At 22:22 02/04/2008, Brendler, Beau wrote:

I would be interested to hear what others think, especially those outside the U.S. who have an understandable desire to see ICANN out from under U.S. Gov't oversight.

Beau, as far as france@large (still not a Member) is concerned this no-decision was expected, in line with the US interests, and with most (1) of the interests of the world. ICANN is the US international network agency. It is establish to protect critical internet resources from a de-facto monopoly by a few or a single corporation. By the same token it is also supposed to host and partly protect the USG monopoly on the Internet (and therefore the world) on-line reference system: the IANA. We are pleased to see that the NTIA underlines that the IANA is not covered by the JPA. But we fail to read in the sentence a determined IANA protection policy and any indication on the post-JPA area. We therefore read in this that NTIA will continue the same policy to protect the 1983 internet status quo and the ICANN registrar system without real attention to IPv6. Our feeling is that the international Internet policy of the USA is not currently stabilized, se will know better after Heyderabad - with the US election and the IDNA situation at the IETF. In any case the future of ICANN passes through ALAC, what it can be, it will be characterized by a progressive loss of control of the namespace and a growing influence of users. ALAC, as the ICANN's interface with local populations should influence the final NTIA decision to continue or discontinue the JPA. The decision is ours : we need to know if we try to make the BoD understand it, and to make an appropriate ALAC a reality. jfc (1) ICANN maintains an ambiguity about its exclusiveness and does not prepare its relations with the multilateral reality.