ICANN Could Be Privatized by the end of the year

Posted on May 17, 2015

PCTechMag.com wrote an article that discussed ICANN being on its own by the end of the year. Fadi Chehade gave comments on Thursday that all the parts were in place for this to happen.

From the article:

The head of the nonprofit group that oversees the world’s Internet addresses expressed confidence Thursday that it would be privatized and out of US government control by year’s end.

Fadi Chehade’s comments came despite criticism in the US Congress, where some lawmakers have resisted the plan to end Washington’s key management role in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Chehade said all the necessary components for a new stewardship scheme are accounted for and there will be “major legitimizing endorsements” from several countries in coming weeks.

“It is now up to the community to wrap them up, put them in a nice little box with a bow and ship them to Washington,” Chehade said, of the pieces of a plan to supplant a contract ICANN has with the US Department of Commerce.

The comments come a year after the US government said it would end its technical oversight role for the Internet domain system, with the stipulation that it be managed without direct control by governments or intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations.

Read the full article on PCTechMag.com

5 thoughts on “ICANN Could Be Privatized by the end of the year”

  4. This is rich! I was looking for the blowback from ICANN for being left out of the recent popcorn-worthy congressional hearing, where evidence presented there demonstrates ICANN’s indifference to abusive, illegal online practices.

    1. In the words of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte from that hearing:

      Substantive concerns [are] routinely expressed by a wide array of stakeholders about ICANN’s trustworthiness, accountability, execution, and transparency . . . Regrettably, many of these issues relate to matters presented to successive leaders of ICANN, and officials at the Commerce Department, for years, and, yet, there remains substantial room for progress . . . Despite these matters being neither novel nor unanticipated, ICANN too often failed to appreciate their seriousness and implement corrective measures in advance, or determined that it is unable or unwilling to do so . . . The multi-faceted debate over the dot sucks gTLD which has resulted in trademark owners being shaken down for $2499.00, or more annually, to protect their brands by a Regsitry affiliated with a company in financial default to ICANN, raises many troubling questions, including (1) how the registry gained approval in the first instance, and (2) whether ICANN itself had a financial motive for allowing this bid to proceed.

      Goodlatte Statement at Hearing on Stakeholder Perspectives on ICANN

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