Summary

  • ICANN's Bylaws create the ASO Address Council by cross-reference — it "consists of the members of the NRO Number Council" — and the reviewed text names no member, no appointment rule, no term and no removal channel.
  • The rules that fill the seats are published by the registries instead: three representatives per RIR region, two selected by that region's community and one appointed by the registry's Executive Board, which makes the Council's composition legible only by reading a second set of documents.
  • The Bylaws say the Council nominates for ICANN Board Seats 9 and 10 while the ASO's own site says it selects, and the same site publishes a call for nominations; both renderings stand.

Article 9 of the ICANN Bylaws is a short piece of drafting with a long reach. Section 9.1(a) hands the Address Supporting Organization its job: the ASO "shall advise the Board with respect to policy issues relating to the operation, assignment, and management of Internet addresses" (ICANN Bylaws, Article 9). Section 9.1(b) does not charter a new organ at all. It defines the ASO as "the entity established by the Memorandum of Understanding entered on 21 October 2004 between ICANN and the Number Resource Organization," an "organization of the existing RIRs."

Then comes the Council, and the drafting changes register. A reader braced for an institutional blueprint gets one clause: "The ASO shall have an Address Council, consisting of the members of the NRO Number Council." That is the constitution. The reviewed text names no individual, sets out no appointment rule, no term length, no removal channel and no vacancy procedure. Anyone who wants to know how a person reaches that Council has been handed an address and told to keep reading elsewhere.

The second sentence about the Council is where the authority shows up. "The Address Council shall nominate individuals to fill Seats 9 and 10 on the Board." Two seats on the board of the body that coordinates the internet's naming and numbering system, filled by a nomination that originates in a council ICANN defines by pointing at someone else's membership list.

The pointing is not sloppiness. It is the whole architecture, and the registries publish the part ICANN's rulebook leaves out. The RIPE NCC's page on the NRO Number Council states the formula plainly: "The NRO NC is made up of three community representatives from each RIR region. Of the three people from each region, two are selected by the RIR community and a third is appointed by the RIR's Executive Board" (RIPE NCC, NRO Number Council). The same page supplies the hinge that makes two bodies into one: "Under the terms of the MoU signed between the ICANN and the RIRs in October 2004, the NRO Number Council (NRO NC) also performs the role of the Address Supporting Organization Address Council (ASO AC)."

Three representatives across five regional registries comes to fifteen seats. No numbered provision retrieved in this review states that total; it is arithmetic on the cited descriptions, and it should be read as arithmetic. The distribution inside each regional delegation is the more interesting number. Two of every three seats are filled by a community selection. The third is appointed by the registry's own Executive Board.

For a body whose visible output is advice to the ICANN Board, that is a deliberate mix: a majority chosen by the network operators a registry serves, a minority chosen by the institution that serves them, sitting in the same fifteen-person room.

The verbs are where the record gets interesting. ICANN's text says the Council nominates. The ASO's own website describes the Council as selecting individuals to fill ICANN Board Seat 9 and Seat 10 (ASO website). The same site carries a dated item from 15 September 2026 headed "ASO AC Calls for Nominations for Seat 9 on the ICANN Board of Directors." So the institution that uses the word selects to describe the function also publishes a call for nominations when a seat comes open. This review records both renderings and does not resolve which verb governs which stage. That gap is not a scandal; it is the ordinary residue of a process whose operative text sits in documents outside the governing charter.

The NRO's own page on the Council describes members as chosen through processes the registries define, generally involving community-based election or selection within each region rather than direct appointment by registry boards (NRO, ASO Address Council). That is the NRO describing its own arrangement, and this review retained it as a summary rather than as quoted text. The NRO's main site adds that the organization coordinates the registries' responsibilities toward the ASO, including appointment of Council members as stipulated in their agreement with ICANN, with each registry responsible for selecting or appointing its representatives (NRO). Read together, the two descriptions agree on the shape: the registries fill the seats, and the NRO says so in its own voice.

The ASO site is candid about its own status, which is worth noting because it affects how its text should be weighed.

A notice on its pages states that the website "is sponsored and operated by the Address Supporting Organization (ASO)" and "is not supported or operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN)." The ASO describes itself there as one of ICANN's three Supporting Organizations, reviews and develops recommendations on Internet Protocol address policy, advises the ICANN Board, and lists among its responsibilities "Defining procedures for the selection of individuals to serve on ICANN bodies." It also records that the Address Council holds monthly teleconferences open to observers — one of the few standing openings through which an outsider can watch the body work.

What this review did not obtain matters to how far the argument can run. The bodies of the ASO Memorandum of Understanding and the Address Council Operating Procedures were not obtained here; the pages at those addresses were captured as records without body text (ASO MoU page, ASO AC Operating Procedures page). Term length, recall or removal channel, vacancy procedure and the internal rules of the NRO Number Council are therefore not established in this article. They may be set out in those instruments. What can be said is narrower and firmer: the reviewed Bylaws text does not contain them, and the composition formula that does exist is published by a registry rather than by ICANN.

That is the finding, and it is a design choice rather than an accusation. A federation that delegates is not doing anything unusual. But delegation has a cost, and the cost is legibility. If you want to know who nominates two seats on the ICANN Board, Article 9 answers you in one sentence. If you want to know who those people are, how long they serve, and what happens if one of them must be replaced, Article 9 will not help you. You will be reading registry pages, and you will be reading them in five regions.

A fuller record of the Council is kept in the BTW directory entry.