IANA Transition To Dominate ICANN 53 Meeting; Search for New CEO, gTLDs Rollout Also of Interest

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition process and accompanying ICANN accountability proposals are set to again dominate proceedings as ICANN 53 convenes in Buenos Aires this week, but questions about the search for a successor to outgoing ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé and the future direction of the generic top-level domains rollout also loom large, stakeholders told us. Debate over the IANA transition at ICANN 53 is likely to center on how much time stakeholders believe it will take to complete the planning and finalization of ICANN’s transition proposal, stakeholders said. ICANN 53, which was to begin Sunday and will run through Thursday, is the nonprofit’s last major meeting before the current Sept. 30 expiration date of ICANN’s current contract with NTIA to administer the IANA functions.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling is still “obviously very concerned” about how long it will take to complete ICANN’s IANA transition proposal and implement the transition because NTIA needs to determine the length of the extension of its current contract with ICANN, said an industry lawyer who's following the transition process. Strickling asked ICANN’s IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) and the nonprofit’s Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) in May to update him on their planning timelines, and again pressed for further timeline clarification in a Tuesday blog post. ICANN’s next major meeting, Oct. 18-22 in Dublin, will be well after the current NTIA-ICANN contract expires, so Strickling will “have to come up with a guesstimate of how long this is going to take,” the industry lawyer said. ICANN “may decide” during the Buenos Aires meeting on a more concrete timeline for transition planning and implementation that will give Strickling some guidance on extending NTIA’s current contract with the nonprofit, said ICANN Vice President-Latin America and the Caribbean Rodrigo de la Parra. “We’ll see how discussions go. We’re excited but we’re also very busy."

The pre-ICANN 53 consensus is that ICG and CCWG-Accountability will have finalized their proposals by early October, in time for ICANN’s Dublin meeting, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw. Pre-IANA transition implementation of ICANN bylaws changes and other accountability measures may last until spring 2016, he said. Possible passage of the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters Act (HR-805/S-1551) would give Strickling “additional time” because of the bill’s congressional review provision, an industry lawyer said. HR-805/S-1551 would give Congress 30 legislative days to review a report from NTIA certifying that ICANN’s IANA transition plan meets the U.S. goal of maintaining global Internet openness. Several congressional aides are to observe portions of ICANN 53 as part of Congress’ debate on IANA transition oversight, the industry lawyer said.

Stakeholders generally believe that by the time ICANN 53 ends “we will have a pretty good idea whether everyone sees a clear path forward or whether this is becoming more difficult,” the industry lawyer said. “What we’re going to start to see, based on what I’ve heard from other stakeholders, is a debate over whether the actual proposal is better or worse than the status quo.” Post-IANA transition ICANN is “going to think and act differently than it does today,” the industry lawyer said. “It’s going to have oversight responsibilities.” Until recently the debate has been whether the U.S. government should spin off its oversight authority, the lawyer said. Some of ICANN’s recent comments on the IANA transition “are a little simplistic and overly optimistic,” former NTIA Administrator John Kneuer said.

The nascent search for Chehadé’s replacement as ICANN CEO also appears likely to garner significant attention during ICANN 53, with the nonprofit’s board set to lead a Thursday session to gather stakeholder input on the search process and candidate qualifications, de la Parra said. Previous CEO searches have been transparent processes, but the ICANN board is trying to increase that transparency for the current search process because of the ongoing work on ICANN accountability, de la Parra said. “This is going to be the initial discussion on this,” he said, saying the board is going to drill down on how the CEO’s responsibilities will change due to the changes in the nonprofit’s bylaws and the IANA transition. “ICANN is now a very different organization than it was three or four years ago.”

Corwin, Kneuer and others have noted that Chehadé’s planned departure in March would occur as the IANA transition is taking place or soon before, which makes stakeholder input into the new CEO’s job description particularly important. “ICANN’s leadership needs to be in sync with the community on what ICANN should be,” Kneuer said. “Somebody who has a very service-oriented, narrow focus would be preferable to someone who views the institution and the job as offering global policymaking prominence. We need someone who is experienced and has a significant track record of performance managing technical service delivery.” Chehadé’s successor should also play a role in the IANA transition planning process since “I don’t know that everything is going to be done and perfectly executed by the time [Chehadé] leaves,” Kneuer said.

ICANN’s gTLD rollout will be up for further debate as the ICANN Discussion Group on Future New gTLD Application Rounds considers possible improvements to the gTLD program and plans for a possible second round of gTLD rollouts, de la Parra said. ICANN is focused on completing the current gTLD before it seriously considers additional rounds, but the community is considering future scenarios, he said. Some members of ICANN’s Business Constituency generic names supporting organization (GNSO) are concerned “that we’re moving too fast” on considering a second gTLD round, particularly amid perceptions that registration statistics for the current round “aren’t very impressive,” Corwin said. Calls for changes to the current gTLD program have centered on concerns of some registries’ abuse of the current program rules, he said, noting the attention on the Vox Populi registry’s pricing of .sucks domain names for trademark owners. Both the FTC (see 1505280056) and Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs have thus far dodged ICANN’s request for guidance on the legality of Vox Populi’s pricing tactics, but members of the Business Constituency GNSO plan to meet with the FTC to further discuss the .sucks situation, Corwin said.