ICANN
ICANN (pronounced "I can") is the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered
in Marina
Del Rey, California, ICANN is a California
non-profit
corporation
that was created on September
18, 1998 in order
to oversee a number of Internet-related
tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S.
Government by other organizations, notably IANA.The
tasks of ICANN include managing the assignment of domain
names and IP
addresses. To date, much of its work has concerned the
introduction of new generic top-level
domains. The technical work of ICANN is referred to as
the IANA
function; the rest of ICANN is mostly concerned with defining
policy.On September
29, 2006, ICANN
signed a new agreement with the United
States Department of Commerce (DOC) that is a step forward
toward the full management of the Internet's system of centrally
coordinated identifiers through the multi-stakeholder model
of consultation that ICANN represents.[1]Paul
Twomey is the President/CEO of ICANN, since March
27, 2003. Internet
inventor Vint
Cerf is currently Chairman of the ICANN Board of Trustees.
ICANN
proceduresICANN holds periodic public meetings
rotated between continents for the expressed purpose
of encouraging global participation in its processes.
Critics argue that the locations of these meetings are
often in countries with lower Internet usage and far
away from locations that the majority of the Internet-using
public can afford to reach, thus making public input
or participation from traditional Internet users less
likely. Supporters reply that ICANN has a worldwide remit
and a key part of its mission is to build Internet use
where it is weak.At present, ICANN is formally organized
as a non-profit corporation "for charitable and
public purposes" under the California Nonprofit Public
Benefit Corporation Law. ICANN was set up in California
due to the presence of Jon
Postel, who was a founder of ICANN and was set to be its
first CTO prior to his unexpected death. ICANN remains in
the same building where he worked, which is home to an office
of the Information
Sciences Institute at the University
of Southern California.Resolutions of the ICANN Board,
preliminary reports and minutes of the meetings are published
for the public to view on the ICANN website. However there
are criticisms from ICANN constituencies like Noncommercial
Users Constituency (NCUC) and At-Large
Advisory Committee (ALAC) that there is not enough public
disclosure and that too many discussions take place out
of sight of the public.Notable
events in ICANN historyThe original mandate for ICANN
came from the United States Government, spanning the presidential
administrations of both Bill
Clinton and George
W. Bush. On January
30, 1998, the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA),
an agency of the US
Department of Commerce, issued for comment, "A Proposal
to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and
Addresses". The proposed rule making, or "Green
Paper," was published in the Federal Register on February
20, 1998, providing
opportunity for public comment. NTIA received more than 650
comments, as of March
23, 1998,
when the comment period closed.The Green Paper proposed
certain actions designed to privatize the management
of Internet names and addresses in a manner that allows
for the development of robust competition and facilitates
global participation in Internet management. The Green
Paper proposed for discussion a variety of issues relating
to DNS management including private sector creation of
a new not-for-profit corporation (the "new corporation")
managed by a globally and functionally representative
Board of Directors. ICANN was formed in response to this
policy. The IANA function currently exists under a remit
from the U.S.
Department of Commerce.On March
14, 2002, in a public
meeting in Accra,
in Ghana,
ICANN decided to reduce direct public ("at large") participation.One
of a few publicly elected board members, Karl Auerbach,
sued ICANN in Superior Court in California
in order to see accounting records without being required
to sign a non-disclosure
agreement. The records were ultimately released to the
public in August
2002.In September and October 2003 ICANN played a crucial
role in the conflict over VeriSign's
"wild card" DNS service Site
Finder. After an open letter from ICANN issuing an ultimatum
to VeriSign, the company voluntarily shut down the service
on October 4,
2003. Following this
step VeriSign filed a lawsuit against ICANN on February
27, 2004, claiming
that ICANN had overstepped its authority, seeking through
the suit to reduce ambiguity over ICANN's authority. The anti-trust
component of Verisign's claim was dismissed in August 2004.
VeriSign's broader challenge that ICANN overstepped its contractual
rights is currently outstanding, although a proposed settlement
approved by ICANN's board would drop VeriSign's challenge
to ICANN in exchange for the right to increase pricing on
.COM domains.At the meeting of ICANN in Rome
taking place from March
2 to March 6,
2004, ICANN agreed to
ask approval of the US
Department of Commerce for the Waiting
List Service of VeriSign.On May
17, 2004, ICANN
published a proposed budget for the year 2004-05. It included
proposals to increase the openness and professionalism of
its operations, and greatly increased its proposed spending,
from US $8.27m to $15.83m. The increase was to be funded by
the introduction of new top-level
domains, charges to domain
registries, and a fee for some domain name registrations,
renewals and transfers (initially USD 0.20 for all domains
within a country-code top-level domain, and USD 0.25 for all
others). The Council
of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR),
which represents the Internet
registries of 39 countries, rejected the increase,
accusing ICANN of a lack of financial prudence and criticising
what it describes as ICANN's "unrealistic political and operational
targets". Despite the criticism, the registry agreement
for the top-level domains .JOBS and .TRAVEL includes a
US $2 fee on every domain the licensed companies sell or
renew.[2]Along
with the successful negotiations of the .TRAVEL
and .JOBS namespace,
.MOBI, and .CAT
are some of the new top-level domains introduced by ICANN.
