The central registry of the German country code Top Level Domain .de, DENIC, has prepared in collaboration with the German government and other German interest groups a position paper with recommendations for action for the future stewardship of the so-called IANA functions.

The U.S. administration announced in March last year its intention to relinquish its exclusive control of core Internet functions exercised by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), an organizational unit of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), if certain parameters were complied with. ICANN is one of the global self-regulating organizations of the Internet and is chiefly responsible for co-ordinating and awarding key Internet resources.

The U.S. administration’s announcement concerns the supervision of the so-called "IANA functions", which ICANN exercises on the basis of a contract with the U.S. administration. The IANA functions are basically technical and clerical in nature, like the management of IP addresses, protocol parameter management and administration of the root zone.

ICANN was tasked with elaborating a proposal for the future design of stewardship of the IANA functions. ICANN takes its decisions in so-called multistakeholder processes involving governments, the private sector, the technical community, academia and civil society.

The current discussion in two working groups that were established for this particular purpose is focusing on two different aspects: Firstly, the stewardship transition of the technical and clerical IANA functions (IANA Stewardship Transition), and secondly ICANN's accountability in general (ICANN Accountability), with the aim to ensure that ICANN will continue to perform its tasks in the interest of the global public.

The contract between the U.S. administration and ICANN for the IANA functions expires on 30 September 2015. By that date a solution for a future stewardship model must have been defined. The German Internet Community makes a contribution towards this solution.

Joint position of the German stakeholders

"The redesign of the stewardship of the IANA functions is an opportunity to play an active part in shaping the processes governing the future management of key Internet resources," emphasizes DENIC-CEO Dr. Jörg Schweiger.

The central guideline here is a clear affirmation of the multistakeholder model with inclusive participation of all the relevant groups (stakeholders) in their specific roles, for developing, deciding and implementing processes and regulations for the global Internet.

The top priority with regard to the IANA transition is "to create a stable, secure and easy solution. By no means must any Internet services be interrupted due to the transition," says Jörg Schweiger.

The German government – represented by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy – and DENIC support and underpin that rules on country-code Top-Level Domains – in particular including .de – continue to be made solely within the respective country in accordance with relevant national rules and legislation. The established and well integrated TLD policies that have proven successful for years should be maintained unchanged. Rules and regulations by ICANN must be in line with national law or allow for special provisions in exceptional cases.