At the Fairwinds Beyond The Dot conference today that was held in Washington DC the question was asked to Akram Atallah of ICANN; is ICANN planning on moving from the United States?
Here is the answer of Mr Atallah:
There are no plans to move outside of the US, but you have to be somewhere, your have to be incorporated somewhere, so its an ongoing issue
When ICANN was first created by contract with the US, it was always envisioned that the multistake model would work so well that at a certain point, and it may have taken a lot longer than first thought that ICANN could operate without the contract, the contract would not be required and it ICANN could operate on its own there are some who think that time is now.
I will leave it to you to decide what the answer means.
Perhaps a question to ask would be, why did ICANN open offices in Istanbul?
Turkey is not in compliance with the European freedom of speech laws, and recently introduced a law to suppress these rights online without any court orders.
It’d be the equivalent of the FCC ordering the arrests of US citizens if a web site reported information not in favor of the ruling party.