ICANN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 1 of 6

ICANN
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)

ICANN (pronounced /aɪkæn/, eye-can) is the Internet ICANN

Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered
in Marina Del Rey, California, United States, ICANN is a non-
profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 and
incorporated September 30, 1998[1] in order to oversee a number of
Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the
U.S. government by other organizations, notably the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

ICANN's tasks include responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP)

address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic Founded September 18, 1998
(gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) top-level domain name system Headquarters Marina Del Rey, CA
management, and root server system management functions. More
generically, ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of Focus Manage Internet Protocol numbers
domain names and IP addresses. To date, much of its work has and Domain Name System root
concerned the introduction of new generic top-level domains
(TLDs). The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA Website www.icann.org
function.

ICANN's primary principles of operation have been described as helping

preserve the operational stability of the Internet; to promote competition;
to achieve broad representation of global Internet community; and to
develop policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-
based processes.[2]

On September 29, 2006, ICANN signed a new agreement with the United
States Department of Commerce (DOC) that moves the private
organization towards full management of the Internet's system of centrally
coordinated identifiers through the multi-stakeholder model of
consultation that ICANN represents.[3] ICANN headquarters at USC ISI

On November 3, 2007, Peter Dengate Thrush replaced Vint Cerf as

Chairman of the ICANN Board of Directors.[4]

On July 1, 2009 Rod Beckstrom was appointed as CEO/President of ICANN, succeeding Paul Twomey who served in
the position from March 27, 2003 until July 1, 2009.

Contents

1 Structure

2 Procedures

2.1 UDRP

3 Notable events

4 Arguments

4.1 Governance issues

5 See also

6 Notes

7 References

7.1 Other sources

8 External links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers 22/12/2009
ICANN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 2 of 6

Structure
At present, ICANN is formally organized as a non-profit corporation "for charitable and public purposes" under the
California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law. It is managed by a Board of Directors, which is composed of six
representatives of the Supporting Organizations, sub-groups that deal with specific sections of the policies under
ICANN's purview; eight independent representatives of the general public interest, selected through a Nominating
Committee in which all the constituencies of ICANN are represented; and the President and CEO, appointed by the
rest of the Board.

There are currently three Supporting Organizations. The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) deals with
policy making on generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO)
deals with policy making on country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs). The Address Supporting Organization (ASO)
deals with policy making on IP addresses.

ICANN also relies on some advisory committees to receive advice on the interests and needs of stakeholders that do
not directly participate in the Supporting Organizations. These include the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC),
which is composed of representatives of a large number of national governments from all the world; the At-Large
Advisory Committee (ALAC) which is composed of representatives of organizations of individual Internet users from
around the world; the Root Server System Advisory Committee which provides advice on the operation of the DNS
root server system; the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) which is composed of Internet experts who
study security issues pertaining to ICANN's mandate; and the Technical Liaison Group (TLG) which is composed of
representatives of other international technical organizations that focus, at least in part, on the Internet.

Procedures
ICANN holds periodic public meetings rotated between continents for the purpose of encouraging global participation
in its processes. Critics argue that the locations of these meetings are often in countries with lower Internet usage and
far away from locations that the majority of the Internet-using public can afford to reach. This makes public input or
participation from traditional Internet users less likely. Supporters reply that ICANN has a worldwide presence, and a
key part of its mission is to build Internet use where it is weak.

ICANN was established in California due to the presence of Jon Postel, who was a founder of ICANN and was set to
be its first CTO prior to his unexpected death. ICANN remains in the same building where he worked, which is home
to an office of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California.

Resolutions of the ICANN Board, preliminary reports and minutes of the meetings are published on the ICANN
website, sometimes in real time. However there are criticisms from ICANN constituencies including Noncommercial
Users Constituency (NCUC) and At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) that there is not enough public disclosure
and that too many discussions take place and too many decisions are made out of sight of the public.

UDRP

One task that ICANN was asked to do was to address the issue of domain name ownership resolution for generic top-
level domains (gTLDs). ICANN's attempt at such a policy was drafted in close cooperation with the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO), and the result has now become known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy
(UDRP). This policy essentially attempts to provide a mechanism for rapid, cheap and reasonable resolution of
domain name conflicts, avoiding the traditional court system for disputes by allowing cases to be brought to one of a
set of bodies that arbitrate domain name disputes. According to ICANN policy, a domain registrant must agree to be
bound by the UDRP — they cannot get a domain name without agreeing to this.

