Centre for Internet and Society

IANA Transition: A Case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

vidushi — 2016-11-03T06:20:46Z

Transparency is key to engaging meaningfully with ICANN. CIS has filed the most number of Documentary Information Disclosure Policy (DIDP) requests with ICANN, covering a range of subjects including its relationships with contracted parties, financial disclosure, revenue statements, and harassment policies. Asvatha Babu, an intern at CIS, analysed all responses to our requests and found that only 14% of our requests were answered fully.

The post was published by Digital Asia Hub on October 6, 2016.

In March 2014, the US Government committed to ending its contract with ICANN to run the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and also announced that it would hand over control to the “global multistakeholder community”. The conditions for this handover were that the changes must be developed by stakeholders across the globe, with broad community consensus.

Further, it was indicated that any proposal must support and enhance the multistakeholder model; maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS); meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners of the IANA services and maintain the openness of the Internet. Further, it must not replace the NTIA role with a solution that is government-led or by an inter-governmental organisation.

These conditions were met, ICANN’s Supporting Organisations (SO’s) and Advisory Committees (ACs) accepted transition proposals, and these proposals were then accepted by the ICANN Board as well, putting the transition in motion. But not quite. The “global multistakeholder community” still had to wait for approval from the NTIA and the US government, both of whom eventually approved the proposal. The latter’s approval was confirmed after considerable uncertainty due to Senator Ted Cruz’s efforts to stop the transition, due to his belief that the transition was an exercise of the US government handing over control of the internet to foreign governments. Notwithstanding this, on 29th September, the US Senate passed a short term bill to keep the US Government funded till the end of the year, without a rider on the IANA transition. The next hurdle was a lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas by the attorney generals of four states to stop the handover of the IANA contract. As on the 30^th of September, the court denied the Plaintiffs’ Application, thus allowing the transition to proceed.

What does this transition mean? What does it change? The transition, while a welcome step, leaves much to be desired in terms of tangible change, primarily because it fails to address the most important question, that of ICANN jurisdiction. It is important to have the Internet’s core Domain Name System (DNS) functioning free from the pressures and control of a single country or even a few countries; the transition does not ensure this, as the Post Transition IANA entity (PTI) will be under Californian jurisdiction, just like ICANN was pre-transition. The entire ICANN community has been witness to a single American political figure almost derailing its meticulous efforts simply because he could; and in many ways these events cemented the importance of having diversity in terms of legal jurisdiction of ICANN, the PTI and the root zone maintainer.

My colleague Pranesh Prakash has identified 11 reasons why the question of jurisdiction is important to consider during the IANA transition. Some of these issues depend on where ICANN, the PTI and the root zone maintainer are situated, some depend on the location of the office in question and still others depend on contracts that ICANN enters into. ICANN’s new bylaws state that it will be situated in California, the post transition IANA entities bylaws also make a Californian jurisdiction integral to its functioning. As an alternative, the Centre for Internet & Society has called for the “jurisdictional resilience” of ICANN, encompassing three crucial points: legal immunity for core technical operators of Internet functions (as opposed to policymaking venues) from legal sanctions or orders from the state in which they are legally situated, division of core Internet operators among multiple jurisdictions, and jurisdictional division of policymaking functions from technical implementation functions.

Transparency is also key to engaging meaningfully with ICANN. CIS has filed the most number of Documentary Information Disclosure Policy (DIDP) requests with ICANN, covering a range of subjects including its relationships with contracted parties, financial disclosure, revenue statements, and harassment policies. Asvatha Babu, an intern at CIS, analysed all responses to our requests and found that only 14% of our requests were answered fully. 40% of our requests had no relevant answers disclosed at all (these were mostly to do with complaints and contractual compliance). To illustrate the importance of engaging with ICANN transparency, CIS has focused on understanding ICANN’s sources of income since 2014. This is because we believe that conflict of interest can only be properly understood by following the money in a granular fashion. This information was not publicly available, and in fact, it seemed like ICANN didn’t know where it got its money from, either. It is only through the DIDP process that we were able to get ICANN to disclose sources of income, and figures along with those sources for a single financial year.

ICANN prides itself on being transparent and accountable, but in reality it is not. The most often used exception to avoid answering DIDP requests has been “Confidential business information and/or internal policies and procedures”, which in itself is a testament to ICANN’s opacity. Another condition for non-disclosure allows ICANN to reject answering “Information requests: (i) which are not reasonable; (ii) which are excessive or overly burdensome; (iii) complying with which is not feasible; or (iv) are made with an abusive or vexatious purpose or by a vexatious or querulous individual.”. These exemptions are not only vague, they are also extremely subjective: again, demonstrative of the need for enhanced accountability and transparency within ICANN. Key issues have not been addressed even at the time that the transition is formally underway. The grounds for denying DIDP requests are still vague and wide, effectively giving ICANN the discretion to decline answering difficult questions, which is unacceptable from an entity that is at the center of the multi-billion dollar domain name industry.

ICANN’s jurisdictional resilience and enhanced accountability are particularly vital for countries in Asia. Its policies, processes and functioning have historically been skewed towards western and industry interests, and ICANN can neither be truly global nor multistakeholder till such countries can engage meaningfully with it in a transparent fashion. The IANA transition is, of course, largely political, and may symbolise a transition to the global multistakeholder community, but in reality, it changes very little, if anything.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/digital-asia-hub-october-6-2016-vidushi-marda-iana-transition

ICANN 57

praskrishna — 2016-11-08T01:14:37Z

ICANN 57 is being hosted by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India from November 3 to 9, 2016 in Hyderabad at Hyderabad International Convention Centre. Vidushi Marda participated in the event as a speaker.

As part of her work for the Cross Community Working Party on ICANN's Corporate and Social Responsibility to Respect Human Rights, Vidushi presented her work on the Human Rights Impact of new gTLD Subsequent Procedures in Hyderabad.

India’s Minister of Law & Justice and Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad reiterated India’s commitment to the multistakeholder model during the Opening Ceremony of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers’ (ICANN’s) 57th Public Meeting. The meeting, also known as ICANN57, is taking place in Hyderabad, India, from November 3 – 9, 2016 and has convened thousands of the global Internet community members (both on-site and remotely) to discuss and develop policies related to the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). It is hosted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), with support from the Government of Telangana.

