United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas Galveston Division has denied plaintiffs motion for a temporary restraining order thus allowing IANA transition to proceed as planned.

— “A federal judge in the Southern District of Texas on Friday denied a last-ditch request for an injunction against the long-awaited shift of oversight of the Internet’s address book from the U.S. Department of Commerce to a non-profit organization,” reports Elizabeth Weise in the USA Today: “U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, said he was pleased the request, which he termed “baseless,” had been denied.”

— “The most significant change in the internet’s functioning for a generation will happen tonight at midnight,” reports Kieren McCarthy in the Register: “At 12.01am Washington DC time, the US government will walk away from the IANA contract, which has defined how the internet has grown and been structured for nearly 20 years, and hand it over to non-profit organization ICANN.”

— “Contract expiration to end U.S. authority over Internet IP addresses,” Craig Timberg reporting in the Washington Post: “Forty-seven years of U.S. government authority over the Internet’s most basic functions is slated to end Saturday, not with a celebration or a wake but with the quiet expiration of a contract. ... ICANN’s executives and board of directors, who oversee the organization day-to-day, will now report to what the group calls the Internet’s “stakeholder community” — a lightly defined mix of corporate interests, government officials, activists and experts spread across four international bodies.”

— “But it may not be the end of the Obama administration’s political and legal headaches,”reports Tony Romm in Politico: “Even though the transition may proceed, the four states that sued this week could appeal — and they haven’t ruled it out. A spokesman for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said the AG would “continue to explore our options for relief to unwind these improper acts by the Obama administration.”

— “Snowden legacy ... Efforts to make it truly neutral and global came back into the fore in 2013, after National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the depth of U.S. Internet surveillance. That pushed ICANN to begin working on a new transition proposal,” writes Elizabeth Weise in USA Today.

— ICANN Board Chair Stephen D. Crocker / 1 Oct 2016: “This transition was envisioned 18 years ago, yet it was the tireless work of the global Internet community, which drafted the final proposal, that made this a reality. This community validated the multistakeholder model of Internet governance. It has shown that a governance model defined by the inclusion of all voices, including business, academics, technical experts, civil society, governments and many others is the best way to assure that the Internet of tomorrow remains as free, open and accessible as the Internet of today.”