, creation of a Post-Transition IANA (PTI) entity, establishment of a Customer Standing Committee (CSC) and a Root Zone Evolution Review Committee (RZERC), operationalizing the IANA customer service escalation mechanisms and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Post-Transition IANA (PTI)

Status update:

ICANN has been working with the Implementation Oversight Task Force (IOTF) on various activities relating to the PTI. Summaries of PTI formation documents (Bylaws, articles of incorporation) as well as the conflict of interest policy have been shared with the IOTF.  ICANN continues to work with the IOTF to finalize the process and timing of review for these documents as well as for the ICANN-PTI contracts.

Documents/announcements posted this week:

  • None.

Mailing list(s):

Customer Standing Committee (CSC)

Status update:

In the CWG-Stewardship proposal, the Domain Names community recommended that a CSC be formed to replace NTIA’s role as it relates to monitoring performance of the IANA naming function. The composition of the CSC will include members and liaisons from all ICANN Supporting Organizations(SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs).

A Request for Appointment is expected to be sent to SOs and ACs this month to appoint members and liaisons to the CSC using their internal processes.

Documents/announcements posted this week:

  • None.

Mailing list(s):

Root Zone Evolution Review Committee (RZERC)

Status update:

The RZERC Charter (v4) was circulated to the CWG-Stewardship on 4 May 2016. The CWG-Stewardship will discuss the Charter on their 12 May 2016 call, and members and participants of the group are encouraged to provide any comment by 23:59 UTC on 17 May 2016.

Following analysis and incorporation of any input received from the CWG-Stewardship, ICANN will post the Charter for a 30-day public comment period.

Documents/announcements:

Mailing list(s):

 

Accountability Enhancements

The Accountability Enhancements track contains plans to implement enhancements to ICANN’s Independent Review and Reconsideration Request processes, to update ICANN’s governance documents, and to operationalize new community powers defined by the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability).

ICANN's Bylaws

Status update:

ICANN and the community are in the middle of a 30-day public comment period on the new draft ICANNBylaws. Any interested party can submit comments to the public comment forum until 23:59 UTC on 21 May 2016. 

Adoption of the new Bylaws by the ICANN Board is anticipated for on or around 27 May 2016. Once new ICANN Bylaws have been adopted, ICANN will notify NTIA so they can complete their anticipated 90-day review of the IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal.

Documents/announcements:

Mailing list(s):

The biggest problem that the global multistakeholder community (a/k/a the global internet community which is a lot larger and broader than just ICANN's relatively small "stakeholder community"), has right now is that so many members and participants comprising the CCWG-Accountability are engrossed in their own groupthink that they apparently have not taken the time to actually read and analyze all the public comments to their own "fundamentally flawed" 2nd Draft Report which is supported overall by only 19 out of 90+ comments. If you read the CCWG mail list regularly, you will discover that many, if not most, CCWG members are actually operating under the delusion that the global multistakeholder community supports their proposed "power grab." 
Indicative of this state of "denial" or what might be called ignorant arrogance among CCWG-accountability members and participants are the remarks made on the CCWG public mail list byPhilip Corwin, who represents a group known as the "Internet Commerce Association," of which major supporters include new gTLDs registry operator Donuts, and other domain name industry "players." Here's an excerpt from Corwin's response to Domain Mondo's post China (CAICT) Objects to ICANN CCWG Accountability 2nd Draft Proposal:
"If the CCWG Proposal is a "power grab" then it's the sorriest excuse for one I've ever seen. It is almost exclusively a proposal for greater defensive rights in reaction to ICANN Board/corporate actions, and would hardly put "vested self-interested special interests ("ICANN stakeholders" or "lobbyists")" in charge of the enterprise." -- Phil Corwin, September 25, 2015 
I suggest Mr. Corwin, (and all other CCWG members and participants), take the time to read carefully all the comments to the 2nd draft report and then take note of the following post on the CCWG mail list by the President of the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), after which, hopefully, they might actually be more "informed and enlightened" and less consumed by their own "ignorant arrogance"--
"WS1 has always been about power and WS2 about implementation. WS1 was never going to be complete and, for that matter, WS2 won’t ever be complete either. That said, if we have the power to spill the board with relative ease, we can easily reconvene, flesh out the member model, submit it to the board and spill them if they aren’t constructive. We don’t need to worry about deadlines, the Congress, NTIA, etc. the whole point of WS1 is to ensure the capability to do just this." Jonathan Zuck, President of ACT and CCWG participant, September 29, 2015 (emphasis added)
Clearly and succinctly said Mr. Zuck! Sounds like a neat way to hijack or supplant ICANN Board authority and bypass any encumbering "fiduciary duties." The use of the word "constructive" above is clearly a euphemism for "submissive." It's all about the "power." The problem, as noted, is that the mostly profit-seeking, self-interested ICANN stakeholders, or "lobbyists," do not have the ICANN Board of Directors' fiduciary duties to the global internet community, nor the fiduciary duty to operate in the "global public interest." By their own self-admission, most ICANN stakeholders are self-seeking, self-interested, profit-making individuals and enterprises, who are primarily interested in their own "agendas" not what is in the "global public interest." That job is usually left to either governments, trustees, or a carefully selected Board of Directors held tofiduciary standards. While ICANN stakeholders should have input into ICANN policy-making, (and I know this may come as a "shock" to some of those stakeholders), they are hardly"infallible." Of course, directors, even though held to fiduciary standards, can still, from time to time, "fail," which is why "enhanced ICANN accountability," in the absence of US government oversight, needs to have "means or methods" whereby any member of the global internet community can seek redress of a Board decision, action, or adopted ICANN policy, which violates ICANN's articles, bylaws, or the Board's fiduciary duties to the global multistakeholder community and the global public interest. The ICANN Board says they agree and have offered suggested "means or methods" by which such redress can be provided. Other accountability "enhancements" or requirements, including, for example, transparency (e.g., record requests etc.), can easily be provided to any member of the global internet community by having appropriate provisions in ICANN's bylaws, none of which requires implementation of the proposed Single Member Model (SMM or CMSM) which, understandably, the ICANN Board does not support.
-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo