US to cede control of ICANN?

Is Obama about to cede control of the Internet to Foreign Governments? (TheDailyWire): According to a recent article in The Daily Wire, the Commerce Department is slated to relinquish control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) beginning on October 1st.  The article posits that US control over ICANN enabled it to thwart the encroachment of censorship and authoritarianism.  The Daily Wire article also uses a reference to Arnold Ahlert’s article in FrontPageMag to assert that the passage of Net Neutrality regulations established the Internet as a “telecommunications service” thus laying the groundwork for including this within the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Unit (“ITU”).  This article then draws the conclusion that authoritarian regimes such as those within Russia and China would have a greater ability to censor speech under the new model than with ICANN being in US control.  The article bolsters this claim by showing that several GOP Senators discovered that the ICANN office in Beijing is sited within the same building as the Cyberspace Administration which reportedly is the censorship arm of the Chinese government.  Additionally, the ITU has allegedly passed a treaty that would grant governments the authority to restrict their citizens’ ability to access the global internet, according to the article.  Finally, the article suggests that at the very least once the US relinquishes control over ICANN taxes and fees could be levied on users who register or renew domains and this would create revenue incentives for foreign governments.  The full text of the article can be found here.

Opinion

While some of the assertions the article makes are arguably plausible and possible, the article seems to indicate that we should view every other UN member or government as less altruistic and more controlling than the US government.  The article also seems to suggest that governments rather than global multistakeholders will become the predominant controlling authorities over ICANN and that thus, retaining ICANN within the US is a far better scenario.  Personally, as a US Citizen I see a number of advantages to retaining US control over ICANN; however, from the perspective of a member of the global community it is also not difficult to consider that very large population blocks of internet users would view this quite differently.  The mere fact that the US has control over ICANN does not prevent regimes from censorship or denying their citizenry the ability to access the global internet.  Additionally, it seems a number of groups have taken up this cause and yet there seems to be very little public outcry either for or against the anticipated Oct. 1 ICANN changes.  There have been various attempts within the House and Senate to block this move by the Obama administration though as the date draws near there is still nothing concrete.  As we approach the Primary and General Election season the electorate is largely distracted by a myriad of other issues and as the Legislative Members fight to keep or grab majorities it is unclear whether they have the focus and zeal to fight this public non-issue which is unlikely to become an election hot-button.  Either way, the road ahead for ICANN will be interesting to watch, perhaps more so than the November elections.