Communications of the ACM
Plan to End U.s. Control of Icann Submitted to Brazil Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance
A proposal to resolve the U.S. government's controversial ties to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) seeks to insure that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is never used for political or regulatory purposes.
Credit: Syracuse University
Syracuse University researchers have proposed a solution to the U.S. government's controversial ties to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
The researchers will present their plan at the Singapore ICANN meeting on March 21, and formally submit it to the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on April 23-24.
ICANN maintains a contract with the United States, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions contract, stemming from the Internet's origins in U.S. Defense Department and National Science Foundation contracts. However, Syracuse professor Milton Mueller says the U.S. has continued to manage ICANN well after it vowed to relinquish control.
In an effort to provide a framework for globalizing IANA functions, Mueller proposes separating IANA functions from ICANN's policy process and ensuring that IANA functions are never used for political or regulatory purposes. In addition, he suggests merging the Domain Name System-related IANA functions with Verisign's Root Zone Maintainer function, and placing them in a new, independent "DNS Authority" to be operated by a nonprofit consortium of top-level domain registries and root server operators.
The plan calls for complete transition by September 2015, when the current IANA contract expires.
From Syracuse University
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