DOTCOM Act Passage Needed To Guarantee NTIA Extends Contract, Maintains Temporary Oversight, Shimkus Says

Senate passage of the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (S-1551) is critical to guaranteeing federal “oversight over the final product” of ICANN’s planning for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., in a speech Wednesday. Shimkus sponsored the House-passed version of the DOTCOM Act (HR-805), which is identical to S-1551. The DOTCOM Act would guarantee that NTIA would temporarily extend its current contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions, which would extend NTIA’s oversight of the process, Shimkus said at an American Enterprise Institute event. To get that guarantee, “you have to pass the DOTCOM Act, the president has to sign it into law,” Shimkus said.

Senate passage of S-1551 should be easy given the House’s lopsided 378-25 vote for HR-805, but “nothing moves easily through the Senate chamber,” Shimkus said. Movement on S-1551 has been at a standstill since Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, placed a hold on the bill because he continues to believe that the bill should require Congress to vote on the IANA transition. Neither HR-805 nor S-1551 currently has that requirement. Cruz has attempted to place a modified version of S-1551’s language, which includes the vote requirement, as an amendment to the House-passed highway funding bill (HR-22). Cruz’s amendment hadn’t been ruled on at our deadline but was co-sponsored by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah.

The IANA transition “has to in the end occur, and that multistakeholder model has to in the end win out” to guarantee a free and open Internet in the future, Shimkus said. Continuing to maintain the U.S.’s oversight over the IANA functions indefinitely will result in balkanization of the Internet, with “servers in different sectors and blockage, which is what we definitely don’t want,” Shimkus said. Internet governance stakeholders who spoke at the AEI event echoed Shimkus’ concerns about the implications of a botched IANA transition. Google Senior Adviser-International Policy Will Hudson said if the transition doesn’t occur correctly and doesn’t institutionalize the multistakeholder model, proponents of government-led multilateral Internet governance will increase their pressure at the ITU to “wrest control away” from multistakeholder groups.

ICANN's Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability), one of several ICANN community groups working on plans related to the IANA transition, is considering whether to recommend that ICANN change its bylaws to solidify the conditions under which it will give special deference to advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), said NetChoice CEO Steve DelBianco, a CCWG-Accountability member. GAC now provides only advice on ICANN rulemakings when there's universal consensus on an issue, but there’s nothing to prevent GAC from changing that rule to only require agreement among a majority of GAC member governments, DelBianco said. He said he would support changing ICANN’s bylaws to require ICANN to give special deference to GAC advice only when that advice is based on universal consensus. “This fits tightly with” a current NTIA requirement that ICANN’s IANA transition plan not allow for government-led Internet governance.

The IANA transition also represents an “inflection point” on determining ICANN’s broader role and “we must take advantage of that," RIAA Deputy General Counsel Victoria Sheckler said. RIAA has been among those pressing for additional scrutiny of ICANN’s enforcement of its Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAAs) and public interest commitments as they relate to IP issues like investigating copyright violations, Sheckler said. ICANN has said it’s not equipped to regulate content that appears online, but Sheckler said that argument is a “red herring.” Enforcement of ICANN’s RAAs isn’t “about content, it’s not about free speech, it’s about contractual compliance,” she said. ICANN must show it’s “not just talking the talk,” Sheckler said.