[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5778-5779]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE POWER OF THE INTERNET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come to 
the floor this morning and talk just a little bit about free speech and 
how we exercise that free speech in this country.
  I think it is no secret that the Twitterverse and the Internet has 
been abuzz with a little bit of concern about what the President is 
planning to do about the Internet and control and governance of the 
Internet.
  I think we all agree that the Internet has had a revolutionary impact 
on not only this Nation but on the world. You can take a look at what 
has happened with jobs, with innovation, with economic freedom, and, 
indeed, with social change.
  You see it pronounced because the Internet allows people to 
participate from the bottom up, receiving information about what their 
governments are doing, about opportunities that are out there. They 
have the opportunity to get online and do a little bit of research.
  So, with this open ecosystem and this decentralized nature of 
information, it is benefiting freedom. It is benefiting free people and 
free markets. We want to see that continue.
  Now, like many of my colleagues, I do support a free market, 
multistakeholders model of Internet governance. And in a perfect world, 
ICANN, which is the organization with governance of domain names and of 
the Internet, and IANA would be fully privatized and free from any 
government influence or control.
  However, realistically, we know that China and Russia have a very 
different view of what would be perfection. Their end goal is to have 
ICANN and IANA functions migrate to the U.N.'s ITU, which is the 
International Telecommunications Union. That solution is one that I do 
not support and one that I would never stand in favor of. I stand in 
opposition to it.
  If the U.S. Department of Commerce is going to relinquish control of 
its contractual authority over the IANA contract and move control of 
DNS into a global, multistakeholder community, the timing and the 
architecture would just have to be absolutely perfect.
  This is an area where you have only got one shot of getting it right, 
only one shot, and we have to make certain that it is a shot that is 
focused fully on freedom.
  If this administration wants to prove to Congress and the 
international community that they are serious about this process, then 
they must immediately move to bring an end to the net neutrality 
movement that is alive and well at our Federal Communications 
Commission.
  Telling Congress and the international community that they are 
serious about relinquishing control over the IANA contract while 
simultaneously having the FCC work to promote net neutrality is 
disingenuous.
  While we know Russia has got a land grab going on, we also see the 
U.N. and

[[Page 5779]]

the ITU trying to carry forth this space grab.
  A lot of our colleagues come to us, Mr. Speaker, and they say, so 
what are we going to do about this?
  I want to highlight two different pieces of legislation with you; 
first, H.R. 4342. This is the Domain Openness Through Continued 
Oversight Matters Act, DOTCOM Act. Congressmen Shimkus and Rokita have 
joined me in this effort.
  What we would do is to make certain that there is a prohibition 
against the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications 
Information Administration--we call it NTIA here--from turning over its 
domain name system oversight responsibilities pending a GAO report to 
Congress.
  Let's put this report in front of the action. Let's have a great 
discussion about what taking that action of relinquishing oversight 
would mean to each and every person that is assembled in this great 
room.
  How is it going to affect our constituents?
  How is it going to affect American innovation?
  Let's have those discussions now. Let's not make a mistake.
  I also highlight H.R. 4070, a piece of legislation I have authored, 
the Internet Freedom Act, to bar the FCC and their actions on net 
neutrality.

                          ____________________