Source: https://vibdoc.com/formandsubstance.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 16:11:14+00:00

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“[E]ach of ICANN’s accomplishments to date have all depended, in one way or another, on government support, particularly from the United States.”1 I.
M. STUART LYNN , PRESIDENT’S REPORT: ICANN—T HE CASE FOR REFORM, Feb. 24, 2002, at http://www.icann.org/general/lynn-reform-proposal-24feb02.htm. 2 A. Michael Froomkin, Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the Constitution, 50 DUKE L.J. 17 (2000) [hereinafter Froomkin, Wrong Turn]. 3 As noted below, the political, albeit not the technical, position of the country code Top Level Domain (“ccTLD”) registries differs slightly from that of other participants in the system. 4 The same result might have emerged from a traditional regulatory process, but the people making those decisions would be accountable to the political process, and the right of aggrieved parties to seek judicial review would be well-defined.
elements in perhaps tedious detail, including how ICANN and the U.S. government have entered into three different contracts. In these agreements the U.S. government lends ICANN power over the DNS, and ICANN provides what amounts to regulatory services for the government. Wrong Turn argued that these facts had, or should have, legal effect. Even though the form of ICANN’s relationship with the United States was carefully crafted to disguise the fact, substantively, the DOC relies on ICANN to regulate those areas that the government fears or is unable to tread. I also argued that, at least from a parochial, U.S.-centric, administrative law point of view, ICANN is a terrible precedent because it undermines the accountability we expect to accompany the use of public power. By vesting de facto regulatory power in a private body, the DOC insulates decisions about the DNS from the obligations (e.g., transparency and due process) and constraints (e.g., conflicts of interest, judicial review for procedural regularity, and reasonableness) that commonly apply to exercises of public power.5 Now that, thanks in large part to the energetic intervention of the U.S. government, ICANN has secured for itself a regular and contractually guaranteed income stream from the entities it regulates, it faces few external constraints on its behavior. Although firms that lobby ICANN as if it were a government body may face anti-trust liability, 6 and ICANN theoretically might be seen as their co-conspirator, to date the chief source of external discipline on ICANN has been the looming possibility of U.S. government oversight combined with the background threat of the U.S. government exercising its right to take back all the powers and functions it previously bestowed on ICANN. 7 My second goal in Wrong Turn was to explore the legal theories that could—and, I argued, should—be used to right this departure from administrative regularity. The key conceptual move was to focus the legal argument on the government’s role in DNS policy rather than on ICANN’s actions.
5 It’s certainly no secret that I became concerned about this question because, despite having originally been a tepid ICANN supporter, I came to believe that ICANN was making bad choices and, most importantly, acting without regard for even minimal procedural regularity. I use these examples to illustrate my arguments, although they are only a fraction of the problems discussed, in a more journalistic fashion, on the ICANNWatch web site of which I am an editor. See ICANNWATCH , at http://www.icannwatch.org (last visited Jan. 31, 2002). 6 See A. M ICHAEL FROOMKIN & M ARK A. LEMLEY , ICANN AND ANTITRUST (forthcoming 2002) (copy on file with the Journal of Small and Emerging Business Law) (draft manuscript available at http://personal.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/ articles/icannantitrust.pdf). 7 “If DOC withdraws its recognition of ICANN or any successor entity by terminating this Agreement, ICANN agrees that it will assign to DOC any rights that ICANN has in all existing contracts with registries and registrars.” ICANN, ICANN, Amendment 1 to ICANN/DOC Memorandum of Understanding (Nov. 4, 1999), http://www.icann.org/nsi/amend1-jpamou-04nov99.htm [hereinafter MOU AMENDMENT 1] ("If DOC withdraws its recognition of ICANN or any successor entity by terminating this MOU, ICANN agrees that it will assign to DOC any rights that ICANN has in all existing contracts with registries and registrars").
[A] few words about what [Wrong Turn] is not about may also be in order. Opinions differ—radically—as to the wisdom of ICANN’s early decisions, decisions with important worldwide consequences. Opinions also differ as the adequacy of ICANN’s decisionmaking procedures. And many legitimate questions have been raised about ICANN’s ability or willingness to follow its own rules. Whether ICANN is good or bad for the Internet and whether the U.S. government should have such a potentially dominant role over a critical Internet resource are also important questions. This Article is not, however, primarily concerned with any of these questions. Nor is it an analysis of the legality of actions taken by ICANN’s officers, directors, or employees. . . . Despite their importance, all of these issues will appear only tangentially insofar as they are relevant to the central, if perhaps parochial, question: whether a U.S. administrative agency is, or should be, allowed to call into being a private corporation and then lend it sufficient control over a government resource so that the corp oration can use that control effectively to make policy decisions that the agency cannot—or dares not— make itself. Although focused on DOC’s actions, this Article has implications for ICANN. If the government’s actions in relation to ICANN are illegal or unconstitutional, then several—but perhaps not all—of ICANN’s policy decisions are either void or voidable, and DOC might reasonably be enjoined from further collaboration with ICANN in other than carefully delineated areas.
Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 36–37. 23 See Joe Sims & Cynthia Bauerly, A Response to Professor Froomkin: Why ICANN Does not Violate the APA or the Constitution, 6 J. SMALL & EMERGING BUS. L. 62 (2002) [hereinafter S&B].
