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With the joint project agreement (JPA) between the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the U.S. Department of Commerce set to expire at the end of this month, global Internet communities and stakeholders have mixed feelings about what they'd like to see happen next.

Under the JPA, both ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce manage the Domain Name System (DNS). Fiona Alexander, associate administrator from the Office of International Affairs, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce, explains the DNS is a “critical component of the Internet infrastructure that works like a telephone directory, allowing users to reach Web sites using easy-to-understand domain names … to retrieve information on the Internet.”

ICANN is a non-profit international corporation that's responsible for maintaining the operational stability of the Internet, including the management of Internet Protocol (IP) address space location, generic (for instance, .com) and country code (like .ca) top-level DNS management. It's structured as a private-public partnership with a Board of Directors that oversee the policy development process, which is governed by a bottom-up, consensus based process. This involves representation from various global Internet communities and stakeholders in the Internet Community.

ICANN was initially created out of an “effort to bring more coordination and sustainability to the management of the Internet,” Alexander explained. On November 25, 1998, ICANN entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The goal with the MOU was to transfer the management of the DNS from the U.S. government to the private sector. Under the MOU, a series of goals were set out for ICANN to meet, and once those goals were met, ICANN would become a fully independent corporation in the private sector.

Under the MOU, Alexander said the U.S. Department of Commerce did not have the power to exercise any oversight into the “traditional context of regulation,” and also said that the government was not involved in any internal governance, or day-to-day operations with ICANN. Instead, the role of the U.S. Department of Commerce was to ensure the Internet and its underlying infrastructure remained stable and secure at all times, by providing expertise and advice when necessary.

After several amendments that were made to the MOU several years later, ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce signed the JPA, which is now set to expire at the end of this month.

The Number Resource Organization (NRO), which is an organization that's made up of the world's five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), is one of the few organization's that shows its support towards the expiration of the JPA between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce. The NRO represents and carries out joint activities on behalf of the RIRs. The RIRs oversee the allocation and registration of Internet number resources, better known as IP addresses. The RIRs are organized by region and include: AfriNIC (African Network Information Centre), APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre), ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers), LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry) and RIPE NCC (Regional Internet Registry for Europe, Middle East and parts of Central Asia).

Adiel Akplogan, chairman of the NRO, said “We believe that the principles that have guided the management of the DNS until now will enable the growth and development of the Internet in the future too, and advise that U.S. Government involvement in ICANN is no longer necessary.”

John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN, says under the NRO, each RIR operates fairly autonomously. In that respect, he says that while ARIN's a supporter of ICANN, it does not do a lot of work with the organization.

“We don't expect to see any change regardless of what happens (with the JPA),” Curran said. “Some of the advantages of having a JPA with the U.S. Department of Commerce was to make sure ICANN was international in nature and was a multi-stakeholder approach. The NRO position on the JPA is that while the JPA was important in getting ICANN launched, it's not necessarily needed, as long as the original guiding principles are still there.”