ICANN can continue to run the Net: for now

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 17 August 2006 02:34

IT Policy - Regulation

The US Government has renewed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) contract for administration of the domain name system, but only for one year with options for four one year renewals. Meanwhile the wider MoU defining ICANN's role remains under review.
According to Dr Paul Twomey, president and CEO of ICANN, the new contract "means that ICANN remains the organisation responsible for a range of functions that are vital to the daily operation of the Domain Name System (DNS) and hence the Internet."

Functions covered by the contract, which is available in full on ICANN's web site  include those that are ultimately the responsibility of the Internet Assigned Names Authority (IANA), a US government body, and which ICANN has provided under contract since 1998: Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) top-level domain name system management and root server system management functions.

The current contract expires on 30 September, at the same time as the MoU entered into between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce in late 1998.

The MoU is now the subject of a US Government enquiry. Announcing this in May, the Government said: "The MOU contained a series of core tasks for ICANN, which include establishing appropriate relationships with the organisations that form the technical underpinnings of the Internet DNS, as well as date-specific milestones designed to help ICANN reach full corporate maturity. It has been amended six times, most recently in September 2003."

Comment was sought on a number of specific questions  and the enquiry has received over 400 submissions, many of them critical of ICANN.

In addition the US Government is under pressure from the international community which sees the relationship between ICANN and the Government has giving the US too much control over what should be an international body. This came to a head earlier this year when ICANN rejected plans to introduce the .xxx top level domain after the US Department of Commerce pushed for its rejection.

The United Nations convened a summit in Tunisia in 2005 to achieve global consensus on managing the Internet. After stormy debate, delegates agreed that ICANN had a legitimate management function, but delegates condemned efforts to make Internet address and name decisions a political tool.

The UN has scheduled a further forum on Internet governance in Greece in October.