24 See, e.g., KARL AUERBACH , AT-LARGE CANDIDATE FOR THE ICANN BOARD , PLATFORM: REFORM OF ICANN—JONES-DAY MUST GO , at http://www.cavebear .com/ialc/platform.htm. 25 For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1999, ICANN’s legal expenses totaled $687,163. ICANN, INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS FINANCIAL STATEMENTS (Sept. 21, 1999), at http://www.icann.org/ financials/financial-report-fye30jun99.htm [hereinafter ICANN JUNE 1999 FINANCIAL STATEMENTS]. During the fiscal year ending June 30, 2000, ICANN paid a total of $635,323.97 in legal fees. This sum was computed using amounts stated in the minutes of ICANN executive board meetings. ICANN, MEETING OF THE ICANN BOARD IN CAIRO (Mar. 10, 2000), at http://www.icann.org/minutes/ prelim-report-10mar00.htm [hereinafter CAIRO M EETING] ($553,535.13); ICANN, SPECIAL MEETING OF THE BOARD (Apr. 6 2000), at http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-06apr00.htm [hereinafter AP R. 2000 M EETING] ($81,788.84). During the fiscal year ending June 30, 2001, ICANN’s legal fees to Jones Day totaled $576,224.63. This sum was computed using amounts stated in the minutes of ICANN executive board meetings. ICANN, SPECIAL M EETING OF THE BOARD (Aug. 30, 2000), at http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-30aug00.htm [hereinafter AUG . 2000 M EETING] ($110,670.96); ICANN, M EETING OF THE E XECUTIVE COMMITTEE (Jan. 6, 2001), at http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-06jan01 [hereinafter JAN . 2001 M EETING] ($465,553.67). During the current fiscal year, ICANN has paid a total of $272,572.28 in legal expenses. This sum was computed using amounts stated in the minutes of ICANN executive board meetings. ICANN, MEETING OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (Aug. 16, 2001), at http://www.icann.org/minutes/ prelim-report-16aug01 [hereinafter AUG . 2001 MEETING] ($183,860.60); ICANN, MEETING OF THE E XECUTIVE COMMITTEE (Oct. 16, 2001), at http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-16oct01 [hereinafter OCT. 2001 M EETING] ($88,711.68). 26 The $300 per hour figure is merely an example. I do not know what the lawyers representing ICANN bill per hour, nor who has worked how many hours, as ICANN does not report this information publicly. 27 If Jones Day is organized like many major U.S. law firms, the billing partner earns a disproportionate share of these fees, either directly or indirectly, when it influences the computation of his annual partnership share. Even if this is not how it works at Jones Day, the ability to attract or, in this case, create and retain clients is prized.
Because legal expenses have consumed a substantial fraction of ICANN’s total revenue to date, that might not be so bad: Year Budget Legal Legal as % of total FY 1999 $1,466,637 $687,163.00 46.85 % FY 2000 $2,851,909 $635,323.97 22.28 % FY 2001 $5,899,470 $576,224.63 09.77 % FY 2002 $4,530,000* $272,572.28** 06.02 %** * projected **to date ICANN JUNE 1999 FINANCIAL STATEMENTS, supra note 25; CAIRO M EETING, supra note 25; AP R. 2000 MEETING, supra note 25; AUG . 2000 MEETING, supra note 25; JAN . 2001 MEETING, supra note 25; AUG . 2001 MEETING, supra note 25; OCT. 2001 MEETING, supra note 25. Karl Auerbach’s successful campaign for the North American Board seat focused on ICANN’s relationship with the Jones Day law firm and raised questions of conflict of interest. See, e.g., Auerbach, supra note 24. 29 S&B, supra note 23, at 67. 30 As explained below, I do not claim that ICANN violates the APA. Rather I claim the U.S. government violates the APA by relying on ICANN. This is not a trivial difference; it is essential. 31 I note examples of this several places below, notably in Part II.D.
S&B’s account of ICANN’s formation and operation glosses over crucial details relating to the source of ICANN’s coercive powers. ICANN has enormous power over registrars and registries for two reasons: (1) the U.S. government’s support; and, (2) the root server operators’ desire to avoid “splitting” the root for fear of technical chaos—a desire that means all root server operators feel a strong pressure to act in conformity with the U.S. government, which controls a substantial minority of the root servers itself. Without question, the idea of an ICANN-like body had important supporters when it was formed, and it has a somewhat different, but not inconsiderable, set of supporters today. Intellectual property interests and some important foreign, and especially European, governments concerned about U.S. dominance of the root belong to both groups. But important dissenters existed at all times.32 Even the DOC itself forced ICANN to amend its by-laws to 32 Somehow, in ICANN-speak, ICANN’s actions always have consensus. Those who disagree with ICANN “have failed to achieve consensus support.” The burden is never on ICANN to prove consensus, and it rarely bothers to explain how it discerned such consensus. Unlike S&B, I have never claimed, and don’t believe for a second, that everyone agrees with me. Any rational observer would have to agree that no consensus exists regarding many, most, maybe almost all, DNS matters. Because ICANN and its frequently paid, or financially interested, apologists wish to wrap themselves in the extra-legal fig leaf of “international consensus” they are reduced to making fairly silly claims. See David Post et al., Elusive Consensus, ICANNWATCH , July 21, 1999, at http://www.icannwatch.org/ archive/elusive_consensus.htm; David Post, ICANN and the Consensus of the Internet Community, ICANNWATCH , Aug. 20, 1999, at http://www.icannwatch.org/ archive/icann_and_the_consensus_of_the_community.htm; David R. Johnson & Susan P.