ICANN57 is the first post-IANA stewardship transition public meeting and also the first Annual General Meeting under the new Meetings Strategy. ICANN meetings are held three times a year in different regions to enable attendees from around the world to participate in person. These meetings offer a variety of sessions such as workshops, open forums and working meetings on the development and implementation of Internet policies. ICANN meetings offer the best opportunity for face-to-face discussions and exchange of opinions among attendees dedicated to the continued stable and secure operation of the Domain Name System.

For more info about the event, visit the ICANN website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/icann-57-hyderabad

NETmundial Roadmap: Defining the Roles of Stakeholders in Multistakeholderism

jyoti — 2014-04-28T12:51:40Z

NETmundial, one of the most anticipated events in the Internet governance calendar, will see the global community convening at Sao Paolo, with an aim to establish 'strategic guidelines related to the use and development of the Internet in the world.' This post analyses the submissions at NETmundial that focused on Roadmap, towards an understanding of stakeholder roles in relation to specific governance functions and highlighting the political, technical and architectural possibilities that lie ahead.

Introduction

A technically borderless Internet, in a world defined by national boundaries, brings many challenges in its wake. The social, ethical and legal standards of all countries are affected by technical standards and procedures, created by a few global players. This disparity in capacity and opportunities to participate and shape Internet policy, fuelled by Edward Snowden's revelations led to the development of the Global Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance or NETmundial. Set against, an urgent need for interdisciplinary knowledge assessment towards establishing global guiding principles with respect to the technological architecture and the legal framework of the Internet–NETmundial is seen as a critical step in moving towards a global policy framework for Internet Governance (IG). As stakeholder groups from across the world come together to discuss future forms of governance, one of the most widely discussed issues will be that of Multistakeholderism (MSism).

Multistakeholderism

The governance structure of the Multistakeholder model is based on the notion, that stakeholders most impacted by decisions should be involved in the process of decision making. The collaborative multistakeholder spirit has been widely adopted within the Internet Governance fora, with proponents spread across regions and communities involved in the running, management and use of the Internet. So far, MSism has worked well in the coordination of technical networking standards and efforts to set norms and best practices in defined areas, in the realm of technical governance of the Internet. However, the extension of MSism beyond truly voluntary, decentralized and targeted contexts and expanding its applicability, to other substantive areas of Internet Governance is proving a challenge. Beyond defining how the process of policymaking should be undertaken, MSism does not provide any guidance on substantive policy issues of Internet governance. With the increasing impact of Internet technology on human lives and framed against the complexity of issues such as security, access and privacy, the consensus on MSism is further rendered unattainable.

The need for contextualizing the model aside, as with most policy negotiations certain open concepts and words have also prevented agreement and adoption of MSism as the best way forward for IG. One such open and perhaps, the most contentious issue with respect to the legitimacy of MSism in managing Internet functions is the role of stakeholders. A key element of MSism is that decisions will be made by and including all relevant stakeholders. Stakeholder groups are broadly classified to include governments, technical community and academia, private sector and civil society. With each stakeholder representing diverse and often conflicting interests, creating a consensus process that goes beyond a set of rules and practices promising a seat at the negotiation table and is supportive of broad public interest is a challenging task that needs urgent addressing.

This post aims to add to the discourse on defining the role and scope of stakeholders' decision-making powers, towards a better understanding of the term "in their respective role". Addressing the complexity of functions in managing and running the Internet and the diversity of stakeholders that are affected and hence should be included in decision making, I have limited the scope of my analysis to cover three broad internet management functions:

Technical: Issues related to infrastructure and the management of critical Internet resources
Policy: Issues relating to the developmental aspects, capacity building, bridging digital divide, human rights
Implementation: Issues relating to the use of the Internet including jurisdictional law, legislation spam, network security and cybercrime

While this may be an oversimplification of complex and interconnected layers of management and coordination, in my opinion, broad categorisation of issues is necessary, if not an ideal starting point for the purpose of this analysis. I have considered only the submissions categorised under the theme of Roadmap, seeking commonalities across stakeholder groups and regions on the role of stakeholders and their participation in the three broad functions of technology, policy and implementation.

Towards a definition of respective roles: Analysis NETmundial submissions on Roadmap

There were a total of 44 submissions specific to Roadmap with civil society (20) contributing more than any other group including academia (7), government (4), technical community (5), private sector (3) and other (5). MSism sees support across most stakeholder groups and many submissions highlight or agree on participation and inclusion in decision making processes.

Regionally, submissions from North (24) were dominated by USA (10) with contributions cutting across academia (4), civil society (2), technical community (2) and other (2). Brazil (5) contributed the most to submissions from South (15), followed by Argentina (3). The submissions were consistent with the gender disparity prevalent in the larger technology community with only 12 females contributing submissions. An overwhelming number of submissions (38), thought that the multistakeholder (MS) model needs further definition or improvements, however, suggestions on how best to achieve this varied widely across stakeholders and regional boundaries. Only 16 submissions referenced or suggested Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in its present capacity or with an expanded policy role as a mechanism of implementing MSism on the Internet.

Many submissions referred to issues related to the management of critical internet resources (CIRs), the role of ICANN and US oversight of IANA functions. A total of 11 submissions referred to or specified governance processes with respect to technical functions and issues related to critical resources with civil society (5) and academia (3) contributing the most. In an area that perhaps has the most direct relevance to their work, the technical community was conspicuous with just two submissions making any concrete recommendations. The European Commission was the only governmental organisation that addressed this issue, recommending an expansion of the role of IGF. There were no specific recommendations from the private sector.

The suggestions on oversight and decision making mechanism were most conflicted for this category of Internet functions and included:

setting up a technical advisory group, positioned within a new intergovernmental body World Internet Organization (WIO) framework;
splitting IANA functions into protocol parameters, that Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) will be responsible for and IP address-related functions retained by ICANN
expanding the role of IGF, possibly creating an IGF Secretariat
expanding the role of Government Advisory Committee (GAC) to mainstream government representatives participation within supporting organisations, in particular the Generic Name Supporting Organisation (GNRO)
expanding the role of private sector
expanding the role of ICANN with multistakeholder values
expanding the role of all stakeholders
implementing changes that do not necessarily require legislative acts or similar hard law approaches and implementation does not necessitate international treaties or intergovernmental structures
establishing a new non-profit corporation DNS Authority (DNSA) combining the IANA Functions and the Root Zone Maintainer roles in
improving transparency and accountability of current bodies managing CIRs

16 submissions referred to issues related to policy development and implementation including developmental aspects, capacity building, bridging digital divide and human rights. All submissions called for a reform or further definition of MSism and included recommendations from civil society (5), academia (4), technical community (2), governments (2), private sector (1) and Other (2). All stakeholder groups across regions, unanimously agreed that all stakeholders within their respective role should have a role in decision making and within public policy functions. There was however, no broad consensus on the best way to achieve this.

