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ICANN free of U.S. supervision, Internet becomes independent
By siliconindia
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Monday, 05 October 2009, 17:32 IST
Bangalore: A more diverse management body will run the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), ending the U.S. government's 11 year supervision of the organization, under the Joint Project Agreement (JPA). ICANN has inked a new document that gives the non-profit organization sovereignty for the first time, effective October 1.
Instead, now a committee comprising ICANN officials, experts and the U.S. government will review ICANN's performance every three years. The measure has earned praise from critics, like the European Union, which believed that the U.S. government had been wielding too much influence over the organization.
Established in 1998 under the U.S. Department of Commerce, ICANN oversees the infrastructure that matches Web addresses to their corresponding IP addresses. It coordinates these identify-and-match tasks, enabling Internet users anywhere to locate and access a site via a decipherable Web address, rather than a string of numbers.
The current change means that the Internet will be a lot more independent and will accelerate the creation of non-English Web addresses. Paul Levins, ICANN's Executive Officer and Vice President of Corporate Affairs told ZDNet Asia, "There's not going to be any agreement. It's over. It's done. There's not going to be a JPA."
A new document, labeled an "affirmation of commitments", will now take the place of the JPA starting October 1, marking the day ICANN will operate as a private sector organization. "It's a huge moment for the Internet," said Levins. "It really means that this resource is free from control, it's not being directed by any one entity but will be coordinated by stakeholders for all Internet users everywhere."
One of the ICANN's upcoming major initiatives is the internationalization of main domain names such as .org and .info, which Internet users currently cannot input using non-Latin characters such as Russian, Chinese or Korean. Provisions next year will be established to support this.
