Cruz, Duffy Bow Anti-IANA Transition Protecting Internet Freedom Act

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., filed companion versions of the Protecting Internet Freedom Act Wednesday, in a bid to hinder the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition. The bill, as expected (see 1605240067 and 1606020056), would prohibit NTIA from allowing the IANA transition unless Congress “expressly grants” the NTIA administrator the authority to allow it. The bill also would require NTIA to certify within 60 days of the bill's enactment that the U.S. government has “secured sole ownership” of the .gov and .mil top-level domains and that the government has a contract with ICANN that grants the U.S. “exclusive control and use of those domains in perpetuity.” Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, signed on as co-sponsors of the Senate version. “This issue threatens not only our personal liberties, but also our national security,” Cruz said in a news release. “We must act affirmatively to protect the Internet and the amazing engine for economic growth and opportunity the Internet has become.” The White House “wants to hand over the keys to the Internet to countries like China and Russia,” Duffy said in the Cruz news release. “The governments of these countries do not value free speech. In fact, they censor the Internet and routinely repress and punish political dissidents. They cannot be trusted with something as fundamental to free speech as a free and open Internet.” Duffy last year bowed the Global Internet Freedom Act (HR-355), which also sought to prohibit the IANA transition (see 1501150030). Cruz's office noted support for the Protecting Internet Freedom Act from more than a dozen conservative and right-leaning groups, including Americans for Tax Reform, National Religious Broadcasters and TechFreedom. Heritage Foundation's Heritage Action for America lobbying arm endorsed the bill Tuesday. The White House “has viewed this transition as a cheap way to recover the global political credibility it lost because of the Snowden revelations and its own stubborn resistance to real surveillance reforms,” said TechFreedom President Berin Szóka in a news release. “They simply haven't been willing to negotiate to protect ICANN’s multistakeholder model.” Cruz also filed the Protecting Internet Freedom Act's language Tuesday as an amendment to National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2017 (S-2943) (see 1606070056). The bill is unlikely to pass on its own or as part of S-2943, but its introduction and recent skepticism voiced by other GOP Senate Commerce Committee members about the IANA transition “puts more steel in the spines” of members of the House Appropriations Committee to extend an existing ban on NTIA's use of its funds on the transition, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw, in an interview.