Specific recommendations and views captured on who should be involved in policy related decision making and what possible frameworks could be developed included:

improving existing intergovernmental organizations
creating Internet Ad Hoc Group
modularization of ICANN’s functions
creating a stewardship group IETF, ICANN and the RIRs
creating an independent IANA as an International NGO with host country agreements governed by its MOUs-defined by the IANA Stewardship Group prior to the signing of MOUs with IANA Partners
creating a 'new body' to develop international level public policies in concerned areas; seek appropriate harmonization of national level policies; and facilitate required treaties, conventions and agreements
responsibility of the definition of these policies rests within the States as an inalienable right
continuity of bottom-up oversight enables a better view of an organization and thus better accountability as government oversight will destroy multistakeholder character
evolving global governance norms that separate DNS maintenance from policies on TLDs, as well as public policies that intersect with nations’ rights to make them
policy makers incrementally develop formal and informal relationships
dealing with conflict of interest and ensuring pluralism
full multi-stakeholder framework including possible establishment of Working Groups where all parties concerned are represented

18 submissions referred to issues related to the implementation of standards including issues relating to the use of the Internet including jurisdiction, law, legislation, spam, network security and cybercrime. All submissions called for a reform or further definition of MSism values and included recommendations from civil society (8), academia (3), technical community (3), governments (2), private sector (1) and other (1). Stakeholders from academia (5), civil society (3) and government (1) collectively called for the reform of ICANN guided by multistakeholder values, but did not specify how this reform would be achieved.

Specific recommendations on the improvements of institutional frameworks and arrangements for issues related to implementation of standards included:

establishment of double system of arbitrage/settlement placed under World Internet Forum (WIF) scrutiny and under the neutral oversight and arbitrage of the UN general secretariat
new legal instruments in establishing MS model need to be adopted
establishment of the Internet Technical Oversight and Advisory Board (ITOAB) replace the US government's current oversight role
multilateral frameworks with oversight role of governments

In summation, the classification of Internet functions discussed above, presents a very broad view of complex, dynamic and often, interrelated relationships amongst stakeholder groups. However, even within these very broad categories there are various interpretations of how MSism should evolve.

To come back to the very beginning of this post, NETmundial is an important step towards a global policy framework for Internet governance. This is the first meeting outside formal processes and it is difficult to know what to expect, partly as the expectations are not clear and range widely across stakeholders. Whatever the outcome, NETmundial's real contribution to Internet Governance has been sparking anew, the discourse on multistakeholderism and its application on the Internet through the creation of a spontaneous order amongst diverse actors and providing a common platform for divergent views to come together.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-roadmap-defining-roles-of-stakeholders-in-multistakeholderism

NETmundial Day 2

achal — 2014-04-25T04:58:26Z

Fadi Chehade, the ICANN boss, closed NETmundial 2014 with these words "In Africa we say if you want to go first, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together." He should have added: And if you want to go nowhere, go multi-stakeholder.

For all the talk of an inclusive global meeting, there was exactly one governmental submission from the African continent, and it was from Tunisia; and the overall rate of submissions from Africa and West Asia were generally very low.

The outcome document perfectly reflects the gloss that the "multi-stakeholder" model was designed to achieve: an outcome that is celebrated by businesses (and by all embedded institutions like ICANN) for being harmless, met with relief by governments for not upsetting the status quo, all of it lit up in the holy glow of "consensus" from civil society.

Of course there was no consensus. Civil society groups who organised on Day 0 put up their position: the shocking omission of a strong case for net neutrality, ambiguous language on surveillance, weak defences of free expression and privacy. All valid points. But it's striking that civil society takes such a pliant position towards authority: other than exactly two spirited protests (one against the data retention in Marco Civil, and the other against the NSA's mass surveillance program) there was no confrontation, no provocation, no passionate action that would give civil society the force it needs to win. If we were to compare this to other international struggles, the gay rights battle, or its successor, the AIDS medicines movement, for instance - what a difference there is. People fought to crush with powerful, forceful action. Only after huge victories with public and media sympathy, and only after turning themselves into equals of the corporations and governments they were fighting, did they allow themselves to sit down at the table and negotiate nicely. Internet governance fora are marked by politeness and passivity, and perhaps - however sad - it's no wonder that the least powerful groups in these fora always come away disappointed.

It's also surprising that there is no language in the outcome document that explicitly addresses the censorious threat posed by the global expansion of a sovereign application of copyright, as seen most vividly in the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation in the United States. The outcome document has language that seems to more or less reflect the civil society proposal, and it's possible that a generous interpretation of the language could mean that it opposes the selective, restrictive and damaging application of what the intellectual property industries want to accomplish on the Internet. But it's puzzling that the language isn't stronger or more explicit, and even more puzzling that civil society doesn't seem to want to fight for such language.

This seems like an appropriate time to end the multi-stakeholder diaries. Hasn't the word been used enough? Here is one last instalment. We thank the kind folks who gave us their time.

Q: What does "multi-stakeholder" mean? What is "multi-stakeholderism"?

A large part of the discourse prior to the NETmundial conference has been centered around the issue of what is the best structural system to regulate a global network – this has commonly been portrayed as a choice between a multistakeholder system – which broadly speaking, aims to place ‘all stakeholders’ on equal footing – against multilateralism – a recognized concept in International law / the Comity of Nation States, where a nation state is recognized as the representative of its citizens, making decisions on their behalf and in their interests.

In our opinion, the issue is not about the dichotomy between multilateralism and multistakeholderism; it is about what functions or issues can legitimately be dealt with through each of the processes in terms of adequately protecting civil liberties and other public interest principles – including the appropriate enforcement of norms. For instance, how do you deal with something like cyber warfare without the consent of states? Similarly, how do we address regulatory issues such as determining (and possibly subsidizing) costs of access, or indeed to protect a right of a country against unilateral disconnection?

.....The crux of the matter rests in deciding which is the best governance ‘basket’ to include a particular issue within – taken from both a substantive and enforcement perspective. The challenge is trying to demarcate issues to ensure that each is dealt with effectively by placing it in an appropriate bucket. (The full post can be accessed here).
Rishab Bailey from the Society for Knowledge Commons (India)

If I would have signed the campaign http://wepromise.eu as a candidate to the European Parliament I would have made it an election promise to defend "the principle of multistakeholderism".

