The Communications subcommittee of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is holding a hearing on ICANN today, July 31, 2003 at 2:30pm EDT.
You can listen in via http://www.capitolhearings.org/ (scan down for the appropriate item for Room SR-253). I’m not sure where the written materials will be posted - I’ll post the URL when I find out.
I was a witness at the two prior hearing, one in 2001 and another in 2002 - it’s quite an experience.
ICANN has abandoned its obligation to oversee the IP address allocation system.
ICANN’s response to security of the DNS is an empty facade.
The actions of the US Department of Commerce reflect a trend to expand executive branch governmental authority, perhaps in violation of US Constitutional principles, through the use of putatively private agents such as ICANN.
Congress should enact a “Public Powers Act” that would define how and under what conditions the exercise of pubic and governmental powers may be delegated to private bodies and define the obligations of such private bodies when they are endowed with the ability to exercise these governmental powers.
ICANN has become a supranational legislature that exports “laws” desired by intellectual property interests onto nations of the world without their consent.
ICANN has not met its obligations to be open, transparent, and accountable to the public. Instead ICANN has restructured itself so as to be further than ever from the public. The gap between the public and ICANN’s centers of power is filled with insulating layer upon insulating layer of ICANN created, and ICANN-regulated “structures”, “organizations”, and “committees”.
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