The last month of the contract according to which National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) carries out the IANA functions has started. The contract expires on September 30th. Assistant Secretary at the Department of Commerce Lawrence Strickling announced earlier that the US government is satisfied with the plan presented by ICANN to transfer IANA functions to the multistakeholder community and is not willing to renew the contract, by doing so refusing to exercise control over the DNS root system.
However, conservative American politicians, who oppose this decision, keep trying to prevent the transfer. One of the leaders of this movement, senator Ted Cruz, took another measure to disrupt the transfer. Yesterday on the home page of his official webpage he put a countdown that shows how many days, hours, minutes and even seconds are left before “Obama gives away the Internet”. The accompanying text contains a standard for Cruz set of “horror stories” about how the refusal of the US government to control the Internet will lead to seizure of power by Russia, China and Iran. This will put freedoms at risk everywhere in the world, in particular in the United States. Earlier on, the Senator used similar arguments in public statements and bills that he presented to the Congress.
All of his arguments are clearly insolvent and there is no need to spend time on refuting them. However, senator Cruz, who probably doesn’t know much about the Internet regulation himself, obviously expects that his call will be perceived by people who know even less. “Congress must act before it’s too late!” he finishes his message. It should be noted that Lawrence Strickling pointed out before that the IANA stewardship transition would happen on time (before October 1st) “barring any significant impediment”. Clearly, that’s what senator Ted Cruz is trying to create.
