ICANN goes to the Caribbean
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ICANN Puerto Rico 2007 Over 1 billion served
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Exclusive Canadian mountie, Olympics organiser and now ICANN Ombudsman
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(InfoWorld) - Internet governance experts remain divided overÂ last week's decision to extend the U.S. government's oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), with some calling it appropriate and others portraying it as unwise. The strong sentiments on either side reflect a chronic, troubling tension that has enveloped ICANN since 1998, when it was formed to progressively absorb Internet management functions until then handled fully by the U.S. government. Often accused of lacking transparency in its decision-making process and of responding disproportionately to U.S. interests, ICANN carries on its shoulders the critical responsibility of ensuring the security and stability of the Internet. With so much at stake in matters of global communications and business, it's no surprise that governments and private-sector enterprises have high expectations and deep concerns about ICANN. Those supporting the continued U.S. supervision say ICANN isn't yet ready to manage the Internet's domain name system by itself, and note that ICANN, a private, nonprofit company in California, has to improve how it makes decisions and establishes policies. By contrast, the other camp argues that while ICANN is far from perfect, the U.S. involvement creates political friction with other countries and delays ICANN's development. Over the years in a series of memorandums of understanding (MOUs), the U.S. Commerce Department has been ceding tasks to ICANN, with the goal of eventually giving ICANN full autonomy. Last week, the MOU got extended for three more years, and increased ICANN's autonomy. However, the Commerce Department continues helping ICANN increase transparency and accountability and overseeing the security and operation of root name servers. "Extending the MOU was the only reasonable course of action at this point," said David McGuire, director of communications at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), in a phone interview. "ICANN has to improve its accountability and transparency and openness. ICANN needs to address that before we can have a meaningful conversation about it standing alone," McGuire said. The CDT is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit think tank focused on Internet public policy issues. The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) in Arlington, Virginia, also supported the decision, calling it, in a statement, "a necessary and important step" toward full autonomy, while noting also that ICANN must improve its transparency. Meanwhile, the Internet Society, a nonprofit education and policy group in Reston, Virginia, said in a statement that the new agreement moves beyond an oversight model, gives ICANN more flexibility and assigns the U.S. government "a more discrete role." However, some predict the continued U.S. oversight will do more harm than good. Ian Peter, senior partner at Ian Peter & Assoc. and founder of the Internet Mark 2 Project in Australia, said via e-mail that ICANN needs a healthier dose of internationalism. "The oversight role for ICANN should be global and multistakeholder -- not a single government," wrote Peter, whose Internet Mark 2 Project analyzes issues affecting Internet governance. Oscar Robles-Garay, general manager of Mexico's Internet NIC (network information center) for the .mx domain, feels pessimistic about last week's decision. "Three years from now we'll have the same problem as today, exacerbated by even more strident criticism from some governments against ICANN and the Commerce Department," Robles-Garay wrote in an e-mail interview. Milton Mueller, professor of information studies at Syracuse University in New York, agrees that international resentment will grow as a result of last week's decision. "The U.S. government is a big part of the problem with ICANN's accountability and process. U.S. government involvement sets up a privileged 'back channel' for influencing ICANN decisions so that powerful interests ... can get their way while bypassing the procedures everyone else has to use," heÂ said in anÂ e-mail. Â
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Prized by journalists, researchers and law enforcement officials as a reliable resource for tracking down website owners, it is criticized by privacy advocates for the same reason. A proposal in front of ICANN would essentially scuttle the ship.
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The U.S. government is loosening its grip on the domain name system and is edging closer to giving ICANN -- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- a greater measure of autonomy in making decisions about the future of the Internet.
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DECEMBER 14, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Two new top-level domain names moved closer to approval this week, as the body charged with overseeing the Internet&#39;s technical matters moved into negotiations with the companies applying to set up and run the &quot;.
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ICANN has proposed a schedule for the fast-tracking of non-contentious IDN ccTLDs that would allow for new non-Latin Alphabet top-level domains as early as Summer '08.
