ICANN: Governing the Internet
56ICANN is the global governing body that manages the assignment of domain names and IP address. ICANN stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The non-profit corporation was first established in September 18, 1998 as a response to the Green Paper. The Green Paper was a proposal published by the Federal Register and opened to the public for comment. The proposal wanted to move the management of Internet domain names and IP addresses to a private entity. In the past, these were handled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). This led to the creation of ICANN. The establishment of the body effectively moved the management of the Domain Name System and IP address to the global internet community.
ICANN administers domain name assignments and IP addresses assignments. The organization is responsible for the administration of the initial top-level domains (TLDs); .com, .org, and .net. As the demand for domain names increase, ICANN busies itself with creating new TLDs. Currently, we have seen the creation of new TLDs like .travel, .jobs, .mobi and .cat. .Travel is for the travel industry, its suppliers, media and others. .Jobs is for websites that are employment-related. .Mobi is the chosen domain name extension for mobile internet sites. And, .cat is for websites that focus on the Catalan culture and language. Current developments as additional TLDs are .EU and .Asia. For its IP addresses function, ICANN, through its supporting group, does policy reviews and recommendations regarding IP addresses.
Ideally, ICANN should be able to help in preserving the stability of the Internet. Internet operations should remain consistent and smooth. Likewise, the organization should enable a healthy competition among web entities and should remain representative of the entire Internet community. Its policies should remain true to the tenets by which the ICANN was created.
ICANN has headquarters at Marina Del Rey, California. Paul Twomey is its current President; while Peter Dengate Thrush is its Chairman of the Board. The Board of Directors is made up of six representatives from ICANN’s three supporting organizations, the President and the Chief Operating Officer, and eight unaligned members representing the public interest, as selected by a nominating committee.
The supporting organizations currently include the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and the Address Supporting Organization (ASO). As their names suggest, these organizations deal with specific aspects of the body’s governing functions. GNSO deals with the policies regarding top-level domains. ccNSO manages country-code top-level domains. ASO is the policy-making body for IP addresses.
ICANN has figured in the news in recent times. In early 2006, it settled with Verisign on a lawsuit regarding allowing the registration company to raise its domain name fees by up to 7% per year. This move was criticized by some members of the US congress. Likewise, in early 2007, ICANN formally rejected the creation of a .xxx TLD, which was supposed to be used by pornographic websites. In June 2008, the ICANN website was reportedly hacked by malicious Turkish programmers.