That means that I "support free, open, bottom-up, and multi-stakeholder models of coordinating the Internet resources and standards - names, numbers, addresses etc" and that I "support measures which seek to ensure the capacity of representative civil society to participate in multi-stakeholder forums." Further, I "oppose any attempts by corporate, governmental or intergovernmental agencies to take control of Internet governance."

My very rudimentary personal view is basically that it's a bad idea to institutionalise conflicting competences.
Erik Josefsson, Adviser on Internet policies for the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament

And so it ends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-day-2

NETmundial Day 1

achal — 2014-04-24T09:02:49Z

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's speech at the opening of NETmundial in São Paulo was refreshingly free of the UN-speak that characterised virtually every single other presentation this morning. The experience of sitting for five hours in a room where the word "multi-stakeholder" is repeated at the rate of five mentions per minute is not for the faint-hearted; it almost makes you wish for more of the straight-talking tough-love of people like Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

Surveillance was mentioned by a few brave souls. Two peaceful, silent - and rather effective - protests broke out during the opening speeches; one, against the data retention clause in Brazil's otherwise path-breaking and brand-new law for civil rights on the Internet, Marco Civil, and another for honouring US NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and urging action against surveillance. Sadly for Brazilian civil society, the Marco Civil protestations went unheard, and Rousseff signed the bill into law in full.

There were lots of speeches. Lots. If you missed them, here's a handy visualisation you can use to catch up quickly: just add some prepositions and conjunctions, and you'll have a perfectly anodyne and universally acceptable bureaucrat/politician keynote address.

The afternoon was given over to assimilating previously received comments on the outcome document and adding new ones from people in the room. Much contention, much continuity, lots of hard work, lots of nitpicking (some of it even useful) and lots of ambiguity; after more consultation - the slog goes on until tomorrow afternoon - the outcome document will be laid to rest. Lunch was excellent: there's a reason the Grand Hyatt São Paulo costs as much as it does.

Our quest to plumb the depths of multi-stakeholderism continued: we thank the kind folks who gave us their time and allowed us to record them.

Q: What does "multi-stakeholder" mean? What is "multi-stakeholderism"?

Multi-stakeholderism to me is the ability to engage with every stakeholder and have them in the room, and have them understand that it is not an equal opportunity for all. I also understand that civil society and academia will never be at the same place as business, which has far more resources, or governments, which have the sovereign right to make laws, or even the technical community, which is often missing from the policy dialogue. There are three things which are important to me: (1) Will I be able to make interventions not just in the dialogue but in the decision making process? For me, that is key. (2) Do I have recourse in a process which might be multilateral or inter-governmental - do I have recourse when international treaties are ratified or signed, because they become binding national laws? and (3) What is it that happens to dissent in a process that is not multi-stakeholder? I think even the ITU (the International Telecommunications Union) has taken cognizance of multi-stakeholderism. So it's not new, but it's also not old or accepted, which is why we contest it. We will never have equal stakeholders. And who gets to represent the stakeholder communities? I don't think power imbalances get resolved, and I think it's a deeply flawed process. It's not perfect. But what worries me is the alternative. So give me a better alternative.
Subi Chaturvedi, Media for Change/ Lady Shriram College (India)

Simply put, multi means many components, and stakeholders are people who have the stakes. So multi-stakeholder means many people who are informed to take the process forward. The process is still on: it's evolving. The idea is that everyone who has an interest should bring it forward, and the dialogue must be balanced. Proof of concept is important - it's not about taking a dogmatic position but a scientific position. Business is concerned about the justification around return on investment.
Jimson Olufuye, Africa ICT Alliance (Nigeria)

Everyone who has a stake in the use and operation of the Internet should have a stake in the way it is managed. I think we shouldn't be considering this as a power game - it's not winner takes all. Decision making should be as much as possible consensual, where no one has a veto power.
Getachew Engida, Deputy Director-General, UNESCO (France)

It is very simple. I think people are complicating matters. It's not a power game. The Internet is fundamentally a global network of interconnected computers. People have become not only consumers of information but providers of information, so the stakes in the media/ICT world are massive. Unprecedented. Therefore, around major issues confronting the Internet, decision making should be as participatory as possible.
Indrajit Banerjee, Director, UNESCO (France)

Additional Links

Watch Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's speech at the opening of NETmundial
Follow Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt on Twitter

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-day-1

NETmundial: Tracking Multistakeholder across Contributions

sumandro — 2014-04-25T09:53:37Z

This set of analysis of the contributions submitted to NETmundial 2014 is part of the effort by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, to enable productive discussions of the critical internet governance issues at the meeting and elsewhere.

Created by Sumandro using Google Charts.
Google Terms of Use and Data Policy.
Data compiled by Sumandro and Jyoti.
Download the data .

This scatter plot shows the number of times the word *multistakeholder* (including *multi-stakeholder* and *multistakeholderism*) appears across contributions submitted to NETmundial.

X axis (horizontal) gives the serial number of contributions and Y axis (vertical) gives the number of times the word appears on a contribution.

Click on the types of organisation below the chart to highlight the corresponding organisations on the chart.

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness, and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

The visualisations are done by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, based on data compilation and analysis by Jyoti Panday, and with data entry suport from Chandrasekhar.

Built on Bootstrap by Sumandro

All code, content and data is co-owned by the author(s) and Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 India license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-tracking-multi-stakeholder-across-contributions

Do we need a Unified Post Transition IANA?

Pranesh Prakash, Padmini Baruah and Jyoti Panday — 2015-10-27T00:46:37Z

As we stand at the threshold of the IANA Transition, we at CIS find that there has been little discussion on the question of how the transition will manifest. The question we wanted to raise was whether there is any merit in dividing the three IANA functions – names, numbers and protocols – given that there is no real technical stability to be gained from a unified Post Transition IANA. The analysis of this idea has been detailed below.

The Internet Architecture Board, in a submission to the NTIA in 2011 claims that splitting the IANA functions would not be desirable.[1] The IAB notes, “There exists synergy and interdependencies between the functions, and having them performed by a single operator facilitates coordination among registries, even those that are not obviously related,” and also that that the IETF makes certain policy decisions relating to names and numbers as well, and so it is useful to have a single body. But they don’t say why having a single email address for all these correspondences, rather than 3 makes any difference: Surely, what’s important is cooperation and coordination. Just as IETF, ICANN, NRO being different entities doesn’t harm the Internet, splitting the IANA function relating to each entity won’t harm the Internet either. Instead will help stability by making each community responsible for the running of its own registers, rather than a single point of failure: ICANN and/or “PTI”.