A look at the UDRP decision patterns has led some[5] to conclude that compulsory domain name arbitration is less
likely to give a fair hearing to domain name owners asserting defenses under the First Amendment and other laws,
compared to the federal courts of appeal in particular.

Notable events
The original mandate for ICANN came from the United States government, spanning the presidential administrations
of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. On January 30, 1998, the National Telecommunications and Information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers 22/12/2009
ICANN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 3 of 6
Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, issued for comment, "A Proposal to Improve
the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses." The proposed rule making, or "Green Paper", was
published in the Federal Register on February 20, 1998, providing opportunity for public comment. NTIA received
more than 650 comments as of March 23, 1998, when the comment period closed.

The Green Paper proposed certain actions designed to privatize the management of Internet names and addresses in a
manner that allows for the development of robust competition and facilitates global participation in Internet
management. The Green Paper proposed for discussion a variety of issues relating to DNS management including
private sector creation of a new not-for-profit corporation (the "new corporation") managed by a globally and
functionally representative Board of Directors. ICANN was formed in response to this policy. The IANA function
currently exists under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

ICANN was incorporated in California on September 30, 1998.[1] It is qualified to do business in the District of
Columbia.[6]

On March 14, 2002, in a public meeting in Accra, in Ghana, ICANN decided to reduce direct public ("at large")
participation. On March 18, 2002, publicly elected At-Large Representative for North America board member Karl
Auerbach sued ICANN in Superior Court in California to gain access to ICANN's accounting records without
restriction. Auerbach won.

In September and October 2003, ICANN played a crucial role in the conflict over VeriSign's "wild card" DNS service
Site Finder. After an open letter from ICANN issuing an ultimatum to VeriSign, later supported by the IAB,[7] the
company voluntarily shut down the service on October 4, 2003. Following this action, VeriSign filed a lawsuit against
ICANN on February 27, 2004, claiming that ICANN had overstepped its authority. In this lawsuit, VeriSign sought to
reduce ambiguity about ICANN's authority. The antitrust component of VeriSign's claim was dismissed in August
2004. VeriSign's broader challenge that ICANN overstepped its contractual rights is currently outstanding. A proposed
settlement already approved by ICANN's board would resolve VeriSign's challenge to ICANN in exchange for the
right to increase pricing on .com domains. At the meeting of ICANN in Rome which took place from March 2 to
March 6, 2004, ICANN agreed to ask approval of the US Department of Commerce for the Waiting List Service of
VeriSign.

On May 17, 2004, ICANN published a proposed budget for the year 2004-05. It included proposals to increase the
openness and professionalism of its operations, and greatly increased its proposed spending from US $8.27m to
$15.83m. The increase was to be funded by the introduction of new top-level domains, charges to domain registries,
and a fee for some domain name registrations, renewals and transfers (initially USD 0.20 for all domains within a
country-code top-level domain, and USD 0.25 for all others). The Council of European National Top Level Domain
Registries (CENTR), which represents the Internet registries of 39 countries, rejected the increase, accusing ICANN of
a lack of financial prudence and criticising what it describes as ICANN's "unrealistic political and operational targets".
Despite the criticism, the registry agreement for the top-level domains .jobs and .travel includes a US $2 fee on every
domain the licensed companies sell or renew.[8]

Along with the successful negotiations of the .travel and .jobs namespace, .mobi, and .cat are some of the new top-
level domains introduced by ICANN. The introduction of the .eu Top Level Domain to the root in violation of RFC
1591[nb 1], and the introduction of .asia are developments to watch.

After an extensive build-up that saw speculation that the United Nations might signal a takeover of ICANN[9],
followed by a negative reaction from the US government[10] and worries about a division of the internet[11] the World
Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia in November 2005 agreed not to get involved in the day-to-day and
technical operations of ICANN. However it also agreed to set up an international Internet Governance Forum, with a
consultative role on the future governance of the Internet. ICANN's Government Advisory Committee is currently set
up to provide advice to ICANN regarding public policy issues and has participation by many of the world's
governments.

