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ICANN boss dismisses US control claims
Independence day for ICANN?
By Darren Pauli, Computerworld Australia | Computerworld Australia
Published: 11:55 GMT, 29 June 09
The new boss of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has dismissed claims the organisation is resisting attempts to escape US oversight.
Incoming CEO Rod Beckstrom said at the Sydney ICANN meeting that he does not have a "fixed form opinion" but is confident that an "optimistic" resolution will be passed.
The comments follow a call last month by European Union society commissioner Viviane Reding for US President Barack Obama to break the country's ties with ICANN. And last week, the world's regional Internet registries (RIRs) also entered the debate, after they called for Internet governance to be privatised.
ICANN has operated under a Joint Project Agreement (JPA)/Memorandum of Understanding since its formation in 1998 with the US Department of Commerce, and has continued to renew the deal.
Reding and others argue the JPA provides the US with oversight of ICANN and have appealed for the deal to be dropped when it expires on 30 September this year.
ICANN board chair Peter Dengate Thrush, also Beckstram's "boss", told Techworld's sister publication Computerworld, that Reding's call for the creation of a group of 12 nations to oversee the group will be ineffective.
"What we would see is an eventual replication of the existing ICANN structure," Thrush said.
"People will see these country heads as figures of power and will want to move closer to them... the organisational structural will then be mirrored under the G12.
"The JPA makes no difference to oversight... we need accountability from the community, ISPs and the media, not from some outside aloof business or governments."
The desire to end the JPA is not exclusive to European registrars, Thrush said, but would not confirm the likelihood that the deal will not be renewed.
Other regional internet registries have argued the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which operates as a forum for government and consumer interests and concerns, should be given greater power.
While ICANN has become more transparent to its constituencies since the introduction of an independent decision arbitrator and group ombudsman, Thrush conceded accountability in the organisation "is not good enough" and will be improved.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which co-ordinates the DNS Root, and Internet Protocol addresses, will remain under contract with the US government irrespective of the outcome of the JPA, and is up for review in 2011.
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