A number of commentators have supported this viewpoint in the past: Bill Manning of University of Southern California’s ISI (who has been involved in DNS operations since DNS started), Paul M. Kane (former Chairman of CENTR's Board of Directors), Jean-Jacques Subrenat (who is currently an ICG member), Association française pour le nommage Internet en coopération (AFNIC), the Internet Governance Project, InternetNZ, and the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA).

The Internet Governance Project stated: “IGP supports the comments of Internet NZ and Bill Manning regarding the feasibility and desirability of separating the distinct IANA functions. Structural separation is not only technically feasible, it has good governance and accountability implications. By decentralizing the functions we undermine the possibility of capture by governmental or private interests and make it more likely that policy implementations are based on consensus and cooperation.”[2]

Similarly, CADNA in its 2011 submission to NTIA notes that that in the current climate of technical innovation and the exponential expansion of the Internet community, specialisation of the IANA functions would result in them being better executed. The argument is also that delegation of the technical and administrative functions among other capable entities (such as the IETF and IAB for protocol parameters, or an international, neutral organization with understanding of address space protocols as opposed to RIRs) determined by the IETF is capable of managing this function would ensure accountability in Internet operation. Given that the IANA functions are mainly registry-maintenance function, they can to a large extent be automated. However, a single system of automation would not fit all three.

Instead of a single institution having three masters, it is better for the functions to be separated. Most importantly, if one of the current customers wishes to shift the contract to another IANA functions operator, even if it isn’t limited by contract, it is limited by the institutional design, since iana.org serves as a central repository. This limitation didn’t exist, for instance, when the IETF decided to enter into a new contract for the RFC Editor role. This transition presents the best opportunity to cleave the functions logically, and make each community responsible for the functioning of their own registers, with IETF, which is mostly funded by ISOC, taking on the responsibility of handing the residual registries, and a discussion about the .ARPA and .INT gTLDs.

From the above discussion, three main points emerge:

Splitting of the IANA functions allows for technical specialisation leading to greater efficiency of the IANA functions.
Splitting of the IANA functions allows for more direct accountability, and no concentration of power.
Splitting of the IANA functions allows for ease of shifting of the {names,number,protocol parameters} IANA functions operator without affecting the legal structure of any of the other IANA function operators.

[1]. IAB response to the IANA FNOI, July 28, 2011. See: https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2011/07/IANA-IAB-FNOI-2011.pdf

[2]. Internet Governance Project, Comments of the Internet Governance Project on the NTIA's "Request for Comments on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions" (Docket # 110207099-1099-01) February 25, 2011 See: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/federal-register-notices/2011/request-comments-internet-assigned-numbers-authority-iana-functions

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/do-we-need-a-unified-post-tranistion-iana

CIS Statement at ICANN 49's Public Forum

pranesh — 2014-06-04T05:31:44Z

This was a statement made by Pranesh Prakash at the ICANN 49 meeting (on March 27, 2014), arguing that ICANN's bias towards the North America and Western Europe result in a lack of legitimacy, and hoping that the IANA transition process provides an opportunity to address this.

Good afternoon. My name is Pranesh Prakash, and I'm with the Yale Information Society Project and the Centre for Internet and Society.

I am extremely concerned about the accountability of ICANN to the global community. Due to various decisions made by the US government relating to ICANN's birth, ICANN has had a troubled history with legitimacy. While it has managed to gain and retain the confidence of the technical community, it still lacks political legitimacy due to its history. The NTIA's decision has presented us an opportunity to correct this.

However, ICANN can't hope to do so without going beyond the current ICANN community, which while nominally being 'multistakeholder' and open to all, grossly under-represents those parts of the world that aren't North America and Western Europe.

Of the 1010 ICANN-accredited registrars, 624 are from the United States, and 7 from the 54 countries of Africa. In a session yesterday, a large number of the policies that favour entrenched incumbents from richer countries were discussed. But without adequate representation from poorer countries, and adequate representation from the rest of the world's Internet population, there is no hope of changing these policies.

This is true not just of the business sector, but of all the 'stakeholders' that are part of global Internet policymaking, whether they follow the ICANN multistakeholder model or another. A look at the boardmembers of the Internet Architecture Board, for instance, would reveal how skewed the technical community can be, whether in terms of geographic or gender diversity.

Without greater diversity within the global Internet policymaking communities, there is no hope of equity, respect for human rights -- civil, political, cultural, social and economic --, and democratic funtioning, no matter how 'open' the processes seem to be, and no hope of ICANN accountability either.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/icann49-public-forum-statement

Jurisdiction: The Taboo Topic at ICANN

pranesh — 2016-06-29T07:51:05Z

The "IANA Transition" that is currently underway is a sham since it doesn't address the most important question: that of jurisdiction. This article explores why the issue of jurisdiction is the most important question, and why it remains unaddressed.

In March 2014, the US government announced that they were going to end the contract they have with ICANN to run the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and hand over control to the “global multistakeholder community”. They insisted that the plan for transition had to come through a multistakeholder process and have stakeholders “across the global Internet community”.

Why is the U.S. government removing the NTIA contract?

The main reason for the U.S. government's action is that it will get rid of a political thorn in the U.S. government's side: keeping the contract allows them to be called out as having a special role in Internet governance (with the Affirmation of Commitments between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN, the IANA contract, and the cooperative agreement with Verisign), and engaging in unilateralism with regard to the operation of the root servers of the Internet naming system, while repeatedly declaring that they support a multistakeholder model of Internet governance.

This contradiction is what they are hoping to address. Doing away with the NTIA contract will also increase — ever so marginally — ICANN’s global legitimacy: this is something that world governments, civil society organizations, and some American academics have been asking for nearly since ICANN’s inception in 1998. For instance, here are some demands made in a declaration by the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus at WSIS, in 2005:

“ICANN will negotiate an appropriate host country agreement to replace its California Incorporation, being careful to retain those aspects of its California Incorporation that enhance its accountability to the global Internet user community. "ICANN's decisions, and any host country agreement, must be required to comply with public policy requirements negotiated through international treaties in regard to, inter alia, human rights treaties, privacy rights, gender agreements and trade rules. … "It is also expected that the multi-stakeholder community will observe and comment on the progress made in this process through the proposed [Internet Governance] Forum."

