Internet Society Urges Congress to Press Ahead with IANA Steward Transition

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Internet Society Urges Congress to Press Ahead with IANA Steward Transition

By CircleID Reporter
September 13, 2016, 2:21 pm PDT Views: 4,662 Add Comment

In a letter to key Congressional leaders, the Internet Society’s CEO, Kathryn Brown, has urged Congress to allow the IANA stewardship transition to proceed without delay.

The contract between the US Commerce Departments National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is set to expire on September 30. As this date approaches, some members of the United States Congress have expressed reservations about allowing the IANA transition to go forward. There have been calls by some to block the transition while others have suggested that a delay is in order.

The Internet Society has advocated that a successful IANA transition will strengthen the collaborative, multistakeholder model of governance that has been at the foundation of the Internet’s success to date. The organization is confident that this can be done in a way that allows the current contract to expire at the end of September 2016, and sees no reason to delay the IANA Stewardship Transition. It believes that any delay would add a degree of instability and make the prospect of government control of the Internet more likely, not less. It would signal to those who want to control the Internet that the US government believes this technology does not work as designed and it would tell the global Internet community that its consensus around the IANA proposal is meaningless.

You can read the Internet Society’s letter to Congress here.

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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