provide for greater end-user influence (although ICANN has to date managed to put off implementation of this commitment in any meaningful way).33 In this light, it is particularly ironic to hear S&B suggesting that ICANN’s powers are merely the product of some consensus, when in fact ICANN’s powers have been controversial from the day its secretly-constituted, unelected initial Board was first revealed to the public.34 ICANN did not spring from the waves like Venus, nor like Athena from the brow of Zeus. It came perilously close to being the product of a cabal, however well-intentioned. Had Jon Postel lived, the trust he had earned, and the idea that the organization existed primarily to provide him with political and legal cover, would have most likely carried the day. But it was not to be. Jon Postel’s untimely death robbed ICANN of both guidance and its chief source of legitimacy before birth. As a result, ICANN’s relevance, and probably its survival, depended critically on the support of the U.S. government. S&B assert that “ICANN was created by the global Internet community. Its policies are those (and only those) that have generated consensus support from that community, and the DOC does not have, and certainly has not ‘loan[ed] . . . control over the root’ to ICANN.”35 They are so persuaded of the truth of these assertions that they suggest that anyone who disagrees is “literally making it up.”36 The willingness of ICANN partisans to make such breathtakingly false statements—no one could seriously believe, for example, that ICANN’s decisions are backed by anything like consensus 37 —suggests that all those footnotes in Wrong Turn might have been necessary after all. Crawford, Why Consensus Matters: The Theory Underlying ICANN’s Mandate to Set Policy Standards for the Domain Name System, ICANNWATCH , Aug 23, 2000, at http://www.icannwatch.org/archive/why_consensus_matters.htm; David R. Johnson & Susan P. Crawford, What an ICANN Consensus Should Look Like, ICANNWATCH , at http://www.icannwatch.org/archive/what_icann_ consensus_should_look_like.htm (last visited Jan. 31, 2002). For an attack on the entire concept of reliance on consensus, see Cary Coglianese, Is Consensus an Appropriate Basis for Regulatory Policy?, SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH NETWORK ELECTRONIC LIBRARY (May 25, 2001), at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayAbstractSearch.cfm. S&B propose various entertaining fictions that follow in the general ICANN mold. These include the idea that ICANN (formed in secret without public input) is somehow an expression of the will of the Internet community, and that ICANN’s actions have been dictated by Internet consensus. In fact, ICANN has yet to adopt a single consensus policy as it defines the term. The UDRP should have been a consensus policy, but by ICANN’s own admission is not a consensus policy although ICANN demands it be treated as one. See, e.g. ICANN, ICANN BASELINE POLICIES (Aug. 25, 2001), at http://www.icann.org/tlds/ agreements/sponsored/sponsorship-agmt-att22-25aug01.htm (“the following shall be treated in the same manner and have the same effect as a ‘Consensus Policy’”). 33 On ICANN’s war against the concept of directly elected members of the Board, see Milton Mueller, ICANN and Internet Governance: Sorting Through the Debris of ‘Selfregulation’, 1 INFO . 497, 508–09 (1999); Jonathan Weinberg, ICANN and the Problem of Legitimacy, 50 DUKE L.J. 187 (2000). 34 Mueller, supra note 33, at 503–05. 35 S&B, supra note 23, at 66-67 n.15. 36 Id. at 82. 37 On the question of consensus, see, e.g., supra note 32. On the question of the DOC’s authority, see infra Part II.B.
The question of the nature of the DOC’s authority over the root is an interesting one, and S&B advance a novel theory of it in their article. Part of S&B’s argument for why ICANN receives no delegated authority from the DOC is that the DOC has no authority over the DNS to delegate. Here is how they characterize the DOC’s pre-ICANN role: [T]he USG, pre-ICANN, depended on the voluntary cooperation of other governments and the DNS infrastructure operators for the effective implementation of any instructions it gave to NSI to make changes in the root zone file. Thus, the only practical “power” that the USG had available for transfer to ICANN was the administrative responsibility for determining global consensus. This responsibility is not governmental 38 power.
how the DNS will be managed.
