[kictanet] ICANN head warns against putting Internet addresses under UN control

[alice]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/icann-head-warns-against-putting-internet-addresses-under-un-control/article1579820/

Alexander Dziadosz

Cairo — Reuters Published on Tuesday, May. 25, 2010 8:00AM EDT

The head of the U.S.-monitored organization in charge of assigning 
global internet addresses such as .com and .net has cautioned against 
proposals to put the group under UN or other international control.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), at the 
heart of global debate over who should run the Internet, is the closest 
thing the vast system of intertwined computer networks has to any 
central authority.

Countries such as Iran and Brazil have argued ICANN, which was founded 
in 1998 under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Commerce and still 
reports partly to the U.S. government, should cede its authority to a 
global body such as the United Nations.

“If you think of that rate, or pace, in technology, it’s just a lot more 
rapid than most traditional forms of policy development would be suited 
to,” Rod Beckstrom, the organisation’s chief executive, told Reuters on 
Monday.

Multilateral state control could make ICANN less nimble, he said, and 
therefore less likely to quickly develop technologies like 
Arabic-language domain names that feed rapidly expanding Internet demand.

“It’s hard to imagine any replacement for (the current system), and I 
feel I can say that somewhat objectively because I’ve worked for 
government as well,” he said, adding such a decision would be up to 
ICANN’s board of directors.

Still, the U.S. government last September agreed to changes that meant 
ICANN would no longer report solely to the United States, part of a push 
to give global constituents more say.

The agreement set up an international review team to monitor ICANN’s 
performance and it is due to issue initial recommendations at the end of 
the year. The deal also included guidelines aimed at making the group 
more transparent.

In 2003 a group of nations suggested ICANN come under the authority of 
the International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency, but that move 
stumbled on the view that the private sector is better able to run the 
Internet’s addressing system.

A contract that gives ICANN authority over much of the Internet’s basic 
plumbing, such as allocating Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, is up for 
review next year.

Mr. Beckstrom was in Cairo after Egypt became one of the first countries 
to win approval to use Arabic script on its national domain name, the 
last part of the address after the dot. ICANN approved use of non-Latin 
scripts in October.

Egypt said this month it had launched the first domain name using Arabic 
letters under the name .misr – the Arabic word for Egypt, which is spelt 
in Arabic script.

Countries including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab 
Emirates have so far won ICANN approval to use their national language 
scripts on the top-level domain.

ICANN is now on track to broaden the non-Latin script, top-level domain 
names that are available into generic names such as .org, Beckstrom said.

“Of course you know .com and .net. Those are English language names that 
are shortened, basically. Where’s the equivalent of that in Arabic?” he 
said. He said ICANN might be able to introduce generic domain names in 
international scripts by the end of this year, but the approval process 
made dates hard to forecast.