Congress Considers the IANA Transfer to ICANN

As we noted earlier, the Administration is proposing to transfer a significant Internet function (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) to an international NGO.  As you may imagine the proposal has generated some discussion in Congress.  On April 2, the House Commerce Committee held a hearing on the proposal, and the House Judiciary Committee is planning a hearing next Thursday (April 10), at which I will be testifying. Having read through some, but not all, of the hearing this week, I think the most notable news was the acknowledgement by Mr. Fadi Chehadé, the CEO of ICANN, that the process for defining the transition might take longer than the is available before the contract ICANN has with the Department of Commerce expires in September 2015.  I think that is a wise statement -- it's more important to do the transition right than it is to do it quickly.  If the ICANN process is not complete by September 2015 we should be willing to renew the contract, with the expectation that it can be terminated when (if) a good transition plan is finalized.