On February 28, 2006, ICANN's board approved a settlement with VeriSign in the
lawsuit resulting from SiteFinder that involved allowing VeriSign (the registry) to
raise its registration fees by up to 7% a year.[12] This was criticised by some people in the US House of
Representatives' Small Business committee.[13]

On May 10, 2006 ICANN failed to approve a plan for a new ".xxx" suffix that would have been designated for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers 22/12/2009
ICANN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 4 of 6
websites with pornographic content. ICANN formally rejected .xxx on March 30,
2007 during its meeting at Lisbon, Portugal.

On July 26, 2006, the United States government renewed the contract with ICANN
for performance of the IANA function for an additional one to five years[14]. The
context of ICANN's relationship with the U.S. government was clarified on
September 29, 2006 when ICANN signed a new Memorandum of Understanding
with the United States Department of Commerce (DOC).
ICANN meeting, Los Angeles
In February 2007, ICANN began the steps to remove accreditation of one of their USA, 2007. The sign refers to
registrars, RegisterFly amid charges and lawsuits involving fraud, and criticism of Vint Cerf, then Chairman of
the Board of Directors, who is
ICANN's handling of the situation. ICANN has been the subject of criticism as a working on the Interplanetary
result of its handling of RegisterFly, and the harm caused to thousands of clients due Internet.
to what has been called ICANN's "laissez faire attitude toward customer allegations
of fraud".[15]

On May 23, 2008, ICANN issued Enforcement Notices against 10 Accredited Registrars and announced this through
press release entitled: "Worst Spam Offenders" Notified by ICANN, Compliance system working to correct Whois
and other issues[16]. This was largely in response to a report issued by KnujOn called The 10 Worst Registrars in
terms of spam advertised junk product sites and compliance failure. The mention of the word spam in the title of the
ICANN memo is somewhat misleading since ICANN does not address issues of spam or email abuse. Website content
and usage are not within ICANN's mandate. However the KnujOn Report details how various registrars have not
complied with their contractual obligations under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA)[17]. The main point
of the KnujOn research was to demonstrate the relationships between compliance failure, illicit product traffic, and
spam. The report demonstrated that out of 900 ICANN accredited Registrars fewer than 20 held 90% of the web
domains advertised in spam. These same Registrars we also most frequently cited by KnujOn as failing to resolve
complaints made through the Whois Data Problem Reporting System (WDPRS). The 10 Registrars cited were Xin
Net, Beijing Networks, Todaynic, Joker, eNom, Monkier, Dynamic Dolphin, The Nameit Co, Directi, and
Intercosmos.

On June 26, 2008, the ICANN Board started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward
on the introduction of new generic top-level domains." This program envisions the availability of many new or already
proposed domains, as well a new application and implementation process.[18]

On June 27, 2008, the NYTreported that the official sites of ICANN and IANA had been defaced by Turkish hackers
the prior day.

In July 2008, the U.S. Department of Commerce reiterated an earlier statement[10] that it has no plans to transition
management of the authoritative root zone file to ICANN. The letter also stresses the separate roles of the IANA and
VeriSign.[19]

On October 1, 2008, ICANN issued Breach Notices against Joker and Beijing Innovative Linkage Technology Ltd.
[20] after further researching reports and complaints issued by KnujOn. These notices gave the Registrars 15 days to
fix their Whois investigation efforts.

Arguments
Governance issues

In the Memorandum of Understanding that set up the relationship between ICANN and the U.S. government, ICANN
was given a mandate requiring that it operate "in a bottom up, consensus driven, democratic manner." However, the
attempts that ICANN have made to set up an organizational structure that would allow wide input from the global
Internet community did not produce results amenable to the current Board. As a result, the At-Large constituency and
direct election of board members by the global Internet community were soon abandoned.

It is argued that ICANN was never given the authority to decide policy (i.e., choose new TLDs or shut out other
interested parties who refuse to pay ICANN's US$185,000 fee), but was to be a technical caretaker. Critics suggest
that ICANN should not be allowed to impose business rules on market participants, and that all TLDs should be added

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers 22/12/2009
ICANN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 5 of 6
on a first-come-first-served basis and the market should be the arbiter of who succeeds and who does not.

