ICANN held its first international meeting of 2012 last week in San Jose, Costa Rica, and kicked off the week on a high note with an inspired speech by Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla. While Chinchilla's point was made in reference to recent U.S. legislative initiatives and other proposals to increase Internet regulations at the international level, the tug-of-war over online rights and the governance framework to develop and assure them was a common thread throughout much of the ICANN meeting. more
ICANN has filed its initial response to writs of attachment issued by U.S. Courts that seek to have ICANN transfer control of the country code top level domains (ccTLDs) of Iran, Syria and North Korea to plaintiffs in various legal actions. The lawsuits were brought under a U.S. law that permits victims of terrorism and their family survivors to seek the assets of governments that provided support or direction of the terrorist acts. more
There is growing concern about how ICANN will comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), whose enforcement sanctions come into force in May of 2018. How will ICANN comply with GDPR without unduly restricting global Internet users' access to the public WHOIS database? For nearly the past 20 years, Internet users, businesses, law enforcement and consumer protection agencies have relied on WHOIS as a necessary resource. more
What happens if ICANN fails? Who will run the DNS then?
Of course to many, ICANN already has failed -- spectacularly so. Critics have long complained that ICANN not only lacks accountability and legitimacy, but also that it is inefficient (at best) and downright destructive (at worst). According to these critics, ICANN's many sins include threatening the stability of the Internet, limiting access by imposing an artificial domain name scarcity, and generally behaving like a petulant dictator. more
ICANN's policy on the special protection of the Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) names has triggered a very lively discussion including contributions by Konstantinos Komatis, Milton Muller, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, and myself (with Avri Doria's reply). There is an agreement that the exceptions are dangerous for ICANN's gTLD policy process which is in a formative and delicate phase. more
The internet has become almost part of our daily involvement and reality is that it affects every facet of our modern lives. We are increasingly becoming dependent on the Internet, for which reason its availability, functionality, safety, stability and security are now of great and continuing concern to all of us and most importantly to US Congress, who so far has maintained stewardship over these key functions. more
The Collaboration for International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) recently published "ICANN, Internet governance and Africa", a public briefing on the current status and key points of the debate that provides essential background for the second phase of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). During the last few years the relationship of African stakeholders with ICANN has received greater attention, largely driven by a few key individuals within African governments, the technical community, and civil society organizations. Meanwhile, the broader topic of Internet governance has been put on the public agenda in the context of the WSIS. ...Decisions taken at the upcoming second phase of the WSIS (to occur in Tunis in November 2005) are likely to have a profound impact on ICANN and the field of Internet governance more generally. more
At the start of the TAS outage, I said ICANN had a great opportunity to get its crisis management right by communicating properly. Now, nearly two weeks after the application window was supposed to close, ICANN has clearly done just that... But clearly, communication isn't the only parameter in crisis management. At some point, you also need to act. more
One of the most disastrous things that could happen to the DNS would be for the root to "split", as it would mean that identifiers would no longer be universal. Instead, "Example.com" would have totally different meanings for different users, substantially reducing the benefits of domain names. Can this happen? Important lessons for ICANN can be learned by studying the history of Rod Beckstrom, Twiki and Foswiki. more
For those participants that have been working rearranged hours and participating remotely in connection with ICANN's Nairobi meeting, here is a chance to sleep in. While ICANN Board tea leaf reading is not an exact science, there is a great deal of predictability to ICANN's actions so here are my big three predictions for tomorrow. more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) concluded its Montreal meeting with a landmark agreement that cements the relationship between ICANN and the worldwide community of country-code top-level domain registries. "Today's agreement represents both a historic achievement for the ICANN process, and a powerful vote of confidence in the newly reformed ICANN 2.0," said Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and CEO.
Finalizing four years of dialogue and negotiation, the creation of the Country-Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) heralds a new era of cooperative and productive relations among ICANN and the country-code domain registries. The structure and rules for ICANN's new ccNSO were endorsed by domain registry organizations and individual managers representing every region and populated continent. "Today's agreement is a testament to how ICANN is seen as a forum the international Top Level Domain administrators can come together and jointly address issues," said Twomey. more
ICANN has posted its suggested .net agreement [PDF]. The new draft puts the ICANN Board and the Names Council firmly in control of the registry's future, and represents a substantial change to the existing registry contracts. No one gave ICANN the power to do this, and it is strange that no approval by anyone -- including the US Dept of Commerce -- is being sought to make this happen. ICANN is taking the occasion of the .net rebid to restructure its entire relationship to the world. more
Today, anyone can use WHOIS to identify the organization or person who registered a gTLD domain name, along with their postal address, email address, and telephone number. Publishing this data has long been controversial, creating a system riddled with problems. On one hand, anonymous access to all WHOIS data enables misuse by spammers and criminals and raises concerns about personal privacy. On the other hand, incomplete or false WHOIS data prolongs Internet outages and leaves crime victims with little recourse. more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has recently decided to allow any entity to register a top-level domain name (TLD). The best mechanism for valuing this decision, a mechanism that outperforms crowdsourcing, blogs, and committee decisions, is the legal and easy-to-implement solution known as prediction markets.
In handing down its TLD decision, ICANN never identified the problem it was trying to solve... more
As a Regional Internet Registry, APNIC has a strong interest in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and the services it provides. We have followed the progress of IANA carefully, in particular through the evolution of ICANN, and the various steps taken by the US Government to reduce its level of oversight. Along with other RIRs, through the NRO, we have made several public statements about the IANA and its future development, mostly in response to US Government enquiries. more