Section 1 Designation
The Senate designates the week of February 8 through February 14, 2015, as “Internet Governance Awareness Week” to—
increase public awareness regarding the March 14, 2014 announcement by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (referred to in this resolving clause as the “NTIA”) declaring the intention of the NTIA to transition the stewardship of the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to the global multistakeholder community;
encourage public education about the importance of this transition process; and
call the attention of the participants at the next global meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (referred to in this resolving clause as “ICANN”) to the importance of designing accountability and governance reforms to best prepare ICANN for executing the responsibilities that it may receive under any transition of the stewardship of the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, including reforms that would—
insist that the domain name system continues to function as part of a secure, stable, resilient, single, decentralized, open, and interoperable Internet;
ensure a form of stewardship and accountability that is based on the separation of the functions of policy-making, policy implementation, and, as needed, independent adjudication or arbitration for dispute resolution;
limit and maintain ICANN authority to matters that pertain to the coordination of Internet unique identifiers, and limit each function to those rights, responsibilities, and authorities that have been explicitly assigned;
protect ICANN from undue influence or capture by one or more governments or multilateral or intergovernmental organizations, or a single set of other commercial or noncommercial stakeholders;
maintain the commitment of ICANN for final action regarding key policy decisions to demonstrate broad support by the community of ICANN stakeholders;
reinforce and expand transparency and accountability measures to ensure community access to ICANN documents and records; and
ensure that, prior to the execution of the transition of the stewardship of the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, each of the foregoing elements of such proposal is adopted and made effective by ICANN through incorporation in its articles of incorporation and by-laws, as needed, and subject to independent adjudication or arbitration for dispute resolution, as appropriate.