IANA

The Russians said what?!

by .Nxt | 22 Nov 2012 |

Last-minute WCIT submission fuels fears of UN control efforts

Contribution 27 saw Russia propose exactly what people feared. It softened the wording days later following an outcry.

With sad inevitability, fears that the WCIT conference was always going to be about surreptitious efforts by the ITU and some countries (read Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia) to take over the Internet came true last week.

Ten days had passed since the official cut-off date for contributions when Russia sent its contribution, now numbered 27. In it, the Russian government asked for a whole new article to be added, and introduced it with a long creed about the importance of the Internet.

"The Internet has an impact on every aspect of human activity within society," it reads before extolling its virtues with regard to education, politics, business and everything in between.

As if by magic, Sudan gets its own Internet extension

by Kieren McCarthy | 22 Nov 2012 |

ICANN finally approves Arabic top-level domain. A week before WCIT

The news earlier this week that Sudan would soon have its own top-level domain in Arabic was greeted warmly.

But perhaps unsurprisingly there was no mention in the formal announcement of the long delay in getting Sudan its internationalized domain name (IDN); a delay that has soured relations between ICANN and parts of the Middle East.

Earlier this year in Geneva, the delayed Sudanese bid for an Internet extension in its own language was used forcefully by ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré as an indication that ICANN was not accountable nor served the interests of developing nations.

Worse, when Touré leveled the accusations at ICANN in a room full of government representatives and Internet governance experts, it was clear that ICANN's representative, who only moments earlier had given a speech explaining how ICANN had internationalized, had no knowledge of the issue.

US government gives IANA contract back to ICANN

As expected, the US government has awarded the IANA contract to ICANN. The contract, which covers a number of critical technical functions including acting as the Internet's top-most directory, will run for three years with two optional extensions of two-years. It contains a number of new requirements and clauses, the most important of which are separation from policy work, and a series of reporting requirements. Earlier this year, the award process was thrown into disarray when the US government's procurement arm so no one had met the new criteria, including ICANN which has run the contract since it was first awarded in 1999. ICANN is under pressure to improve the way it runs IANA if it wishes to retain the contract past 2015.

INET Madrid

INET Madrid

Intellectual Property Rights and the Internet: are they compatible?

Venue: Hotel Hesperia Madrid
Address: Paseo de la Castellana 57

Don't text and drive: An analysis of the new IANA contract

by Sam Dickinson | 25 Apr 2012 |

The Request for Proposals (RFP) for the IANA contract has been reissued, with no substantive changes to the meat of the requirements of the IANA function, but plenty of additional contractual clauses added to govern the organization that performs the function.

The key changes at a glance:

  • Most obvious: date changes for the submission deadline (now 31 May 2012) and for the new IANA contract dates (now 1 Oct 2012 - 30 Sep 2015).
  • Most amusing: the Department of Commerce has, since the November RFP, decided that toxic chemical spills are an unlikely by-product of the IANA function and has removed the relevant contract clause (If you're interested, IANA contractors now don't have to worry about 52.223-13 Certification Of Toxic Chemical Release Reporting (Aug 2003)).
  • Most intriguing: the US Government's rights to IANA deliverables are reinforced in multiple ways, from Section F.5, "Government Rights to Deliverables" to Sections H.3, "Patent Rights—Ownership by the Government" and H.5, "Rights in Data—Existing Works".
  • Most likely to put non-lawyers to sleep: 21 new contract clauses are listed in Section I. Non-lawyers who don't fall asleep, however, will be rewarded by the idiosyncratic inclusion of Section I.24, "52.223-18 Encouraging Contractor Policies To Ban Text Messaging While Driving (Aug 2011)".

How the re-issued IANA RFP differs from the cancelled RFP

by Sam Dickinson | 25 Apr 2012 |

On 17 April, the NTIA reissued its request for proposals for the IANA contract, having unexpectedly cancelled the previous RFP on 10 March noting that no bidder has reached its criteria.

We have carried out a close review of both RFPs and below is a full summary of the changes. We have also produced an analysis of what these changes may mean both for the current IANA contract holder, ICANN, and for the IANA contract itself.