ICANN collects from registries or would-be registries is due to this delegation from the Department of Commerce. Were the U.S. government to take on this function directly, or choose to rely on a different third party to make the decisions as to what changes should be proposed for the root zone file, no one would have any interest in ICANN’s views on the matter—nor would generic top level domain (“gTLD”) registries pay ICANN a dime. 50 ICANN’s U.S.-government-created power over gTLD registries in turn creates a power over registrars. Since gTLD registrars need access to ICANNapproved gTLD registries, and the ICANN registries have agreed to accept only registrations from ICANN-accredited registrars, the registrars who wish to sell domain names that work everywhere must sign agreements with ICANN. In these agreements, they agree to impose terms of service on their clients that include the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).51 Before ICANN imposed this requirement, registrars competed on basic service terms, including their solicitude for trademark interests; now they cannot.52 While ICANN’s delegated power from the DOC sufficed to induce, even coerce, payments from those interested in new gTLDs53 and those interested in registering names in both old and new gTLDs, it did not suffice to motivate the level of payments ICANN sought from incumbent TLD registries. Both NSI/VeriSign (the .com, .net, and .org registry) and the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) registries understood that, for political, legal, and technical reasons, the U.S. government would not take them out of the root. Unlike would-be new entrants, therefore, their incentive to pay ICANN was limited. (quoting letter denying petition for rulemaking). 50 See MOU AMENDMENT 1 supra note 7 (citing the DOC’s contracts with ICANN entitling the DOC to transfer obligations due to ICANN to a successor chosen by the DOC). 51 S&B’s discussion of the UDRP contains an example of more general features of their article. In their attempt to marginalize me, they suggest (without a footnote) that I was the “lonely” dissenter on the WIPO Committee of Experts. S&B, supra note 23, at 74. The truth is that Laina Raveendran Greene, another Member of the WIPO Panel of Experts, authorized me to note her agreement with the substance of my dissent. See A. M ICHAEL FROOMKIN, A COMMENTARY ON WIPO’S T HE M ANAGEMENT OF INTERNET NAMES AND ADDRESSES: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES (May 19, 1999), at http://personal.law.miami.edu/~amf/commentary.htm [hereinafter FROOMKIN, COMMENTARY ON WIPO] (copy on file with the Journal of Small & Emerging Business Law). Harald Tveit Alvestrand published his own pungent comments. See HARALD T VEIT ALVESTRAND, MY COMMENTS TO THE WIPO PROCESS AND ITS RESULT, at http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/ wiponote.html (last visited Feb. 4, 2002) (supporting the UDRP in principle but disagreeing with other parts of the WIPO report). In any case, it would not have been surprising if I had been the lone dissenter because I was a late addition to the panel—the sole “Public Interest Representative” added about a third of the way into the process in response to a barrage of criticism that WIPO had appointed a completely one-sided group. As it transpired, even the one-sided panel was too interventionist for WIPO; it tried to keep the drafts on which we were supposed to comment away from us. See FROOMKIN, COMMENTARY ON WIPO, supra; A. Michael Froomkin, Semi-Private International Rulemaking: Lessons Learned from the WIPO Domain Name Process, in REGULATING THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY 211 (Christopher Marsden ed. 2000), http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/ articles/tprc99.pdf. 52 See Froomkin & Lemley, supra note 6, at 3. 53 A striking example is the $50,000 non-refundable application fee ICANN demanded and received from would-be new gTLD registries.
Some foreign ccTLD registries did make voluntary payments to ICANN because they wished it to succeed, seeing it as preferable to direct U.S. government control of the root. Neither they nor NSI/VeriSign, however, were willing to undertake contractual obligations to make regular payments, much less to give ICANN the power to determine the size of the levy.54 As I explained in Wrong Turn, NSI was only persuaded to sign an agreement, requiring it to submit to ICANN’s rulings and make payments to ICANN, by intense, direct, U.S. government pressure, backed by the threat that NSI’s contract to run the lucrative registries was due to expire, after which the United States might hand the franchise to someone else.55 As for the ccTLDs, despite first strong-arming, and now a combination of soft soap56 and hardball, 57 no ccTLD has signed ICANN’s model ccTLD agreement except for the .au and .jp ccTLDs. Both are special cases. The signature of .au appears to be a quid pro quo for ICANN forcibly removing control of the .au ccTLD (in violation of the applicable Internet Standards 58 ) from the private operator to whom Jon Postel had delegated it, and giving it to an Australian governmentsponsored ICANN-like body.59 As for .jp, until the agreement with ICANN it had been controlled by Jun Murai, a member of the ICANN Board of Directors.60 The only other ccTLD known to be planning to agree to ICANN’s terms is .us, because its subservience to ICANN is required by the .us contract recently issued by the DOC.61 54 See, e.g., Letter from Sue Leader, Chair, ICANN Funding Working Group, to Mike Roberts, CEO, ICANN Inc. (Mar. 1, 2000) (regarding Asia Pacific Top Level Domains), http://www.isocnz.org.nz/international/ aptld000301letter-funding.html (copy on file with the Journal of Small and Emerging Business Law). 55 See Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 89–93. 56 ICANN has increased staffing devoted to the care of ccTLDs. See, e.g., e-mail from Louis Touter to ICANN Names Council (Jan. 18, 2001), http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc04/msg00699.html (announcing appointment of Herbert Vitzthum to new post of ccTLD Liaison). 57 ccTLD registries complain that ICANN has adopted a go-slow policy on entering updates to ccTLD technical information, saying that ccTLDs who do not sign contracts with ICANN cannot expect better service. See Press Release, CENTR, Press Release from 12th CENTR General Assembly in Luxembourg (Dec. 12, 2001), at http://www.centr.org/news/ 20012111.htm (on file with the Journal of Small and Emerging Business Law); Jon Weinberg, ICANN and CENTR at Odds, ICANNWATCH Jan. 7, 2002, at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=510. 58 See A. Michael Froomkin, How ICANN Policy Is Made (II), ICANNWATCH , Sept. 5, 2000, at http://www.icannwatch.org/essays/ dotau.htm. 59 See The Other Shoe Drops, II, ICANNWATCH , Oct. 26, 2001, at http://www.icannwatchorg/article.php?sid=428; A. Michael Froomkin, The Other Shoe Drops, ICANNWATCH , July 17, 2001, at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=339. 60 See ICANN, AGREEMENT FOR . JP CCTLD COMPLETED (Feb. 28, 2002), at http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-28feb02.htm. 61 See BRIAN KAHIN , CTR. FOR INFO . POLICY , UNIV. OF MD ., MAKING POLICY BY SOLICITATION: T HE OUTSOURCING OF .US (July 16, 2001), at http://cip.umd.edu; see also .US Goes to Neuster, ICANNWATCH , Nov. 1, 2001, at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=438; A. Michael Froomkin, DoC Stakes Out Maximalist Position on .us, ICANNWATCH , July 17, 2001, at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=254.
