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Re: To whom is ICANN answerable?

2001-02-08 08:20:03
On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 10:54:45AM +0000, Graham Klyne wrote:
I found this news report of some concern, not because of what ICANN is 
supposed to have done or not done, but because it seems there is a 
presumption by some that ICANN is answerable to US Congress.  I understood 
that the whole purpose of setting up ICANN was to provide Internet 
governance that was trans-national, not answerable to US Government.

#g
--

<snip>

------------
Graham Klyne
(GK(_at_)ACM(_dot_)ORG)


The U.S. Dept. of Commerce has control of the legacy root zone, and
will likely be keeping that control for some time to come. They cannot
give away that responsibility without jumping through some considerable
hoops, and have made statements that they won't do this in the near future.

So, anything that ICANN does w.r.t. the root zone has to be approved by
DOC, thus making ICANN subject to review by the U.S. Government.


David Schutt

david(_at_)speco(_dot_)com