Sections A through to D are unchanged, apart from fixing up a numbered list that included C.4.2 three times in a row, instead of C.4.1 through to C.4.3.

Page 26:

One new sentence added to end of Section E.1, "Inspection and acceptance":

"The Government reserves the right to inspect the premises, systems, and processes of all security and operational components used for the performance of all Contract requirements and obligations."

Page 29:

TLD Universal Acceptance

Summary

The meeting examined the issue of some software not accepting some Internet extensions, particularly those with more than three letters and those not using the Latin alphabet - an issue that raised its head in 2003 with the sTLD round.

ICANN outlined the history of the problem and invited panel members to make suggestions about the best way to solve the problem going forward.

For full details, including context, agenda, results, an executive summary and longer summary with hyperlinks to relevant documents and parts of the transcript, become a member of .Nxt.

NADIA SOKOLOVA: Hello, everybody. We are going to give it another minute and then we will start.

KURT PRITZ: Welcome, everybody, to this session on universal acceptance of TLDs. I think it's going to be a very informative, important, and interesting session.

But for those of you that remember, back when we launched the sTLD round, the trial round of TLDs in 2003 and 2004, there were very specific questions at that time pertaining to the acceptance of TLDs.

People came to public forums at ICANN meetings and said some TLDs, domain names using some TLDs do not resolve in browsers. Some browsers screen out addresses as right or wrong, and many of the longer TLDs just don't resolve ore-mail doesn't work. ICANN should undertake some effort in that regard. And some effort was undertaken. ICANN was a lot smaller; did not have any significant communications wherewithal. Nonetheless, we embarked on certain efforts that are going to described by this panel today.

ICANN had no idea IANA rejection was coming

by Kieren McCarthy | 10 Mar 2012 |

In a worrying turn of events, it appears that ICANN had no idea about the rejection of its bid for long-term running of the IANA contract prior to an announcement being posted on the NTIA's website today.

The organization - which has run the IANA functions for over a decade - is also waiting to hear why the US government feels it has failed to meet the RFP criteria that defined a new, more open approach to the contract.

In a series of sudden and unexpected announcements earlier today, the NTIA first announced it was canceling the entire rebid process for IANA, then that it was canceling it because no one had met its criteria, and then that it was extending ICANN's IANA contract for six months to give it time to re-run the RFP process.

ICANN was aware of the IANA contract extension, having held some discussions in recent days but it appears it was completely unaware that its RFP bid had been rejected - alongside any others that may also have bid - and still has no idea what the reasons are for the rejection.

ICANN granted stay of execution over IANA contract

by Kieren McCarthy | 10 Mar 2012 |

ICANN has been granted a six-month extension to run the IANA contract but in an extraordinary statement put out by the NTIA this morning has been told its proposal to run the contract long-term was sub-standard.

The decision to cancel the IANA rebid process, announced this morning, caught many by surprise, particularly since an announcement of the process' winner was due any day. In a subsequent clarifying statement, the NTIA explained that "we received no proposals that met the requirements requested by the global community".

As a result of having received no bids that met its RFP criteria, the US government has cancelled the RFP process, extended the current contract (for a second time) to 30 September 2012, and noted that it "intends to reissue the RFP at a future date to be determined (TBD) so that the requirements of the global internet community can be served".

What does it mean?

US government scraps IANA bidding process

by Kieren McCarthy | 10 Mar 2012 |

Update: The NTIA has said it will relaunch the bid process later this year. Full information.

The US government has cancelled the rebid process for the crucial IANA contract, effective immediately.

The unexpected decision, just days before an announcement was expected, was made through an amendment posted to the RFP process. It leaves the way open for ICANN to announce this week that it has retained the contract, due to end on 31 March.

However it remains unclear why the NTIA cancelled the RFP process "in its entirety" rather than simply award the contract through its RFP terms to ICANN - which is what everyone expected.

By canceling the RFP, many of the changes to the contract - including a schedule of deadlines for improvements - may not apply to a rewarded IANA contract, raising the question: why did the US government bother with the process in the first place?

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