S&B point to this recalcitrance on the part of the ccTLD operators as evidence that ICANN could not possibly have the power over the root that I ascribe to it.62 In fact, the ccTLDs recalcitrance is evidence of several other things, not least that only organizations with a government behind them can stand up to ICANN. First, it is evidence of a special kind of stalemate; because the ccTLDs are frequently connected to their governments, they understand that they are not directly threatened by ICANN because they know that the U.S. government would not remove them for the root in defiance of their local government’s wishes under any but the most extreme circumstances. Not only is there no reason for the United States to do this and risk the diplomatic consequences, but a move that suggested the United States was flexing its power over the root in a way that so threatened the interests of other nations would be one of the few things that could create a near-consensus to migrate to a new root. The recalcitrance of the ccTLDs is also evidence that any claim of nearunanimous or even consensus support for ICANN is wishful thinking (although I hasten to add that many ccTLDs do support the concept of an independent body much less activist than ICANN, and at least some clearly see ICANN as a lesser evil than the U.S. government). The ccTLD situation dovetails neatly with the account I summarized above and detailed in Wrong Turn about how ICANN needed to use strong-arm tactics, aided directly by the U.S. government, to reach agreements with the registries.63 Registrars knuckled under much earlier than registries both because the registrars had little choice, and because they had more to gain; new TLDs mean new product to sell, and they were also anxious to see NSI/VeriSign’s near-monopoly in the registrar market broken. Some registrars also wanted to break into the registry market, which also required new TLDs. ICANN seemed the only way to achieve those goals. Now, however, some are having second thoughts.64 C.
Role of the Root Server Operators Complete with italics, S&B advance the contention that Wrong Turn ignores . . . the critical fact that any “control” over the DNS through the root file exists only because of, and relies entirely on, the voluntary cooperation of the other root server operators. The authority exercised by the DOC is thus not control, but rather stewardship made possible 65 only by the consensus of the Internet community.
Indeed, their overall case for the legality of the DOC’s relationship with ICANN rests heavily on this claim. First, they use it to suggest that the U.S. government cannot be accused of delegating control over the DNS because the DOC has, they say, no meaningful control in the first place.66 Second, they argue, on the same principle, that ICANN itself has no meaningful control over the DNS, because, again, the real control rests offstage, in the hands of the root server operators, or the nebulous “Internet Community.” It follows, if neither the DOC nor ICANN really controls anything of importance, they cannot really be regulating, and that there are no administrative law or constitutional issues of substance to discuss because the whole structure turns on independent voluntary acts of private root server operators. It sounds great. Alas, only a very little of it is true. The true part is this: if the operators of the thirteen root servers were to get together and declare that henceforth they would collectively rely on a root zone file originating somewhere other than the file currently controlled by the DOC, then the DOC would indeed become irrelevant to the root. The continued reliance of the root server operators on the zone file controlled by the U.S. government is thus a but-for cause of the DOC’s, and thus ICANN’s, power over the DNS. True as this fact is, it is of almost no relevance to the legal issue of the U.S. government’s power over the root because the U.S. government itself operates sufficient root servers to veto any change. That is in part why, as I explained in Wrong Turn, Jon Postel’s failed attempt to take personal control of the root is an important moment in DNS history.67 If there had been any lingering doubt remaining as to whether the U.S. government controlled the legacy root,68 that moment dispelled it. The same two structural features that killed Jon Postel’s “experiment” in redirection of the root in January 1998 would doom any similar project that did not have the U.S. government’s endorsement. The independent root server operators who do not work for governments are among the old guard of the Internet. They subscribe strongly to the view, enunciated by the Internet Architecture Board, that To remain a global network, the Internet requires the existence of a globally unique public name space. The DNS name space is a hierarchical name space derived from a single, globally unique root. This is a technical constraint inherent in the design of the DNS. Therefore it is 66 See S&B, supra note 23, at 70 n.29. In addition to simply being false, the plausibility of this claim was substantially undercut by ICANN President Stuart Lynn’s recent complaint that ICANN has too little power over the root, and the U.S. has too much. See LYNN , supra note 1. 67 Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 45, 64–65. 68 Personally, from a legal point of view, I think doubt was resolved earlier when Postel’s IANA disclaimed the power to make changes in the root, and NSI therefore declared that the authority rested in the U.S. government directly. See Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 62–65. But Postel’s failed attempt certainly demonstrated the realities of the situation. Id. S&B argue that Postel’s attempt to redirect the root demonstrated that the root server operators considered themselves independent from the U.S. government. S&B, supra note 23, at 77. In fact, the attempt’s failure proves the reverse, because the attempt collapsed as soon as U.S. government officials made it clear that they opposed the move.
not technically feasible for there to be more than one root in the public DNS. That one root must be supported by a set of coordinated root 69 servers administered by a unique naming authority.
