On February 5th, while many (including the author) were on route to ICANN 52 in Singapore, the U.S. Senate passed S.Res. 71, a non-binding, “Sense of the Senate” Resolution declaring February 8th-14th as “Internet Governance Awareness Week”. Those dates overlap the now ongoing ICANN meeting in Singapore, and the congruence is intentional.
The text of the Resolution (below) is fairly innocuous, in large part repeating long-standing U.S. support for the multistakeholder model (MSM) of Internet Governance (IG) and largely reflecting the IANA functions transition approval conditions already articulated by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Notably, the Resolution ends with the proviso that, “Nothing in this resolution shall be construed as congressional approval of any proposal by ICANN to transition the stewardship of the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to the global multistakeholder community.” The Senate, in other words, wants the transition to meet certain benchmarks but is in no way pre-committed to approval of any transition and accountability package that the ICANN community ultimately produces, and reserves its rights as a co-equal branch of government to review and evaluate the plan designed by the ICANN community.
Full Article: http://www.internetcommerce.org/ig-awareness-week/But if the existing legal structure will not accommodate the type of accountability measures that the community is seeking to develop then perhaps it is the structure that must change. S. Res. 71’s operational provision concludes with language requiring that the final accountability measures must “ensure that, prior to the execution of the transition of the stewardship of the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, each of the foregoing elements of such proposal is adopted and made effective by ICANN through incorporation in its articles of incorporation and by-laws, as needed, and subject to independent adjudication or arbitration for dispute resolution, as appropriate”. (Emphasis added).
