This is good news, and I hope the co-chairs of the CCWG all sit down and read former Congressman Boucher's message out loud - better yet, sing it to the tune of Jingle Bells! - together. The idea that we have to truncate our process and twist ourselves into pretzels or cave to unreasonable demands from the board in order to meet an arbitrary schedule is now, I think, officially dead. --MM
-----Original Message----- It's also noteworthy that (b) has been added saying that the restriction shall not apply in fiscal year 2017. That's a nice statement of intention by the drafters of this provision that by the commencement of fiscal year 2017 in October of next year the transition will be complete.
I don't believe that the adoption of this language in any way reflects a stepping back by Congress from the bipartisan consensus which has now been formed in both the House and the Senate to support the IANA transition as long as the NTIA’s originally announced 4 principles for ICANN accountability are in place and are enforceable as part of the transition plan.
Please let me know if you have questions.
Rick
SEC. 539. (a) None of the funds made available by 21 this Act may be used to relinquish the responsibility of 22 the National Telecommunications and Information Ad ministration, during fiscal year 2016, with respect to 24 Internet domain name system functions, including respon- 1 sibility with respect to the authoritative root zone file and 2 the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions. 3 (b) Nothwithstanding any other law, subsection (a) 4 of this section shall not apply in fiscal year 2017.