Study Challenges ICANN Accountability
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers controls extremely important aspects of the Internet, but is largely accountable to no one, according to a new study from the Technology Policy Institute. The paper comes as interest in ICANN oversight grows among lawmakers and industry stakeholders and the organization moves closer to severing its formal ties with the Commerce Department later this year. The report, coauthored by TPI President Thomas Lenard and New York University economist Lawrence White, reviews the structure and function of ICANN and also a number of other organizations that perform a roughly comparable range of private-sector and quasi-governmental coordination and standard-setting functions.
The authors conclude that no organization with ICANN's level of responsibility operates with the independence that ICANN enjoys. The organization's proposal for complete privatization and termination of the U.S. government's official oversight function would make the accountability problem worse, they wrote. Virtually all the organizations reviewed in the study are governed by their direct users; Lenard and White argue that direct users should similarly govern ICANN. The model would increase accountability and would also be consistent with the reduced regulatory role the authors recommend. Read the Lenard-White study here.
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