A new policy paper from the American Enterprise Institute is staking out a position against the Obama administration’s plan to hand off control of a key component of the Internet, saying it would allow the Web to become “politicized” by governments around the world.
The statement came in a paper on cyberspace policy released on Tuesday. Authors wrote that while ICANN, the international agency responsible for administering components of the Web, had taken positive steps toward removing itself from the influence of authoritarian governments, it wasn’t enough.
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“The promise of the Internet inheres in its open architecture, its user-driven standards and the freedom to innovate technologically,” the paper said. “That promise is at risk when governments insist on establishing controls over those spontaneous processes.”
President Obama has sought to move IANA, a U.S.-based agency responsible for converting numbers into readable addresses on the Internet, to ICANN authority. It has faced objections from congressional Republicans, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who have said ICANN is too heavily influenced by authoritarian governments such as China.
IANA stands for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, and ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
The administration has countered that the U.S. and private stakeholders around the globe that participate in ICANN have sufficient power to prevent ne’er-do-wells from exerting undue influence.
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AEI scholars said that while Western influence had played a positive role in maintaining the independence of ICANN, particularly by ensuring the right of any country to veto proposed changes in policy, it was not enough, and that there should be an independent body involved in the process.
“The U.S. and like-minded stakeholders were able to fend off an attempt by Russia, China and other governments to give governments substantially greater control over ICANN,” they noted. “The administrator of the new post-transitional IANA, as an affiliate of ICANN, should not be expected to decide policy questions … Neither should the ICANN community, which sets policy, be given the power to enforce that policy.”
“It is vital that the U.S. not give up or in any way weaken its veto,” the authors added. “The U.S. should also insist that the IANA function be supervised by an independent entity shielded from the politics of ICANN and ‘the community.'”