Quite simply, the last thing in the world the root server operators are going to do is “split the root.” Every member of the club has an effective veto on any move, because anyone who fails to go along ensures that the attempted move would result in a split and therefore ensures that any other operators favoring the move in principle will forbear. We come then to the critical fact mentioned in Wrong Turn, 70 but conveniently ignored by S&B in order to support their fairy-tale story of a toothless ICANN and an impotent DOC: Because the U.S. government controls a significant fraction of the root servers, the DOC has an effective veto on any attempt to switch to a new authoritative root file. The “E,” “G,” and “H” root servers are operated by U.S. government agencies and the “A,” “B,” and “L” root servers are operated by U.S. government contractors.71 Given the root server operators’ reluctance to “split” the root, three out of thirteen is more than enough to serve as an effective veto; and six out of thirteen even more so. Thus, S&B’s statement that “the USG has absolutely no ability to prevent the nongovernmental root servers (and especially the non-U.S. root servers) from pointing” to any root72 is artful, only partly accurate in the narrowest sense of “ability,” and misses everything important and relevant about the relationship between ICANN and the root server operators as a whole.73 S&B’s argument regarding the root server operators is especially ironic 69 INTERNET ARCHITECTURE BOARD , IAB TECHNICAL COMMENT ON THE UNIQUE DNS ROOT (May 2000), RFC No. 2826, at http://www.ietf.org/rfc (on file with the Journal of Small and Emerging Business Law). 70 See Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 141. 71 ICANN itself operates the “L” root server, which can be demonstrated from a unix computer connected to the Internet by doing a traceroot of “l.root-servers.net”. A list of webaccessible traceroot servers can be found at Geektools, http://www.geektools.com/traceroute.php. Only the “I,” “K,” and “M” root servers are operated in other countries (Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Japan, respectively). See DNS ROOT SERVER SYSTEM ADVISORY COMM., ICANN, ROOT NAMESERVER YEAR 2000 STATUS Appendix A (July 15, 1999), at http://www.icann.org/committees/dns-root/y2kstatement.htm. Of the non-federal-governmental U.S.-based servers, “C” is operated by psi.net, “D” by the University of Maryland, and “F” by the Internet Software Consortium. The authoritative list, at ftp://ftp.rs.internic.net/domain/ named.root reports (last updated Aug. 22, 1997), that the “J” root server is “temporarily housed at NSI (InterNIC).” Other sources, however, report that the status of the “J” root server remains to be determined. See, e.g., DNS ROOT SERVER SYSTEM ADVISORY COMM., supra; Jun Murai, Chair, Root Server System Advisory Committee, Presentation to ICANN Public Meeting, slide 6 (July 15, 2000), http://cyber.law.Harvard.edu/icann/yokohama/archive/ presentations/murai071500/index_files/slide0034.htm. 72 S&B, supra note 23, at 71 n.24. 73 Note that S&B are especially disingenuous here: Their claim that the government’s control of the legacy root is not meaningful because the Internet community could just choose to recognize another, a “decision [that] is not subject to the ‘control’ of . . . the USG,” id. at 79 n.72, is a claim falsified by the U.S. government’s direct control of root servers.
See, e.g., Jon Weinberg, Busy With the Root, ICANNWatch, May 10, 2001, at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=142. ICANN President M. Stuart Lynn’s plan to remake ICANN envisions it taking over all the root servers. See LYNN , supra note 1. This would cement its authority. See A. Michael Froomkin, IP: Where goes ICANN—the second of two notes, INTERESTING-PEOPLE , Feb. 27, 2002, at http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interestingpeople/200202/msg00259.html; David Post, ICANN ver. 2.0 and ‘Mission Creep’, ICANNWATCH , Feb. 28, 2002, http://www.icannwatch.org/ article.php?sid=577. Compare LYNN ¸ supra note 1 (proposing that ICANN take direct control of all the root servers and thus the entire root), with S&B, supra note 23, at 69 n.15 (“ICANN neither does nor ever will have ‘control’ of the root . . . .”). 75 See ICANN, SPECIAL M EETING OF THE BOARD (Jan. 21, 2002), at http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-21jan02.htm (last visited Feb. 4, 2002) (giving president authorization to enter into MOUs with root server operators). The status of a “Memorandum of Understanding” is ambiguous because it may or may not be a contract depending on whether there is an exchange of consideration, and whether the parties intend to be bound. An MOU is A document which, if meeting the other criteria, can be, in law, a contract. Generally, in the world of commerce or international negotiations, a MOU is considered to be a preliminary document; not a comprehensive agreement between two parties but rather an interim or partial agreement on some elements, in some cases a mere agreement in principle, on which there has been accord. Most MOU’s imply that something more is eventually expected.
http://www.duhaime.org/dict-m.htm (last visited February 17, 2002). 76 ICANN BYLAWS (July 16, 2000), http://www.icann.org/general/ bylaws.htm. 77 Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 113–25.
