ICANN Sends Reply To Cruz And Co

Senator Cruz and ICANN have been involved in a game of “swap the letter” for the last couple of months.

Earlier this week Cruz and Co sent a letter to ICANN that displayed a couple of key things:

• they were very unhappy with how ICANN had been responding (They’re not alone in this one!)
• They were displeased with ICANN’s concept of time (hey we’ve all been there! Welcome to the club!)
• it was also very clear that they’ve been getting help from someone very familiar with ICANN and its inner workings

ICANN observers knew that the organisation would have to send a reply, but I suspect a lot of us were expecting the reply to take several weeks to appear. However ICANN issued a response 48 hours later! That’s very good by ICANN standards!

So what does the reply say?

Does it address the concerns raised by Cruz and Co?

Personally I’d view the response as being well written but very ICANNesque.

It does not address most of the concerns that Cruz and Co raised in their previous letter. Senator Cruz’ letter asked ICANN to answer very specific questions. The ICANN response, signed by Dr Steve Crocker, does not answer any of those questions directly.

You can read the letter below:

crocker-to-cruz-lankford-lee-06apr16-en

Will this appease Cruz? I sincerely doubt it.

I suspect we’ll see another letter or worse within the next few weeks. With the IANA transition up for grabs how ICANN interacts with Washington is key, yet they seem to be incapable of handling the situation sanely and seem to believe that the same kind of vague and non-committal replies they give to others will work with elected US officials.