[CWG-Stewardship] ICANN fighting separabiity in the numbers space

[Milton L Mueller]

I am at the ARIN meeting in San Francisco, and members of the CRISP team gave a report on the status of their proposal.
That discussion revealed several very interesting facts about how ICANN legal is negotiating with the numbers community over the CRISP proposal.
Apparently, ICANN legal is fighting very hard against the ability of the numbers community to terminate the contract with notice.
It is also resisting the idea that the numbers community could do periodic review and competitive selection of an alternate provider if it was deemed necessary
The CRISP team pointed out that the contract termination clauses of their proposed contract with ICANN was much less one-sided than the current NTIA contract, yet ICANN is still resisting it.
It seems clear to me that ICANN will fight very hard to maintain control of IANA, and is doing everything it can to mitigate separability as a real option.
This provides us with a very clear caution regarding internal proposals. When ICANN controls IANA and there is no legal separation we should not be naïve about how easy it will be to create "nuclear option" procedures that provide for separability.

Milton L Mueller
Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://faculty.ischool.syr.edu/mueller/
Internet Governance Project
http://internetgovernance.org<http://internetgovernance.org/>

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