Id. at 113; see also Kathleen E. Full, An Interview with Michael Froomkin, 2001 DUKE L. & T ECH . REV. 0001 (2001), at http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/ dltr/articles/2001dltr0001.html (admitting that “the case for finding ICANN to be a state actor although strong is not at all a certainty, especially given the current trend in the case law against finding private bodies to be state actors without overwhelming evidence”). 79 See GEORGE J. M ITCHELL ET AL., REPORT OF THE SPECIAL BID OVERSIGHT COMMISSION (Mar. 1, 1999), at http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/ hearings/ 0414ioc.pdf; Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 176. S&B’s treatment of S.F. Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. U.S. Olympic Comm., 483 U.S. 522 (1987), seems to miss the point of the case. The case held that the U.S. Olympic Committee was not a state actor because the necessary element of government control was lacking. An indicia of that was the small fraction of its total funds the Olympic Committee received from the U.S. Instead of focusing on the question of what fraction of ICANN’s revenues would continue be paid to it if the DOC were to re-assign ICANN’s contracts to another body, which is the issue that goes to the government’s ability to exert financial pressure, S&B focus on the dollar value of ICANN’s direct support from the U.S. government. See S&B, supra note 23, text accompanying notes 83–101. 80 It’s actually a slightly interesting question because the APA applies to “each authority of the Government of the United States, whether or not it is within or subject to review by another agency,” 5 U.S.C. §551(1) (2000), but it’s not a question I addressed in Wrong Turn. 81 Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 94. 82 ICANN might face declaratory judgment actions claiming due process violations, and perhaps suits against its officers under Bivens. Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). ICANN itself is safe from a § 1983 challenge because it acts under instructions from a federal agency, not a state agency, and § 1983 applies to individuals acting under the “color” of state law only. ICANN is also safe from Bivens actions because of the Supreme Court’s decision in Correctional Servs. Corp. v. Malesko, 122 S. Ct. 515 (2000) (holding that Bivens actions can be brought against individuals only, not corporations), a case decided after Wrong Turn was published. 83 Plaintiff’s First Amended Complaint, Bord v. Banco de Chile (E.D. Va. filed Dec. 27, 2001), http://www.icannwatch.org/essays/bord-complaint.htm; see also A. Michael Froomkin, A Very Interesting Lawsuit, ICANNWatch, Jan. 4, 2002, at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php ?sid=507 (discussing complaint).
84 Government contracts are one exception to the APA’s notice and comment requirement. But other parts of the APA still apply. See infra text accompanying note 97. 85 S&B put these words in my mouth without citation. S&B, supra note 23, at 65-66. 86 After a full privatization, one in which the DOC no longer had any ongoing role in DNS rulemaking, there would be no nondelegation issue. Some difficult legal questions remain, however, as to how this hypothetical full privatization might be managed without authorizing legislation. See Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 32 n.44. In any case, the DOC continues to say both that it has no plan to relinquish its powers over the DNS, and that it doesn’t particularly want to exercise them. Id. at 31 n.43. Except, of course, when it does. See supra note 40 (discussing .us redelegation by U.S. government). 87 S&B, supra note 23, Part V.B. 88 Id. at 81. 89 Id. 90 Id. at 82. 91 Id. at 82 n.71. 92 Id. at 82.
In advancing a nondelegation argument in Wrong Turn, I focused on proving that ICANN “regulates,” and does not merely engage in “standardsetting.” If ICANN were limited to standard-setting, as it used to argue, a nondelegation issue would likely not exist.112 It is refreshing to see S&B admit what has, in any case, become obvious, that ICANN makes policy decisions relating to the DNS.113 conclusion in a peculiar fashion. Rather than applying the tests for state or federal actors, the court simply reasoned that because the DOC’s establishment of ICANN was intended to move “away from nascent public regulation of the Internet and toward a consensus-based private ordering regime” and because the White Paper was a statement of policy only, rather than a substantive rule, it followed that “the Accreditation Agreement represents a private bargain” between ICANN and the affected registrars. Id. at 247–48. Perhaps S&B do not rely on Register.com because they found this logical leap as unconvincing as I do. Cases relating to government-sponsored enterprises have some limited relevance. It seems fairly clear that ICANN is not a federal “agency” for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the Government Corporation Control Act (GCCA) because it is neither a “Government controlled corporation” as contemplated by the GCCA nor some “other establishment in the executive branch of the Government.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(f)(1) (2000); c.f., A. Michael Froomkin, Reinventing the Government Corporation, 1995 U. ILL . L. REV. 543, available at http://www.law.Miami .edu/~froomkin/articles/reinvent.htm. The test in these matters is control of the sort used to measure corporate control—tests which often focus on the reality of control as much as the form. 110 See 5 U.S.C. § 551(1); 5 U.S.C. § 701(b)(1). 111 Take, for example, S&B’s assertion that ICANN “neither sought nor received approval” of the UDRP from the U.S. government. S&B, supra note 23, at 76. Regardless of whether ICANN and the government officially communicated, are we seriously expected to believe that ICANN staff never discussed this with Becky Burr, or the other U.S. government officials interested in DNS policy? In any case, as I explained in Wrong Turn, the critical instruction to impose something like the UDRP was in the DNS White Paper. See Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 24–25, 69–70, 96, 110; ICANN, STATUS REPORT TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE § I (June 15, 1999), at http://www.icann.org/statusreport -15june99.htm. That ICANN in fact did what the U.S. government told it to do is not the greatest evidence of its independence. 112 See Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 95–97. 113 S&B, supra note 23, at 63.
