Dec. 27, 2016, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government senior editor Robert Romano today issued the following statement condemning the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which administers the world’s domain name system, for refusing to rule out a proposal that would take ICANN out from under U.S. law as a California-based corporation and instead incorporate it overseas:
“One of the preconditions under which the U.S. transitioned administration of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions is that would remain under U.S. law as a California-based corporation. Now, the ink on the transition has barely dried, and ICANN refuses to rule out proposals to take the corporation out from under U.S. law, potentially sending ICANN overseas or governed by international law. This is exactly what opponents of the transition warned would eventually happen if the transition proceeded. Congress failed to stop the Obama administration from surrendering U.S. oversight of the Internet, and now sooner than anyone thought we could be paying the price for that negligence. Were those who assured Congress that ICANN would remain in the U.S. lying, or is this a new development, with the international community now being emboldened to finish the job of globalizing the Internet, free of any U.S. legal oversight including antitrust?”
To view online: http://getliberty.org/2016/12/internet-chief-icann-making-moves-to-place-itself-under-international-law-outside-u-s-law/
Attachments:
“While discussion of ICANN’s place of incorporation is not central to the work of the incumbent subgroup, as per the recommendations of our WS1 report, should the subgroup identify an issue where it appears that the only apparent solution would be a change in ICANN’s place of incorporation, then the issue would be discussed, since we don’t want to rule out any discussions that can help the subgroup produce a better and complete outcome.” Mathieu Weill, ICANN CCWG Accountability Co-chair, Dec. 22, 2016 in response to Seun Ojedeji at http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2016-December/013529.html
“Let me re-state my question again: ‘is change of ICANN’s current jurisdiction of incorporation open for debate within WS2 hence can be an (or one of the) outcome from the jurisdiction sub-group’? Greg [Shatan]’s Response was ‘somewhat yes’ – if there is an issue that warrants it then it will be recommended. While I have no problem leaving such option open for discussion in future (perhaps by other group even though it’s been discussed significantly in the past), and of course the actions of the new US govt could trigger such need especially if the ICANN Board is convinced as such but that is not the case as as today.” Seun Ojedeji, Chief Network Engineer at Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Nigeria, Dec. 14, 2016 at http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2016-December/013461.html
Index threads at http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2016-December/subject.html and http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2016-November/013409.html
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