Jeff Eisenach, Trump’s comms guy, is a first-rate economist. He holds very strong “free market,” “deregulatory” opinions, presumably a requirement for Trump. Many, including the Times, suggest he is inspired by the money he has taken from telcos. I disagree; he has held similar positions for decades and has long been a political activist. "Jeff Eisenach is certainly as smart and wonky as they come," Harold Feld wrote.

Eisenach's PFF colleagues, Scott Wallsten and Ray Gifford, would be better choices for FCC Chair than Jeff or either of the Republican Commissioners. Trump has enough battles to fight without having combat at the FCC. Eisenach presents such certainty in his positions he will be a lightning rod for criticism. Commissioners Pai and O’Rielly, along with Democrat Wheeler, are part of what they agree is the most contentious FCC in many years; the job calls for a diplomat, especially today. Pai is a very skilled lawyer, often making cogent arguments on difficult issues of law. 

Unfortunately, both Pai and O'Rielly concentrate too much on legal theory while neglecting what's going on in the industry.

NTIA head Larry Strickling, the U.S. guy in charge, explained the problem to me, "Dave, do you want Russia and China to run the Internet?" The world majority didn't want the U.S. running things. Strickling's plan was to reduce the criticism by handing off to a group that nearly always takes the same position as the U.S.Before I get too many flames, let me say I support the ICANN transition. I titled my writeup Ted Cruz is a bleeping idiot,Unfortunately, both sides treated this like a political campaign. We all know about politicians and truth.

The battle over ICANN was a symbolic fight between the Global North (led by the U.S.) and the Global South (BRICS and more.) The "problem" the ICANN transition is meant to solve is the demand by the majority of countries in the world to have a representative say in decisions about the Internet.

The Global South generally believes the system is rigged to protect things like high transit prices and unreasonable patent royalties. Many of their issues are on target, although ICANN itself has almost nothing to do with them. Despite the irrelevance, both sides choose ICANN and the ITU as the battleground.

Dominated by U.S and Europe. Don't flame me; I supported the ICANN transition.  I also am aware of the limitations of ICANN that are generally ignored. In particular, some who know better called this a victory of the global Internet community. 

It always was a symbolic battle. Steve Crocker is Chair of ICANN as well as an outstanding engineer throughout Internet history. 

 "While today is an absolutely historic day for ICANN and for the success of the multi-stakeholder approach toward governance of an important portion of the Internet ecosystem, from the perspective of the Internet user community, today is a day like any other.  The transition of the stewardship of the IANA process from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to multi-stakeholder oversight of ICANN, has had and will have no impact on the orderly operation of the Internet.  Packets will continue to flow and new services will continue to be invented.  (And, of course, the multiple forms of abuse, conflict and controversy over content and other matters will also continue as before.)

Thousands of man hours and very large numbers of emails, documents and meetings tallied up between NTIA’s announcement 2-1/2 years ago on 14 March 2014 and the big event last night.  And what was the big event?  The quiet completion of the contract between NTIA and ICANN which was really vestigial in nature.  ICANN now has stronger accountability mechanisms, and the paperwork documenting the interactions with the operational communities is now more direct and does not involve the U.S. government, but otherwise it’s business as usual."

I support the IANA transition but the proponents also stretch the truth. Nothing important will change no matter how this resolves, because ICANN has little real power. ICANN, a once obscure agency, maintains the Directory Name Service, DNS. If Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump takes over ICANN, they couldn't effectively use it to censor. The Internet is a network of networks. The "infrastructure of the Internet" is actually controlled by AT&T, France Telecom/Orange, MTN South Africa, Russia's Sistema and the other carriers and backhaul systems. The DNS is just one possible way for those networks to communicate. If ICANN becomes a problem, those companies can and would move to another system.

Andrew Sullivan, Chairman of the Internet Architecture Board, notes, "Other name systems have been invented and deployed, and they don't depend on a root zone. Also, even if we keep using DNS, nobody can force you to use the same root zone. ... If the IANA system ceases to be useful (or starts to be too politically controversial), then people will choose something else. And there is no central point where people could be forced to use the IANA system because there is no center in a network of networks. That is also the reason why nobody -- not China, not Russia and not the bogeyman in the basement -- can 'take over' the internet." 

Ted Cruz is a bleeping idiot thinking ICANN could be dominated by the Russians or Chinese. ICANN's Chair is Steve Crocker, who has worked alongside Vint and others to build the Internet since earliest days. Also on the board are George Sadowsky, who had a distinguished career with the U.S. government; Marcus Kummer, who served the Swiss government and then was ISOC's policy lead; Thomas Schneider, currently of the Swiss government; Ron de Silva, of Time Warner Cable in the U.S.; Jonne Soininen of Nokia; and a half dozen others with generally concurring views.

25 Societies fight increased staff power. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers does extraordinary work, from broadcasting the world's best 5G Conference to setting the standards for Wi-Fi and so much else. The IEEE Communications Society publications are by far the most prestigious in the field. Their oral histories can be fascinating. The work on making royalties reasonable benefits all of us but the poor most of all. It's long been a member-driven organization, with volunteers staffing the editorial boards and many other positions in the organization. So when the below note from UCLA Professor Ali Sayed came across the IP list, I did some basic research.

There are obviously some issues not apparent in the public statements, so I'd welcome private comments from readers. Putting the Executive Director on the Board would seem a minor change, although that's been cast as a symbol. More important is consolidating power in the existing board, apparently close to the senior staff. The new election model is likely to reduce the powers of the regions. That's the wrong move as the majority of the Internet is now in the developing world. The reasons presented are vague notions of efficiency, not concrete improvements in what IEEE does.

I do not know enough about the issues to have an opinion on the merits. But the opposition of 25 IEEE societies suggests a breakdown in governance that would be best addressed by pulling back the changes.

Larry Strickling's great accomplishment was to hand the DNS to our chosen people at ICANN, but the Trump platform says it’s going to the Chinese and Russian governments, After Snowden, there was no way the rest of the world was going to accept the current U.S. (symbolic) control of the Internet. Larry's brilliant plan was to convince people that ICANN, controlled by Americans and a few Europeans, was "independent" and represented a "multi-stakeholder" equivalent to democracy. 

Anyone not blind can look at the board of ICANN pictured and below and see they aren't Russian and Chinese bureaucrats. Several have been employed by the U.S. and Swiss governments and others by U.S. companies. The handful from other parts of the world generally have strong financial ties to the U.S. and Europe. A third of the Internet is Chinese but no one from China is here. The Trump platform on this is hogwash. 

"Protecting Internet Freedom The survival of the internet as we know it is at risk. Its gravest peril originates in the White House, the current occupant of which has launched a campaign, both at home and internationally, to subjugate it to agents of government.

Tony Romm identifies 11 telecom folks working with Clinton. Alec Ross, Ben Scott, Jennifer Pahlka, Bruce Gottlieb, Rebecca Arbogast, Kevin Werbach, Phil Weiser and Tom Power are working with the campaign. I know almost all of them; they are intelligent, experienced and hardworking insiders. They are center-left as measured in D.C., which is to the right of the Conservative Party in England. None are likely to make large changes. Blair Levin in the article projects, "When it comes to telecom, a Clinton presidency would be like 'a third Obama term.' He's correct in that none of these people are radicals; I'm sure most would consider themselves "pragmatic." I hope it's not like the first Obama term, when the Bells walked all over Genachowski.  

I met Susan Ness in 1999 when as an FCC Commissioner she raised important questions about backbone competition in the Sprint-MCI deal. She worked with Hilary when both were out of office.