ICANN

When Will The Internet Be Divided Among Nations?

The desired goal of most of the other countries other than US is to end up with their own local language suffixes, own local language domain names, basically their own Internet, with its own domain registration policies -- in a nutshell, a very big and a very complex global mess, indeed. This fight over ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is all about a golden key, as without it, the Internet is completely useless. ...It's also ICANN, the organization that from the start has made some very stringent and often very weird policies about such issues as the golden keys. Now its global authority is being challenged, and such fights could divide the power of this controlling body, and any adverse outcome will simply split the Internet.

ICANN Needs a Good Root

It's not been the best of years for ICANN. Leaving aside for a few seconds the controversy about xxx, and the allegations of improper behavior about the .Net assignment, ICANN has had a lot to deal with. The troubles began with the UN Working Group on Internet Governance hell bent on fixing ICANN, even though ICANN says nothing is broke. That trouble remains and isn't likely to go away for some time. And then, just when it seemed that the UN and ITU was the cause of all ICANN's problems, the old ally, US Government's DOC, decided that it was going to be in charge of ICANN. ...This could be the beginnings of a distinct change where the centralized DNS as we know it gradually gives way to some next generation structure which is far more decentralized. The coming 12 months may see some significant changes in this area.

Working Group on Internet Governance Releases Report

The Working Group of Internet Governance has released its final report [PDF]. As I wrote this week in my Law Bytes column, the report comes on the heels of the U.S. statement that it has no intention of surrendering control of root zone file. The WGIG report developed a working definition of Internet governance that states: "Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet."...

ICANN Meetings in Luxembourg

The ICANN Meetings are in full flow here in sunny Luxembourg. The venue is immense and located a cab, bus, or shuttle ride from the various hotels. So far, the big topics are the .Net finalization (focusing on the readjustment of the pricing verbiage), the USDOC root announcement, the shell registrar accreditations used in the batch pool for the purposes of getting dropped names, and the practice of registrars exploiting the 5 day add grace period to register in excess of 50000 names to watch how much web traffic they have, and returning the ones that do not at no cost...

The Internets

I don't know how much deep thought was involved when George Bush called the Internet "the internets" but this reflects a real risk that we face today. If you look at the traffic of many large countries with non-English languages, you will find that the overwhelming majority of the traffic stays inside the country. In countries like China and Japan where there is sufficient content in the local language and most people can't or don't like to read English this is even more so. I would say that the average individual probably doesn't really notice the Internet outside of their country or really care about content not in their native language.

Signposts in Cyberspace: An NRC Report on the DNS and Internet Navigation

In light of the recent decision by the United States government to "maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file" and ICANN's recent decisions to add more gTLDs (including .xxx), and to renew VeriSign as the .net registry, readers may be interested in the just-published report of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, Signposts in Cyberspace: The Domain Name System and Internet Navigation. ...a comprehensive policy-oriented examination of the Domain Name System in the broader context of Internet navigation.

The US Department of Commerce, the DNS Root, and ICANN

The recent announcement in eWeek titled "Feds Won't Let Go of Internet DNS" (slashdotted here) has some major internet policy implications. The short, careful wording appears to be more of a threat to ICANN than a power grab. In short, the US Department of Commerce's (DOC) National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it was not going to stop overseeing ICANN's changes to the DNS root. ...Of course, they have done next to nothing to support DNSSEC or other proposal for securing the DNS, but it sounds reassuring. The last sentence shows that the Bush administration shares the Clinton administration's lack of understanding of how the internet should evolve...

U.S. Government to Retain Oversight of the Internet’s Root Servers

The U.S. government has announced today that it will indefinitely retain oversight of the Internet's root servers, ignoring pervious calls by some countries to turn the function over to an international body.

Live Nude Domain Names

ICANN announced recently that it has begun negotiations with an applicant for another 'sponsored' (non-open) top level domain, .XXX. There has been a fair amount of coverage, for and against. My initial reaction is (with the proviso that the public information to assess these things is always insufficient): .XXX seems plausible for what it is but it isn't what many probably think it is. ...that's the key to understanding this. This TLD is intended to be a trade association and is not a form of regulation.

Hope for Human Resources with .Jobs Domain

Yesterday, at the annual SHRM Conference in San Diego, the .jobs domain was formally unveiled to the public, and offered exclusively through ICANN authorized registrars. As a HR professional myself, I have conversed with many HR professionals who are often frustrated by the inability to provide an exact destination (i.e., a "jobs" page) that restricts the ability to communicate and otherwise effectively carry out the organizational strategy HR is charged with in our communication to the labor market...