3 months of JPA remaining

Mark your calendars. On September 30- exactly three months from today- the Joint Project Agreement between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce will expire.

Peter Thrush, the Chairman of ICANN’s Board of Directors, stated earlier this month that the California organisation has no intention of renewing this agreement.

Besides a congressional hearing to investigate accountability and transparency within ICANN, the U.S. government has kept quite on the the agreement issue.

I highly doubt JPA will be renewed. Regardless of what decision is made, the Internet will remain largely the same. ICANN has always asserted that the agreement is not an oversight mechanism, but merely a partnership of sorts.

Some in Europe are pushing for an international oversight entity, such as Viviane Reding with her “G-12 for Internet Governance”, but thus far no practical solution has been proposed.

Reding’s plan is flawed in that representation for the oversight panel would be a strict status quo of two members per continent (three for Australia and Asia combined), with no regard to the number of Internet users or population. More developed countries with a significant stake in the web would receive no more input than a developing country that just bought its first mainframe.

ICANN has been an American organisation since its founding. I don’t think this will change any time soon. It may have no official partnership with the U.S. government, but my bet is things will operate as they always have.