In short: the objective of the transition is political, not technical. In an ideal world, we should aim at reducing U.S. state control over the core of the Internet's domain name system.¹

It is our contention that U.S. state control over the core of the Internet's domain name system is not being removed by the transition that is currently underway.

Why is the Transition Happening Now?

Despite the U.S. government having given commitments in the past that were going to finish the IANA transition by "September 30, 2000", (the White Paper on Management of Internet Names and Addresses states: "The U.S. Government would prefer that this transition be complete before the year 2000. To the extent that the new corporation is established and operationally stable, September 30, 2000 is intended to be, and remains, an 'outside' date.") and later by "fall of 2006",² those turned out to be empty promises. However, this time, the transition seems to be going through, unless the U.S. Congress manages to halt it.

However, in order to answer the question of "why now?" fully, one has to look a bit at the past.

In 1998, through the White Paper on Management of Internet Names and Addresses the U.S. government asserted it’s control over the root, and asserted — some would say arrogated to itself — the power to put out contracts for both the IANA functions as well as the 'A' Root (i.e., the Root Zone Maintainer function that Network Solutions Inc. then performed, and continues to perform to date in its current avatar as Verisign). The IANA functions contract — a periodically renewable contract — was awarded to ICANN, a California-based non-profit corporation that was set up exclusively for this purpose, but which evolved around the existing IANA (to placate the Internet Society).

Meanwhile, of course, there were criticisms of ICANN from multiple foreign governments and civil society organizations. Further, despite it being a California-based non-profit on contract with the government, domestically within the U.S., there was pushback from constituencies that felt that more direct U.S. control of the DNS was important.

As Goldsmith and Wu summarize:

"Milton Mueller and others have shown that ICANN’s spirit of “self-regulation” was an appealing label for a process that could be more accurately described as the U.S. government brokering a behind-the-scenes deal that best suited its policy preferences ... the United States wanted to ensure the stability of the Internet, to fend off the regulatory efforts of foreign governments and international organizations, and to maintain ultimate control. The easiest way to do that was to maintain formal control while turning over day-to-day control of the root to ICANN and the Internet Society, which had close ties to the regulation-shy American technology industry." [footnotes omitted]

And that brings us to the first reason that the NTIA announced the transition in 2014, rather than earlier.

ICANN Adjudged Mature Enough

The NTIA now sees ICANN as being mature enough: the final transition was announced 16 years after ICANN's creation, and complaints about ICANN and its legitimacy had largely died down in the international arena in that while. Nowadays, governments across the world send their representatives to ICANN, thus legitimizing ICANN. States have largely been satisfied by participating in the Government Advisory Council, which, as its name suggests, only has advisory powers. Further, unlike in the early days, there is no serious push for states assuming control of ICANN. Of course they grumble about the ICANN Board not following their advice, but no government, as far as I am aware, has walked out or refused to participate.

L'affaire Snowden

Many within the United States, and some without, believe that the United States not only plays an exceptional role to play in the running of the Internet — by dint of historical development and dominance of American companies — but that it ought to have an exceptional role because it is the best country to exercise 'oversight' over 'the Internet' (often coming from clueless commentators), and from dinosaurs of the Internet era, like American IP lawyers and American 'homeland' security hawks, Jones Day, who are ICANN's lawyers, and other jingoists and those policymakers who are controlled by these narrow-minded interests.

The Snowden revelations were, in that way, a godsend for the NTIA, as it allowed them a fig-leaf of international criticism with which to counter these domestic critics and carry on with a transition that they have been seeking to put into motion for a while. The Snowden revelations led Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil, to state in September 2013, at the 68th U.N. General Assembly, that Brazil would "present proposals for the establishment of a civilian multilateral framework for the governance and use of the Internet", and as Diego Canabarro points out this catalysed the U.S. government and the technical community into taking action.

Given this context, a few months after the Snowden revelations, the so-called I* organizations met — seemingly with the blessing of the U.S. government³ — in Montevideo, and put out a 'Statement on the Future of Internet Governance' that sought to link the Snowden revelations on pervasive surveillance with the need to urgently transition the IANA stewardship role away from the U.S. government. Of course, the signatories to that statement knew fully well, as did most of the readers of that statement, that there is no linkage between the Snowden revelations about pervasive surveillance and the operations of the DNS root, but still they, and others, linked them together. Specifically, the I* organizations called for "accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders, including all governments, participate on an equal footing."

One could posit the existence of two other contributing factors as well.

Given political realities in the United States, a transition of this sort is probably best done before an ultra-jingoistic President steps into office.

Lastly, the ten-yearly review of the World Summit on Information Society was currently underway. At the original WSIS (as seen from the civil society quoted above) the issue of US control over the root was a major issue of contention. At that point (and during where the 2006 date for globalization of ICANN was emphasized by the US government).

Why Jurisdiction is Important

Jurisdiction has a great many aspects. Inter alia, these are:

Legal sanctions applicable to changes in the root zone (for instance, what happens if a country under US sanctions requests a change to the root zone file?)
Law applicable to resolution of contractual disputes with registries, registrars, etc.
Law applicable to labour disputes.
Law applicable to competition / antitrust law that applies to ICANN policies and regulations.
Law applicable to disputes regarding ICANN decisions, such as allocation of gTLDs, or non-renewal of a contract.
Law applicable to consumer protection concerns.
Law applicable to financial transparency of the organization.
Law applicable to corporate condition of the organization, including membership rights.
Law applicable to data protection-related policies & regulations.
Law applicable to trademark and other speech-related policies & regulations.
Law applicable to legal sanctions imposed by a country against another.

Some of these, but not all, depend on where bodies like ICANN [the policy-making body], the IANA functions operator [the proposed "Post-Transition IANA"], and the root zone maintainer are incorporated or maintain their primary office, while others depend on the location of the office [for instance, Turkish labour law applies for the ICANN office in Istanbul], while yet others depend on what's decided by ICANN in contracts (for instance, the resolution of contractual disputes with ICANN, filing of suits with regard to disputes over new generic TLDs, etc.).

However, an issue like sanctions, for instance, depends on where ICANN/PTI/RMZ are incorporated and maintain their primary office.

As Milton Mueller notes, the current IANA contract "requires ICANN to be incorporated in, maintain a physical address in, and perform the IANA functions in the U.S. This makes IANA subject to U.S. law and provides America with greater political influence over ICANN."

