See Paul Rosenweig: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/12/congress-tries-to-stop-the-iana-transitio... I think this is unlikely to have the effect that Congress seems to intend. As I said back in May <http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/05/the-wrong-way-to-deal-with-the-icanniana-...>, when this proposal was first made, the language prohibits the NTIA from spending funds to carry out the transition. So, if enacted in law, NTIA would be disabled from participating in discussions with ICANN about the nature of the transition, precisely at the critical moment when those discussions would be most useful to NTIA, to ICANN and to America. More importantly, since the act of *not signing* a contract (which is what NTIA proposes to do) costs nothing, there can be no funding prohibition that effectively prevents NTIA from declining to renew the contract. To achieve that end it need simply let the current contract expire on its own terms by doing precisely zero — inaction that is consistent with the funding prohibition. The only way for Congress to achieve its objective of preventing the transition would be to affirmatively prohibit the transfer (a result that has nearly no likelihood of occurring). In short, I read this language as disabling NTIA from engaging in discussions of the transition while not, in the end, preventing the transition itself — a lose-lose proposition if ever there was one. And if, to the contrary, the NTIA reads this language as compelling renewal of the contract and preventing the transition altogether, then this will send the wrong message to the rest of the world, many of whom doubt the bona fides of American stewardship of the network. The United States achieved a fairly successful result at NetMundia <http://netmundial.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NETmundial-Multistakeholder-Document.pdf>l in Brazil — at least in part because the proposed IANA transition created good will. This points in the opposite direction. On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 12:37 AM, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:

The US Congress has said it's not going to happen any time soon.

Helpful blog post here:

http://jl.ly/2014/12/10#trans2017

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