Access has supported greater international oversight of internet resources. We welcome today’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Commerce intends to transition its current coordinating role over the internet’s domain name system — the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, or IANA — to the ‘global multistakeholder community.’
In making its announcement, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce has asked the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene stakeholders “across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition” plan with broad community support, and based on four key principles:
- 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.
While we largely support the four principles articulated by the NTIA, Access believes that the plan must ‘meet the needs and expectation’ of users, including the majority of the world that is not yet online, not just ‘customers and partners.’
The plan must also be inclusive in its decisionmaking so that policies reflect the interests of the global community, and the process to craft this transition proposal must be transparent, as must any resulting governance system.
Furthermore, Access strongly believes that the final proposed plan must secure and facilitate the exercise of fundamental human rights.
Today’s announcement, while promising, is short on detail. We see this as positive step ahead of the global NetMundial conference being held in Sao Paulo, Brazil next month. Access looks forward to being part of the discussion on the development of the transition plan and its future implementation.