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October 28, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Two new domains, .post and .travel could appear next year after ICANN , the organization that oversees the Internet address system, announced their preliminary approval on Wednesday, according
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(InfoWorld) - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will discuss key projects and initiatives at a meeting this week, including the internationalization of the domain name system and a new, lucrative Web site registration practice that some object to. Other topics on the agenda for ICANN's 27th International meeting, to be held in Sao Paulo, include the group's strategic plan for 2007 to 2009 and next year's operating plan. Also on the discussion table are a workshop on IPV6 that will address what this new Internet protocol is and why it's needed, as well as a forum on the introduction of TLDs (top level domains). The meeting, which began Monday and ends Friday, will feature over 30 sessions and workshops. Attendees include engineers, businesspeople, government officials and private-sector executives from around the world. A major focus this week will be on the Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) initiative, a years-long project that aims to revamp the DNS system so that it can support domain names in a broad range of languages and alphabets that can't be represented via the ASCII character set, such as Arabic and Chinese. In Sao Paulo, ICANN will issue a status report on the IDN project and hold a training and a tutorial session. So far, through lab tests and meetings, ICANN is finding that the process to broaden the DNS' support for non-ASCII characters will be more difficult than originally thought, ICANN Chief Executive Officer and President Paul Twomey said Monday during a press conference. "This is really hard," he said, adding that ICANN hopes to have a technical solution in place by the end of 2007. "It has to be done carefully so that it works for the entire world." Attendees will also discuss a recent Web-site name registration practice called "kiting" and "tasting" that is generating much controversy. It involves the wholesale purchase of expired domain names, and the subsequent cancellation of most of them during a 5-day "grace" period allowed as part of the process. If canceled before the 5 days are up, the registration fee is fully refunded. Those who engage in this practice only keep the domain names that attract enough traffic to justify their registration fee, and proceed to "park" those Web sites and load them with pay-per-click ads. "There's a whole discussion going on in the community about whether there should be anything done about this," Twomey said. "There are people who think this isn't an appropriate behavior. [Others] think this is just the market at work." Those opposed to "kiting" are suggesting that ICANN impose some sort of fee whenever a registration is canceled before the grace period is over, a move they feel will discourage the practice.
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Net overseer moves toward approving industry-specific.post,.travel.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Commission welcomed moves in the U.S. to free ICANN, the Internet domain name manager, from its historic ties to the U.S. government on Monday. The U.S. Commerce Department willÂ retain its oversight of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, for three more years under a new agreement that took effect at the beginning of this month. The new agreement grants ICANN more freedom from U.S. government involvement, but stops short of full privatization, which many in the Internet industry want. European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr said the Commerce Department had given "clear indications that this three year agreement between ICANN and the U.S. government would be the last." "This is good news. Last year there were doubts about whether the U.S. would privatize ICANN," Selmayr said. The new agreement, which runs until 2009, is subject to a review in 18 months. If in the review the Commerce Department concludes that ICANN is stable, transparent, and accountable enough, it could decide to grant the nonprofit organization full autonomy immediately, the Commerce Department said in a statement Friday. In addition to promising full autonomy, the U.S. government has shaped the new three-year agreement to help pave the way towards independence. From now on ICANN will determine how it works and what it works on, ICANN said. It will no longer have to submit half-yearly progress reports to the Commerce Department. Instead it will publish an annual progress report on the internet for everyone to see. Many observers argue that U.S. government involvement in ICANN is slowing the international development of the Internet down and should pull out without delay. Others warn that ICANN isn't ready to fend for itself. They believe the organization hasn't yet proven that it can handle the entire task of domain name management alone, and if the government withdraws now this could compromise security and stability of the internet. Â ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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The internet could soon have two new domain names, aimed at mobile services and the jobs market. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has given preliminary approval to two new addresses - .
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VFW Post #9097, Hurricane, now has an Internet
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Raise your hand if you use whois every day. Even if your hand isn't up, and you just regard whois as am essential sysadmin tool, this post is for you. Because if you're interested in keeping whois working for the those it was made for in the first place, you need to visit the battlefield where whois' future is being determined right now. That  is, you must be Beowulf to the Grendel that is the Intellectual Property Community. Worse, you must confront him in the vast cave that is ICANN.  read more
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NOVEMBER 12, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - A new transfer policy for inter-registrar domain names went into effect today, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
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One of the best things I like about the Internet is the boundary-less nature of this amazing network. I can check out user views of people (from here in India) around the world on the India issues.
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Net overseer moves toward approving industry-specific .post, .travel.