National Telecommunications & Information Administration chief Larry Strickling says moves like handing off oversight off ICANN's authority over Internet naming conventions is the best way to preserve Internet freedom.

Conversely, he told a Washington audience at the Internet Governance Forum USA, "what will not be effective to protect Internet freedom is to continue the IANA functions contract."

Back in March, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) said it hoped to have a decision by June on whether or not it approved of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plan to transition stewardship of the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), which oversees domain naming conventions, from the U.S. to a multistakeholder model. NTIA succeeded with room to spare, but there remains work to be done.

It made that deadline, deciding last month that the multinational, multistakeholder plan for overseeing internet domain naming functions meets its criteria for handing over oversight.

The current NTIA contract with ICANN expires at the end of September, but it can be extended if need be. Strickling makes it clear he does not thing it needs to be.

In a lengthy speech to the forum, according to a copy of his prepared text supplied to B&C/MultiChannel News,he said the contract is too limited to be an effective tool for protecting Internet freedom.

"Extending the contract, as some have asked us to do, could actually lead to the loss of Internet freedom we all want to maintain," he said. The potential for serious consequences from extending the contract beyond the time necessary for ICANN to complete implementation of the transition plan is very real and has implications for ICANN, the multistakeholder model and the credibility of the United States in the global community."

Citing the Global Commission on Internet Governance, he said that failure to adopt the transition proposal would “send the wrong message to the international community, increase distrust, and will likely encourage some governments to pursue their own national or even regional Internets.”

Strickling also doubled down on his promise that NTICA "would not accept a plan that replaced NTIA’s role with a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution."

He took aim at criticisms of the transition, saying it would not be "giving away" the Internet, and certainly not to Russia and China or any other authoritarian government.

He also said ICANN is not moving its headquarters out of Los Angeles and that the transition is not some radical rush job pushed by the Obama Administration.

"How can anyone call a longstanding bipartisan policy to privatize the Internet radical? The direction to privatize the domain name system goes back nearly twenty years," he said. "The community spent two years to develop its plan. No one rushed the community effort. To the contrary, we extended the contract for a year when the community said it needed more time to complete its work. Nothing is being rushed here and to suggest otherwise is to ignore the facts."

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration says it hopes to have a decision by June on whether or not it approves of the The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plan to transition stewardship of the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), which oversees domain naming conventions, from the U.S. to a ultistakeholder model.

NTIA currently oversees IANA under a contract that was to have expired Sept. 30, 2015, but was extended a year--with an option to extend it three more years--because the plan was not yet ready. In 2014, NTIA concluded that no single nation, including the U.S., should be overseeing domain names for the 'net and set the transition in motion.

In a blog post after the plan was submitted to NTIA this week, NTIA head Lawrence Strickling  said the review process had begun and that, "hopefully within 90 days," it would determine whether it meets the criteria NTIA announced.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, but particularly Republicans, are concerned with the handoff and will be vetting NTIA's vetting process..

But Strickling has long pledged that NTIA would not turn over the Internet naming function to a government-led or controlled model, which is the main concern of critics of the hand-off.

Strickling called teh plan the largest multistakeholder process every conducted, saying: "Stakeholders spent more than 26,000 working hours on the proposal, exchanged more than 33,000 messages on mailing lists, and held more than 600 meetings and calls." 

Strickling says the plan must:

•"Support and enhance the multistakeholder model of Internet governance, in that it should be developed by the multistakeholder community and have broad community support. More specifically, we will not accept a transition proposal that replaces the NTIA role with a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution. 

• "[M]aintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the domain name system. 

•  [M]eet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA services, and. 

•  "[M]aintain the openness of the Internet."

House Democrats and Republicans were squarely in opposite camps on the DOTCOM (Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters) Act. The proposed law would not allow the National Telecommunications & Information Administration's oversight role in the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)  Internet domain naming system to be transferred to a multi-stakeholder model until the Comptroller General had reported to Congress on the impact of such a move.

That was clear from opening statements in the House Communications Subcommittee markup of the bill.

Republicans said the bill was simply a "trust but verify" move to insure that hand-off of U.S. responsibility to a multistakeholder model was not a hand-off to a process controlled by governments like China and Russia.

Democrats pointed out that NTIA has said no government-led process would be acceptable, but Republicans wanted to make sure that's the case. Democrats contend the study would delay the process and send the wrong signal -- that the U.S. was inserting a government review into what was to be a multistakeholder process.

"[T]he Obama Administration is lunging down a path that is perilous and uncertain," said Subcommittee chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.). "The legislation before us today is simple: it tells the administration to pause and evaluate."

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in a perfect world the NTIA role in ICANN could be fully privatized, but said that Russia and China have a different view of "perfect." She said Russia's Vladimir Putin should not be allowed to turn this transfer into another land grab. Blackburn also asked the committee to take up her bill, the Internet Freedom Act, which would prevent the FCC from redrafting its network neutrality rules.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the parent Energy & Commerce Committee, said the bill creates "partisanship and division where we should be seeking unity."

The bill's author Rep. john Shimkus (R-Ill.), pointed out that former President Bill Clinton had issues with NTIA's transfer of responsibilities, and even the head of ICANN had said he supported the bill "conceptually."

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), who opposes the bill, weighed in at the end, reading into the record a tweet from that ICANN official saying that he did not support any particular legislation.

The markup of the bill, which means any amendments and, ideally, a vote on whether to refer to full committee, continues on Thursday (April 10) at 9 a.m.