He further notes that:

While it is common to assert that the U.S. has never abused its authority and has always taken the role of a neutral steward, this is not quite true. During the controversy over the .xxx domain, the Bush administration caved in to domestic political pressure and threatened to block entry of the domain into the root if ICANN approved it (Declaration of the Independent Review Panel, 2010). It took five years, an independent review challenge and the threat of litigation from a businessman willing to spend millions to get the .xxx domain into the root.

Thus it is clear that even if the NTIA's role in the IANA contract goes away, jurisdiction remains an important issue.

U.S. Doublespeak on Jurisdiction

In March 2014, when NTIA finally announced that they would hand over the reins to “the global multistakeholder community”. They’ve laid down two procedural condition: that it be developed by stakeholders across the global Internet community and have broad community consensus, and they have proposed 5 substantive conditions that any proposal must meet:

Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
Meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and,
Maintain the openness of the Internet.
Must not replace the NTIA role with a solution that is government-led or an inter-governmental organization.

In that announcement there is no explicit restriction on the jurisdiction of ICANN (whether it relate to its incorporation, the resolution of contractual disputes, resolution of labour disputes, antitrust/competition law, tort law, consumer protection law, privacy law, or speech law, and more, all of which impact ICANN and many, but not all, of which are predicated on the jurisdiction of ICANN’s incorporation), the jurisdiction(s) of the IANA Functions Operator(s) (i.e., which executive, court, or legislature’s orders would it need to obey), and the jurisdiction of the Root Zone Maintainer (i.e., which executive, court, or legislature’s orders would it need to obey).

However, Mr. Larry Strickling, the head of the NTIA, in his testimony before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, made it clear that,

“Frankly, if [shifting ICANN or IANA jurisdiction] were being proposed, I don't think that such a proposal would satisfy our criteria, specifically the one that requires that security and stability be maintained.”

Possibly, that argument made sense in 1998, due to the significant concentration of DNS expertise in the United States. However, in 2015, that argument is hardly convincing, and is frankly laughable.⁴

Targetting that remark, in ICANN 54 at Dublin, we asked Mr. Strickling:

"So as we understand it, the technical stability of the DNS doesn't necessarily depend on ICANN's jurisdiction being in the United States. So I wanted to ask would the US Congress support a multistakeholder and continuing in the event that it's shifting jurisdiction."

Mr. Strickling's response was:

"No. I think Congress has made it very clear and at every hearing they have extracted from Fadi a commitment that ICANN will remain incorporated in the United States. Now the jurisdictional question though, as I understand it having been raised from some other countries, is not so much jurisdiction in terms of where ICANN is located. It's much more jurisdiction over the resolution of disputes.

"And that I think is an open issue, and that's an appropriate one to be discussed. And it's one I think where ICANN has made some movement over time anyway.

"So I think you have to ... when people use the word jurisdiction, we need to be very precise about over what issues because where disputes are resolved and under what law they're resolved, those are separate questions from where the corporation may have a physical headquarters."

As we have shown above, jurisdiction is not only about the jurisdiction of "resolution of disputes", but also, as Mueller reminds us, about the requirement that ICANN (and now, the PTI) be "incorporated in, maintain a physical address in, and perform the IANA functions in the U.S. This makes IANA subject to U.S. law and provides America with greater political influence over ICANN."

In essence, the U.S. government has essentially said that they would veto the transition if the jurisdiction of ICANN or PTI's incorporation were to move out of the U.S., and they can prevent that from happening after the transition, since as things stand ICANN and PTI will still come within the U.S. Congress's jurisdiction.

Why Has the ICG Failed to Consider Jurisdiction?

Will the ICG proposal or the proposed new ICANN by-laws reduce existing U.S. control? No, they won't. (In fact, as we will argue below, the proposed new ICANN by-laws make this problem even worse.) The proposal by the names community ("the CWG proposal") still has a requirement (in Annex S) that the Post-Transition IANA (PTI) be incorporated in the United States, and a similar suggestion hidden away as a footnote. Further, the proposed by-laws for ICANN include the requirement that PTI be a California corporation. There was no discussion specifically on this issue, nor any documented community agreement on the specific issue of jurisdiction of PTI's incorporation.

Why wasn't there greater discussion and consideration of this issue? Because of two reasons: First, there were many that argued that the transition would be vetoed by the U.S. government and the U.S. Congress if ICANN and PTI were not to remain in the U.S. Secondly, the ICANN-formed ICG saw the US government’s actions very narrowly, as though the government were acting in isolation, ignoring the rich dialogue and debate that’s gone on earlier about the transition since the incorporation of ICANN itself.

While it would be no one’s case that political considerations should be given greater weightage than technical considerations such as security, stability, and resilience of the domain name system, it is shocking that political considerations have been completely absent in the discussions in the number and protocol parameters communities, and have been extremely limited in the discussions in the names community. This is even more shocking considering that the main reason for this transition is, as has been argued above, political.

It can be also argued that the certain IANA functions such as Root Zone Management function have a considerable political implication. It is imperative that the political nature of the function is duly acknowledged and dealt with, in accordance with the wishes of the global community. In the current process the political aspects of the IANA function has been completely overlooked and sidelined. It is important to note that this transition has not been a necessitated by any technical considerations. It is primarily motivated by political and legal considerations. However, the questions that the ICG asked the customer communities to consider were solely technical. Indeed, the communities could have chosen to overlook that, but they did not choose to do so. For instance, while the IANA customer community proposals reflected on existing jurisdictional arrangements, they did not reflect on how the jurisdictional arrangements should be post-transition , while this is one of the questions at the heart of the entire transition. There were no discussions and decisions as to the jurisdiction of the Post-Transition IANA: the Accountability CCWG's lawyers, Sidley Austin, recommended that the PTI ought to be a California non-profit corporation, and this finds mention in a footnote without even having been debated by the "global multistakeholder community", and subsequently in the proposed new by-laws for ICANN.

Why the By-Laws Make Things Worse & Why "Work Stream 2" Can't Address Most Jurisdiction Issues

The by-laws could have chosen to simply stayed silent on the matter of what law PTI would be incorporated under, but instead the by-law make the requirement of PTI being a California non-profit public benefit corporation part of the fundamental by-laws, which are close to impossible to amend.

While "Work Stream 2" (the post-transition work related to improving ICANN's accountability) has jurisdiction as a topic of consideration, the scope of that must necessarily discount any consideration of shifting the jurisdiction of incorporation of ICANN, since all of the work done as part of CCWG Accountability's "Work Stream 1", which are now reflected in the proposed new by-laws, assume Californian jurisdiction (including the legal model of the "Empowered Community"). Is ICANN prepared to re-do all the work done in WS1 in WS2 as well? If the answer is yes, then the issue of jurisdiction can actually be addressed in WS2. If the answer is no — and realistically it is — then, the issue of jurisdiction can only be very partially addressed in WS2.

