Up ICANN (Part 1) — Congress Beats
Members of the House rip into ICANN over pricing, transparency, and security.
It wasn’t pretty.
For better than two hours today, members of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet took turns ripping into Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its President/CEO Paul Twomey. If nothing else, ICANN’s experience on Capitol Hill today will give it all the more reason to try to get out of U.S. oversight. In addition to discussing the Joint Project Agreement, members also discussed the introduction of fresh top level domain names.
The hearings started with committee members spending two minutes on opening remarks. You can generally divide the members’ into three categories:
1. Well informed regarding subject matter
2. Didn’t know subject matter and admitted it
3. Didn’t know subject matter but read their staff notes and pretended like they knew regarding it
Almost all representatives were in favor of extending the Joint Project Agreement with ICANN, which they believe will provide more U.S. control in the internet’s naming system. Here are a few of their comments:
Rep. Cliff Stearns, (R – FL), seemed to focus on ICANN’s financial interests. He sharply questioned Twomey on ICANN’s reserve fund, Twomey’s salary, and even how much Twomey worked in the California office. Stearns repeatedly referred to ICANN as “I-CON” by accident in his opening remarks.
Rep. Mike Doyle (D – PA) questioned ICANN’s $4.5 million in stock losses. “I’m afraid ICANN seems better at furthering its own interests” than those of internet constituents, stated Doyle. He also questioned the introduction of fresh top level domain names.
Rep. Lee Terry (R – NE) stated control of the internet’s naming system “could be a matter of national security”. He also stated the United States Government created the internet and needs to be in charge.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D – CA) stated she’s against cutting ICANN loose since countries that try to stifle freedom of speech may get control.
Rep. John Dingell (D – MI) was particularly harsh, saying ICANN was hardly a good model of governance and that it would be “wholly unwise to reduce further participation” by the U.S. Government. He also stated ICANN’s contracting process with .com registry VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) had a “deplorable lack of transparency”.
In the next part of Reglike’s coverage of today’s hearings I’ll summarize what some of the witnesses stated and the line of questioning from committee members.