Wrong Turn argued that if I was wrong about the DOC being required to use APA procedures when contracting out for regulatory services, then there was instead a Carter Coal issue about ‘nondelegation’ to a private group. S&B attempt to trash this argument by saying that because there is no Congressional action delegating power to the DOC to manage the DNS, much less allowing sub-delegation to ICANN, there can’t possibly be a nondelegation issue because the doctrine “prohibits only Congress from delegating its legislative power to any other entity.”114 This argument might work if I were relying on the traditional nondelegation doctrine of Schechter Poultry, although it would then raise a serious ultra vires question. The single term ‘nondelegation’ actually refers to two quite different ideas, and I relied on the one in Carter Coal. The idea, that there may be a fundamental structural constraint on the legislature’s power to delegate public power to private groups, a limit sounding in Due Process, is one that completely blunts S&B’s doctrinal challenge. It is somewhat odd to speak of a sub-delegation of power from the DOC to a private party as violating even Carter Coal nondelegation in the absence of legislation clearly allowing it. One would devoutly wish for a statute to put the DOC’s relation with ICANN on a less shaky legal footing. But even without one, it’s hornbook law that agencies have no inherent powers; they can only validly exercise the powers delegated to them by Congress.115 It is equally axiomatic that the Due Process clause applies to all three branches of our government. In light of these two maxims, it follows fairly simply that if there is a structural due process bar to the sub-delegation of public power to a private group of the sort described in Carter Coal, then it applies at all times to all of the DOC’s activities. S&B advance the obvious doctrinal rejoinder to my claim, the counterassertion that the nondelegation doctrine is dead, that Carter Coal is a dead letter. As noted in Wrong Turn, in light of the case law since the New Deal, this argument has force. Academic authorities tend to be divided between seeing nondelegation as a residual doctrine deployed to justify limiting constructions of potentially over-broad statutes116 and a historical relic. Recognizing this, I also argued that the ICANN facts are so egregious and the self-dealing so similar to the facts that prompted Carter Coal (itself the least obnoxious of the three anti-New Deal “nondelegation” cases) that it makes a case for why the doctrine, even if thought to be dead, should be revived for this limited purpose.
Id. at 66. Here, S&B are in good company, as the GAO also advanced this argument. Letter from Robert P. Murphy, General Counsel, General Accounting Office, to Sen. Judd Gregg, Chairman, United States Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary 26 n.41 (July 7, 2000), http://www.gao.gov/new.items/og00033.pdf (“Since it is a role not specifically required by statute, the Department was not delegating or transferring a statutory duty when it proposed to transition administrative control over the domain name system to a private entity.”). One of my goals in Wrong Turn was to explain how the GAO erred in this assertion. 115 Or, an agency might exercise powers delegated to it by the President, but that is not at issue here. 116 See, e.g., WALTER GELLHORN ET AL ., ADMINISTRATIVE LAW 64 (David L. Sh apiro et al. eds., Foundation Press 1987) (1940).
An alternate approach to gTLD creation, one that would most certainly enhance competition, would take its inspiration from the fundamental design of the Internet itself, and from major league sports. The Internet was designed to continue to function even if large parts of the network sustained damage. Internet network design avoids, whenever possible, the creation of single points of failure. When it comes to policy, however, ICANN is currently a single point of failure for the network. A solution to this problem would be to share out part of ICANN’s current functions to a variety of institutions. 122 If there is such a number, it is likely to be very large. See Froomkin, Wrong Turn, supra note 2, at 22 n.12.
California non-profit organization, has no legal obligation to be democratically accountable other than whatever duties it may owe its members under state law;131 even if it is a federal actor, its duties under federal law run to due process, not representation or decentralization. Nor, despite the title of S&B’s article, does Wrong Turn argue that the APA applies directly to ICANN. The U.S. government could have chosen a different relationship with ICANN. We have available workable models of how an agency constitutionally interacts with a self-regulatory organization (SRO). The SEC’s relationship with the various stock exchanges provides one model. There, pursuant to statute, the agency retains the right to regulate, but in most cases the SRO regulates its own members. Before important rules go into effect, those rules are submitted to the agency for its review and by the agency for public comment. As a practical matter, the agency’s approval is usually little more than a rubber-stamp, but the procedural hurdle serves the important functions of discouraging the SRO from proposing abusive rules and providing an avenue for judicial review if one slips through. But such a relationship would have required authorizing legislation, for which neither the Clinton administration, nor ICANN, had any desire. In choosing how to decide any APA or public-law controversy spawned by the DOC’s reliance on ICANN, a reviewing court will almost inevitably be forced to navigate between form and substance. Leaving aside their exaggerations and misrepresentations, S&B’s core argument seems to be that we should close our minds to thick description and let the forms control: ICANN is private; the White Paper was just a policy statement of no legal import; the DOC’s relationship with ICANN is one of contract, and the contracts do not seem to say much; third parties are not in privity with, and are not involved in, issues of power over the root; indeed, that power itself is chimeral because large parts of it do not rest on legal formalities. Don’t rock the boat. As a positive matter, it is not impossible that a court might indeed adopt the formalistic view.132 But it would be an avoidable error. As I sought to detail in Wrong Turn, and to suggest in this Response, one need not look very far underneath the surface to discover that the substance of the U.S. government’s relationship with ICANN is materially different from what it may appear to be from the forms alone. Look a little beyond the forms to the actual means by which the DOC can, and on occasion does, exercise control over the root. Look to the extent to which the DOC keeps ICANN on a short leash, and the consequences that would flow were the DOC to de-recognize ICANN and instead recognize another body in its place, and you begin to see the things to which Joe Sims and Cynthia L. Bauerly seem to have closed their eyes very tightly indeed.

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