Keeping this in mind, we recommended specific changes in the by-laws, all of which were rejected by CCWG's lawyers.

The Transition Plan Fails the NETmundial Statement

The NETmundial Multistakeholder Document, which was an outcome of the NETmundial process, states:

In the follow up to the recent and welcomed announcement of US Government with regard to its intent to transition the stewardship of IANA functions, the discussion about mechanisms for guaranteeing the transparency and accountability of those functions after the US Government role ends, has to take place through an open process with the participation of all stakeholders extending beyond the ICANN community

[...]

It is expected that the process of globalization of ICANN speeds up leading to a truly international and global organization serving the public interest with clearly implementable and verifiable accountability and transparency mechanisms that satisfy requirements from both internal stakeholders and the global community.

The active representation from all stakeholders in the ICANN structure from all regions is a key issue in the process of a successful globalization.

As our past analysis has shown, the IANA transition process and the discussions on the mailing lists that shaped it were neither global nor multistakeholder. The DNS industry represented in ICANN is largely US-based. 3 in 5 registrars are from the United States of America, whereas less than 1% of ICANN-registered registrars are from Africa. Two-thirds of the Business Constituency in ICANN is from the USA. While ICANN-the-corporation has sought to become more global, the ICANN community has remained insular, and this will not change until the commercial interests involved in ICANN can become more diverse, reflecting the diversity of users of the Internet, and a TLD like .COM can be owned by a non-American corporation and the PTI can be a non-American entity.

What We Need: Jurisdictional Resilience

It is no one's case that the United States is less fit than any other country as a base for ICANN, PTI, or the Root Zone Maintainer, or even as the headquarters for 9 of the world's 12 root zone operators (Verisign runs both the A and J root servers). However, just as having multiplicity of root servers is important for ensuring technical resilience of the DNS system (and this is shown in the uptake of Anycast by root server operators), it is equally important to have immunity of core DNS functioning from political pressures of the country or countries where core DNS infrastructure is legally situated and to ensure that we have diversity in terms of legal jurisdiction.

Towards this end, we at CIS have pushed for the concept of "jurisdictional resilience", encompassing three crucial points:

Legal immunity for core technical operators of Internet functions (as opposed to policymaking venues) from legal sanctions or orders from the state in which they are legally situated.
Division of core Internet operators among multiple jurisdictions
Jurisdictional division of policymaking functions from technical implementation functions

Of these, the most important is the limited legal immunity (akin to a greatly limited form of the immunity that UN organizations get from the laws of their host countries). This kind of immunity could be provided through a variety of different means: a host-country agreement; a law passed by the legislature; a U.N. General Assembly Resolution; a U.N.-backed treaty; and other such options exist. We are currently investigating which of these options would be the best option.

And apart from limited legal immunity, distribution of jurisdictional control is also valuable. As we noted in our submission to the ICG in September 2015:

Following the above precepts would, for instance, mean that the entity that performs the role of the Root Zone Maintainer should not be situated in the same legal jurisdiction as the entity that functions as the policymaking venue. This would in turn mean that either the Root Zone Maintainer function be taken up Netnod (Sweden-headquartered) or the WIDE Project (Japan-headquartered) [or RIPE-NCC, headquartered in the Netherlands], or that if the IANA Functions Operator(s) is to be merged with the RZM, then the IFO be relocated to a jurisdiction other than those of ISOC and ICANN. This, as has been stated earlier, has been a demand of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus. Further, it would also mean that root zone servers operators be spread across multiple jurisdictions (which the creation of mirror servers in multiple jurisdictions will not address).

However, the issue of jurisdiction seems to be dead-on-arrival, having been killed by the United States government.

Unfortunately, despite the primary motivation for demands for the IANA transition being those of removing the power the U.S. government exercises over the core of the Internet's operations in the form of the DNS, what has ended up happening through the IANA transition is that these powers have not only not been removed, but in some ways they have been entrenched further! While earlier, the U.S. had to specify that the IANA functions operator had to be located in the U.S., now ICANN's by-laws themselves will state that the post-transition IANA will be a California corporation. Notably, while the Montevideo Declaration speaks of "globalization" of ICANN and of the IANA functions, as does the NETmundial statement, the NTIA announcement on their acceptance of the transition proposals speaks of "privatization" of ICANN, and not "globalization".

All in all, the "independence" that IANA is gaining from the U.S. is akin to the "independence" that Brazil gained from Portugal in 1822. Dom Pedro of Brazil was then ruling Brazil as the Prince Regent since his father Dom João VI, the King of United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves had returned to Portugal. In 1822, Brazil declared independence from Portugal (which was formally recognized through a treaty in 1825). Even after this "independence", Dom Pedro continued to rule Portugal just as he had before indepedence, and Dom João VI was provided the title of "Emperor of Brazil", aside from being King of the United Kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves. The "indepedence" didn't make a whit of a difference to the self-sufficiency of Brazil: Portugal continued to be its largest trading partner. The "independence" didn't change anything for the nearly 1 million slaves in Brazil, or to the lot of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, none of whom were recognized as "free". It had very little consequence not just in terms of ground conditions of day-to-day living, but even in political terms.

Such is the case with the IANA Transition: U.S. power over the core functioning of the Domain Name System do not stand diminished after the transition, and they can even arguably be said to have become even more entrenched. Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.

It is an allied but logically distinct issue that U.S. businesses — registries and registrars — dominate the global DNS industry, and as a result hold the reins at ICANN.↩
As Goldsmith & Wu note in their book Who Controls the Internet: "Back in 1998 the U.S. Department of Commerce promised to relinquish root authority by the fall of 2006, but in June 2005, the United States reversed course. “The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet’s Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS),” announced Michael D. Gallagher, a Department of Commerce official. “The United States” he announced, will “maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.”↩
Mr. Fadi Chehadé revealed in an interaction with Indian participants at ICANN 54 that he had a meeting "at the White House" about the U.S. plans for transition of the IANA contract before he spoke about that when he visited India in October 2013 making the timing of his White House visit around the time of the Montevideo Statement.↩
As an example, NSD, software that is used on multiple root servers, is funded by a Dutch foundation and a Dutch corporation, and written mostly by European coders.↩

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/jurisdiction-the-taboo-topic-at-icann