Post Tagged with: "icann"

Dot-XXX Decision Exposes Cracks in Net Governance System

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC version, homepage version) looks at the recent ICANN decision to reject the creation of a new dot-xxx domain name extension. The year-long debate over whether to approve the adult-oriented domain may have long-term implications for Internet governance since it sparked enormous controversy and provided ample evidence of U.S. government intervention into ICANN matters.

With millions of dollars at stake, the Internet community has relied on ICANN to establish a transparent system for creating new domain name extensions. The resulting process has left many observers unhappy. They argue that it is too expensive (application costs alone are now estimated at US$250,000), too cumbersome (creation of the domain name extension may require months of negotiation after preliminary approval is granted), and too subjective (rather than establishing objective criteria, the decisions are fraught with subjective policy choices).

The prospect of a dot-xxx domain name extension created an immediate firestorm in the United States.

May 22, 2006 — 16 comments — Columns

ICANN Faces Pressure From Friends and Foes

My latest Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC version, homepage version) highlights the growing frustration with ICANN’s accountability and transparency. The column highlights the many policy issues associated with Internet governance and notes that over the past month even ICANN’s most ardent supporters have begun to express doubts about the organization' s lack of transparency and accountability.

April 4, 2006 — Comments are Disabled — Columns

CIRA’s Public Letter to ICANN

Late this afternoon, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which manages the dot-ca domain, issued an important public letter to ICANN. As a CIRA board member for the past five years, I'm particularly proud of this letter as the organization has publicly called on ICANN to follow accountable, transparent, and fair […]

March 17, 2006 — 1 comment — News

Chinese Domains Alter Net Governance Landscape

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC version, homepage version) looks back at last week’s announcement of changes to the Chinese domain name system. While Chinese officials have clarified that this does not involve an alternate root, I argue that the developments are significant since they reinforce the mounting frustration with ICANN’s failure to develop multilingual domain names. Moreover, China’s ability to implement its own IDN system without ICANN support is likely to serve as a model for many other countries around the world.

March 7, 2006 — 2 comments — Columns

The Credible Threat

If you have been following the debate over Internet governance over the past few years, you know that while ICANN supporters (U.S., Canadian, Australian governments; business lobby) and critics (developing world and occasionally Europe) argue over the optimal approach, particularly with respect to government involvement in the domain name system, the reality has been that possession is all. The U.S. government retains ultimate control over the system and thus the debate is somewhat academic. In assessing the outcome at the World Summit on the Information Society last fall, I argued that:

"the U.S. simply had a very strong hand and played it well. Changes to the governance structure ultimately requires U.S. agreement since possession is even more than the proverbial 9/10th of the law. The U.S. had loudly indicated that it was not prepared to make concessions. During the negotiations at the PrepCom it adopted a very hard line – even raising the prospect of pulling back on ccTLD sovereignty or turning over the Internet Governance Forum to a private sector group like ISOC. Without a credible threat (the threat being the creation of alternate root), the U.S. was able to maintain its position and ultimately force everyone else to deal."

The alternate root has always lurked in the background as a possibility that would force everyone to rethink their positions since it would enable a single country (or group of countries) to effectively pack up their bags and start a new game. The U.S. control would accordingly prove illusory since a new domain name system situated elsewhere would be subject to its own rules. While the two could theoretically co-exist by having ISPs simply recognize both roots, the system could "break" if both roots contained identical extensions. In other words, one root can have dot-com and other other can have dot-corp, but they can’t both have dot-com.

It is with that background in mind that people need to think about a press release issued yesterday in China announcing a revamping of its Internet domain name system. Starting tomorrow, China’s Ministry of Information Industry plans to begin offering four country-code domains. In addition to the dot-cn country code domain, three new Chinese character domains are on the way: dot-China, dot-net, and dot-com. As the People’s Daily Online notes this "means Internet users don’t have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States."

February 28, 2006 — 5 comments — News