A member of the European Parliament, William Newton-Dunn, has recently been addressing questions to the
European Commission which asks whether ICANN is engaging in restraint of European free trade laws by imposing
restrictions on who can operate a TLD and sell domain names.[21] Some restrictions are considered insurmountable by
many small business owners and individuals, such as the perhaps-partially-refundable $185,000 application fee.

See also

Alternative DNS root

Domain name

Domain name registrar

IANA

Internationalized domain names and GeoTLDs

Internet democracy

Top-level domain

Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy

WHOIS

Notes
1. ^ Specifically, RFC 1591 uses the ISO 3166 standard as the authoritative list of country codes. .eu is not a
country code, but is listed among the Exceptional Reservations.

References
1. ^ a b California Secretary of State, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Accessed 2009.09.18.
2. ^ "MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND
INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS". 25 Nov 98.
http://www.icann.org/en/general/icann-mou-25nov98.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-30.
3. ^ ICANN-DOC JPA 09-29-2006
4. ^ NZ Herald: NZer appointed 'Chairman of cyberspace' - 03 Nov 2007
5. ^ Hannibal Travis, The Battle for Mindshare: the Emerging Consensus that the First Amendment Protects Corporate
Criticism and Parody on the Internet, 10 Virginia Journal of Law and Technology 3, 32-34 (2005),
http://www.vjolt.net/vol10/issue1/v10i1_a3-Travis.pdf
6. ^ D.C. Department of Consumer and Regualtory Affairs, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Accessed
2009.09.18.
7. ^ Geoff Huston (2003-10-17). "Wildcard entries in DNS entries". IAB.
http://www.iab.org/documents/correspondence/2003-10-17-crocker-wildcards.html. Retrieved 2008-06-23.
8. ^ "ICANN imposes $2 internet tax". The Register. March 31, 2005.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/31/icann_2buck_fee.
9. ^ "U.N. Summit to Focus on Internet". Washington Post. December 5, 2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-
dyn/A36852-2003Dec4?language=printer.
10. ^ a b "Bush administration annexes internet". The Register. July 1, 2005.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/01/bush_net_policy/.
11. ^ "Power grab could split the net". CNET. October 3, 2005. http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-5886556.html.
12. ^ ICANN announcement [1], retrieved November 1, 2006
13. ^ CNET: Domain name price hikes come under fire
14. ^ "United States cedes control of the internet - but what now?". The Register. July 27, 2006.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/27/ntia_icann_meeting/.
15. ^ The Register, Burke Hansen Of ICANN and the Registerfly meltdown, March 3, 2007
16. ^ "Worst Spam Offenders" Notified by ICANN
17. ^ Registrar Accreditation Agreement
18. ^ "32nd International Public ICANN Meeting". ICANN. 2008-06-22. http://par.icann.org/.
19. ^ "U.S. DoC letter to ICANN's Chairman". 2008-07-30. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/comments/2008/ICANN_080730.html.
Retrieved 2008-08-03.
20. ^ Breach Notices Sent to Joker.com and DNS.com.cn
21. ^ Question no 78 by Bill Newton Dunn (H-0126/07 ) Subject: ICANN's levy from price increases imposed on Europeans

Other sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers 22/12/2009
ICANN - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Page 6 of 6

Franda, Marcus, The Emergence of an International Regime, ISBN 1-55587-999-3

Wass, Erica, Addressing the World, ISBN 0-7425-2809-X

Paré, Daniel J. Internet Governance in Transition, ISBN 0-7425-1846-9

Mueller, Milton L. Ruling the Root, ISBN 0-262-13412-8

Froomkin, A. Michael Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the
Constitution, 50 Duke Law Journal17 (2000)

Tim Schumacher, Thomas Ernstschneider & Andrea Wiehager Domain-Namen im Internet (text in German),
ISBN 3-540-42910-7

External links

ICANN website

Memorandum of Understanding Between the Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers

ICANNWatch

Site advocating the return of public representation in ICANN

VeriSign Domain Report - Quarterly analysis of global domain name market

DailyChanges.com — a free ICANN Registrar Statistics website
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN"
Categories: 1998 establishments | Internet governance | Domain name system | Internet in the United States | Non-
profit organizations based in California | Information technology organisations

This page was last modified on 20 December 2009 at 07:41.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See
Terms of Use for details.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

Contact us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation_for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers 22/12/2009