WASHINGTON (CN) - The California nonprofit charged with the Sisyphean task of governing the Internet is not yet ready to do so without congressional oversight, industry stakeholders testified Wednesday in front of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.
ICANN, short for the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, has been managing the Domain Name System, IP addresses and other structural functions of the Internet since 1998.
The private-sector nonprofit's impending separation from its overseers in the subcommittee and the Department of Commerce, a move the Obama administration announced last year, is supposed to go into effect in September.
While ICANN's independence is a shared goal, subcommittee members commiserated with stakeholder witnesses in a three-hour hearing Wednesday about how ICANN has not proved itself capable of moving forward with accountability and transparency.
The act of severing the government oversight in place since ICANN's inception cannot be undone, subcommittee chairman Darrell Issa said.
"We cannot overstate the importance of the transition if it is to occur," said Issa, a California Republican.
Drawing from popular Cheez-It commercials, subcommittee vice-chair Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, said ICANN was not mature enough to go out on its own.
With the eight witnesses assembled before the subcommittee, Issa said it was the largest panel he had seen since the beginning of his time in Congress. Those witness list featured Mei-Lan Stark, immediate past president of the International Trademark Association; Paul Misener of Amazon.com; Steven Metalitz, counsel for the Coalition for Online Accountability; John Horton of LegitScript; Philip Corwin, counsel for the Internet Commerce Association; Steve DelBianco of NetChoice; Bill Woodcock of Packet Clearing House, an Internet infrastructure organization; and Jonathan Zuck, president of ACT, The App Association, a group of app companies and information-technology firms.
Businesses and users of the Internet like those that the eight witnesses represent are part of the global community of "multistakeholders" governing ICANN.
The model is supposed to ensure that the running of the Internet is not unduly influenced by one particular country or company.
Stark said the multistakeholder members believe in the idea of the model, but trust and accountability are essential. ICANN is supposed to foster innovation and promote fair competition, but it cannot succeed in those goals without holding itself accountable to its stakeholders.
LegitScript, the online pharmacy-monitoring company of which Horton is president, has filed complaints with ICANN about several pharmacies that are selling drugs illegally, but Horton said ICANN has closed the complaints without taking action or explaining what the registrar of the pharmacy's domain did in response to the complaint.
ICANN's refusal to explain the response process gives the impression that ICANN is participating in a cover-up, Horton said.
A central topic of the hearing was the release of new generic Top Level Domains, or gTLDs.
Stark said the rollout has demonstrated many of ICANN's inefficiencies. The ".sucks" gTLD in particular has caused significant controversy since ICANN auctioned it off to Vox Populi Registry Ltd. While most gTLDs start their pricing around $10, basic .sucks domains are being sold for $249, and premium .sucks domain names are being sold for $2,499, prices that Issa called "legalized extortion."
The high .sucks prices specifically target businesses that want to purchase domain names with their trademark to avoid having others use their mark in an abusive manner.
