[At-Large] NTIA JPA Mid-Term Review Statement

[JFC Morfin]

At 22:22 02/04/2008, Brendler, Beau wrote:
>I would be interested to hear what others think, especially those 
>outside the U.S. who have an understandable desire to see ICANN out 
>from under U.S. Gov't oversight.

Beau,
as far as france at large (still not a Member) is concerned this 
no-decision was expected, in line with the US interests, and with 
most (1) of the interests of the world.

ICANN is the US international network agency. It is establish to 
protect critical internet resources from a de-facto monopoly by a few 
or a single corporation. By the same token it is also supposed to 
host and partly protect the USG monopoly on the Internet (and 
therefore the world) on-line reference system: the IANA.

We are pleased to see that the NTIA underlines that the IANA is not 
covered by the JPA. But we fail to read in the sentence a determined 
IANA  protection policy and any indication on the post-JPA area. We 
therefore read in this that NTIA will continue the same policy to 
protect the 1983 internet status quo and the ICANN registrar system 
without real attention to IPv6. Our feeling is that the international 
Internet policy of the USA is not currently stabilized, se will know 
better after Heyderabad - with the US election and the IDNA situation 
at the IETF. In any case the future of ICANN passes through ALAC, 
what it can be, it will be characterized by a progressive loss of 
control of the namespace and a growing influence of users. ALAC, as 
the ICANN's interface with local populations should influence the 
final NTIA decision to continue or discontinue the JPA. The decision 
is ours : we need to know if we try to make the BoD understand it, 
and to make an appropriate ALAC a reality.

jfc

(1) ICANN maintains an ambiguity about its exclusiveness and does not 
prepare its relations with the multilateral reality.