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The
43rd
ICANN public meeting
got
underway today in San Jose, Costa Rica
where it will continue through Friday (March 16,
2012). The meeting opened with outgoing
President and CEO Rod Beckstrom (who will
leave the post July 1) warning
the Board of Directors that they needed to make
some major changes if the organization
wants to maintain its role as administrator of
the domain name system.
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Beckstrom
said, "A significant threat lies within ICANN’s existing
structure. I believe it is time to further tighten up the rules that have allowed perceived conflicts to exist within our board. This is necessary not just to be responsive to the
growing chorus of criticism about ICANN’s ethics
environment, but to ensure that absolute dedication to the public good supersedes all other priorities.”
“ICANN must place commercial and financial
interests in their appropriate
context," Beckstrom continued. How can it do this if all |
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top leadership is from the very domain name industry it is supposed to coordinate
independently? A more subtle but related risk is the tangle of conflicting agendas within the board that would make it more difficult for any CEO to meet the requirements of this deeply rewarding and sometimes frustrating job.” |
"It is also important that
new and occasionally dissenting voices from outside this world and this industry be given a shot at a seat in our boardroom. As the Internet’s global users become more diverse in their backgrounds, so too must our board.”
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Rod
Beckstrom
ICANN President & CEO |
Shortly
before the meeting began, the U.S. Department
of Commerce’s National
Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) had dropped
a bomb on ICANN by canceling
the Request for Proposal (RFP) to
administer the contract to operate the
authoritative DNS root server per the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) -
the contract that givens ICANN its
authority over the DNS.
The
ICANN Board issues that Beckstrom
addressed were also referenced in the
NTIA announcement that said, "Based
on the input received from stakeholders
around the world, NTIA added new
requirements to the IANA functions’
statement of work, including the need
for structural separation of
policymaking from implementation, a
robust company-wide conflict of interest
policy, provisions reflecting
heightened respect for local country
laws, and a series of consultation and
reporting requirements to increase
transparency and accountability to
the international community." |
"The
government may cancel any solicitation that does
not meet the requirements. Accordingly, we are canceling
this RFP because we received no proposals
that met the requirements requested by the
global community," the statement said,
leaving ICANN's proposal in the unacceptable
pile. NTIA
did extend ICANN's current IANA contract until September
30, 2012 but that leaves the organization
just six months to gets its house in order
before NTIA issues a new RFP (on a date that
NTIA has not yet specified). The Internet
Commerce Association's Legal Counsel, Phil
Corwin, has more details on this
exceptionally important IANA contract issue in
an article he posted at InternetCommerce.org
today. Prior to
Rod Beckstrom’s address, Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla told the meeting, “the Internet should not be viewed a threat, but as hope, a world of
hope. Costa Rica is committed to bridging the digital gap to provide broadband access to
100% of our educational institutions and make it available to all
people." President
Chinchilla said her country fully supports ICANN programs
including the controversial new gTLD program and
IPv6 adoption.
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