Latest Congressional Hearings on the IANA Transition Focus on ICANN Accountability

It seems like Congress is starting to warm up to the idea of relinquishing U.S. oversight of the Internet’s naming and numbering system. And they’re asking more constructive questions, too: namely, how to keep the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accountable once the U.S. government’s role in overseeing the IANA functions is eliminated.

Last week, I testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee on the IANA transition, which is the process that’s been underway for over a year to give up the last vestige of U.S. government oversight over the Internet’s core infrastructure. (You can read my written testimony, my shorter oral statement, or watch the video.) I was joined by an impressive group of expert witnesses: Steve DelBianco, the Executive Director of NetChoice, who has deep expertise on ICANN-related issues and has testified multiple times on the subject; Matthew Shears, the Director of the Global Internet Policy and Human Rights Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology and an active member of both the IANA transition and ICANN accountability working groups; Audrey Plonk, the Global Cybersecurity and Internet Governance Policy Director at Intel, who offered the industry perspective on the transition; and Brett Schaefer, a Senior Research Fellow from the Heritage Foundation who has written extensively about the timing of the transition and the issues at stake.

Overall, the tone of Wednesday’s hearing was considerably improved over a year ago, when Congress first began to make noise about the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s decision to let the IANA functions contract expire and hand oversight of ICANN and the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) over to the global multistakeholder community. At that time, while most of the Internet policy community was celebrating the long overdue transfer — including technology companies, civil society, and the technical community — Congress appeared hostile toward the decision to give up what some referred to as U.S. “control” over the DNS. Members even introduced a number of bills in the House that would stop or delay the IANA transition, including the DOTCOM Act, which was also the part of the discussion during our panel.

Last week’s hearing, however, demonstrated that we’ve made significant progress in the past year. While there’s clearly still some skepticism on the part of Congress about the transition, members had generally shifted their focus onto questions about how to get it right, rather than how to stop it from happening altogether. And that’s largely due to the fact that the process of developing transitions plans for oversight of the names, numbers, and protocols (which, all together, make up the “IANA functions”) and improving ICANN accountability — although complex — is proceeding fairly well. At multiple times during the hearing, panelists and members of Congress acknowledged that the community has really “stepped up” and “risen to the challenge” of finding an alternative governance system that both satisfies the U.S. government’s criteria and is acceptable to the multistakeholder community.

The biggest unresolved questions right now are about ICANN accountability and what safeguards need to be put in place to ensure that the global Internet community can correct any misuses or abuses of ICANN’s power once the “backstop” role played by NTIA is gone. That’s why we dove deep into the weeds discussing the contents of draft document recently released by the ICANN Accountability working group (all 143 pages of it!) and the mechanics of proposals that would empower the community to reign in ICANN now and in the future. Which of ICANN’s bylaws should be “fundamental” bylaws that are harder for the ICANN board to change? How can the global community have the power to approve or veto decisions the board makes — and recall some or all of the board members in the event that the corporation goes “off the rails”? What does a strengthened Independent Review Process within ICANN look like, and why does that matter? These are the questions that dominated the discussion at the hearing, and are sure to occupy center stage as the global multistakeholder community continues to review and refine these proposals in the coming months. And they’re especially important given recent reports that ICANN officials may be attempting to interfere with the process behind the scenes. We only have one opportunity for the IANA transition — which is why it’s critical that the accountability measures create an appropriate number of checks and balances on ICANN’s power.

Meanwhile, another hearing on Wednesday morning in the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet — whose panelists primarily represented intellectual property interests — was more critical of the transition. But in both cases, the focus was clearly on how to improve accountability and responsiveness at ICANN, and there was a substantial amount of optimism that the reforms currently being discussed by the accountability working group could effectively address both current challenges and future hurdles.

To be sure, there’s a lot riding on the process, as David Post and I explain in a recent paper about the IANA transition and why it matters for the future of the Internet. If the transition is successful, hardly anyone will notice (and, when it comes to the DNS, that’s a good thing). But if it goes badly, the consequences for the global Internet could be severe. That’s why we’ll be paying close attention to the ICANN accountability process and weighing in on what we think the details of those reforms should look like in order to protect the stability of this critical Internet infrastructure.

For additional takeaways from the hearing, see this recap from CDT's Matthew Shears.