The additional introduction of the .EU
Top
Level Domain to the root, and the proposed .ASIA
multiregional suffix are developments to watch.After an extensive
build-up that saw speculation that the United
Nations might signal a takeover of ICANN[3],
the World
Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia
in November 2005 agreed not to get involved in the day-to-day
and technical operations of ICANN. However it also agreed
to set up an international Internet
Governance Forum, with a consultative role on the future
governance of the Internet. ICANN's Government Advisory Committee
or GAC, is currently set up to provide advice to ICANN regarding
public policy issues and has participation by many of the
world's governments.On February
28, 2006, ICANN's
board approved a settlement with Verisign in the lawsuit resulting
from SiteFinder that involved allowing Verisign (the registry)
to raise its registration fees by up to 7% a year.[4]
This was criticised by some people in the US
House of Representatives' Small
Business committee. [5]On
May 10, 2006 ICANN
rejected a plan for a new ".xxx"
suffix that would have been designated for websites with pornographic content.
The rejection followed an initial acceptance of the
".xxx" suffix,
following pressure applied by the United States government,
including strong hints that the Commerce department would
depart from its usual rubber-stamp approval of ICANN's
gTLD decisions. ICANN's rejection of ".xxx"
was taken by many as a sign of too much U.S. government
interference into ICANN's workings.On July
26, 2006, the United
States Government renewed the contract with ICANN for performance
of the IANA function
for an additional one to five years. The context of ICANN's
relationship with the US Government was clarified on September
29, 2006 when ICANN signed a new Memorandum of Understanding
with the United
States Department of Commerce (DOC).Arguments
about ICANNIt has been suggested publically that ICANN
should internationalize, in that it should be seen as an international
public organisation and should remove historical contractual
links to the U.S. Government and the U.S.
Department of Commerce.To counteract this argument, supporters
note that of the 15 voting members of the ICANN Board of Directors,
it currently has board members from six continents, and has
only two US Directors, 1) ICANN Chairman, Vint
Cerf, a noted "Father of the Internet" who was appointed
by ICANN's Nominating Committee and 2) Rita Rodin, a New
York attorney who was appointed by ICANN's Generic
Name Supporting Organization or GNSO.The authority that
the U.S. Government holds via contracts with ICANN and
Commerce stems from the historical role of the United
States in creating the Internet. Support from National
Top Level Domain Internet
registries has improved drastically in 2006, but
there has not been universal acceptance of ICANN's
legitimacy.To counteract this argument, opponents note
that the ICANN link to the American Government no longer
reflects the international nature of the internet.ICANN
was charged with "Operating in
a bottom up, consensus driven, democratic manner" by the
US Department of Commerce in the Memorandum of Understanding
that set up the relationship between ICANN and the US Government.
However, the attempts that ICANN made to set up an organizational
structure that would allow wide input from the global Internet
community did not work well; the At-Large constituency
and direct election of board members by the global Internet
community were soon abandoned.One task that ICANN was asked
to do was to address the issue of domain name ownership
resolution for generic
top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN's attempt at such a policy
was drafted in close cooperation with the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO), and the result has now become
known as the Uniform
Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). This policy esentially
attempts to provide a mechanism for rapid, cheap and reasonable
resolution of domain name conflicts, avoiding the traditional
court system for disputes by allowing cases to be brought
to one of a set of bodies that arbitrate domain name disputes.
According to ICANN policy, a domain registrant MUST agree
to be bound by the UDRP - they cannot get a domain name without
agreeing to this. A look at the UDRP decision patterns by
some experts [citation needed]
has led some to the conclusion that the policy is just a way
for rich and powerful entities to steal domains from those
that are not part of the WIPO organization.Proponents of a
unrestricted namespace argue that ICANN was never given the
right to decide policy (ie: choose new TLDs or shut out other
who refuse to pay their USD 50,000 fee), but was to be a technical
caretaker. They claim that ICANN should not be allowed to
impose business rules on market participants - all TLDs should
be added on a first-come-first-serve basis and the market
should be the arbiter of who succeeds and who doesn't.In addition
to that, some critics argue that ICANN is engaging in restraint
of free trade by imposing restrictions on who can operate
a TLD and sell domain names. The restrictions are considered
insurmountable by many small business owners and individuals,
such as the non-refundable $50,000 application fee.Alternatives
Alternatives to ICANN have been suggested for managing the
DNS namespace and the address space, including:
-
Letting the US Government perform ICANN's tasks directly
-
Assigning ICANN's tasks to the International
Telecommunication Union
-
Turning ICANN into a new UN
agency
-
Letting the Regional
Internet Registries manage the addresses
-
Abandon all control and let the DNS namespace be a
free-for-all
-
Create a new non-profit organisation without any links
to the current interested parties
As of February
2006, no single proposal has enough political push
behind it to succeed.In addition, a number of private,
for-profit firms are trying to "seize the opportunity" of
namespace development by creating new TLDs in alternative
DNS roots. Chief among them are Amsterdam-based UnifiedRoot
and New.net, which
started off as one of Bill
Gross' Idealab projects.
These initiatives assume (or hope) that the discussions
around ICANN will result in a free-for-all, where they
will be able to claim that their namespaces are "as good as anyone
else's".Footnotes
-
^
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/agreements/jpa/ICANNJPA_09292006.htm
-
^
"ICANN
imposes $2 internet tax", The Register, March
31, 2005.
-
^
"U.N.
Summit to Focus on Internet", Washington Post,
December 5, 2003.
-
^
ICANN announcement [1],
retrieved Nov 1, 2006
-
^
http://news.com.com/Domain+name+price+hikes+come+under+fire/2100-1030_3-6081336.html?tag=nefd.top
External
links
This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License. It uses material from the
Wikipedia
article "Cybersquatting".
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