By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Friday, September 13, 2002; 5:41 PM
The U.S. government will renew a California nonprofit's authority to
manage the Internet's global addressing system, a top Commerce
Department official said today.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
manages the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) under agreements with the U.S.
government that are up for renewal at the end of this month.
"At this point we do anticipate that there will be an extension" of
ICANN's authority, Commerce Department Undersecretary Nancy Victory
told reporters in a conference call. Victory is the head of the
Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA), which oversees ICANN.
ICANN, based in Marina del Rey, has been criticized for failing to
involve the online public in its decisions, but Victory said she has
been encouraged by internal ICANN reforms. She added that new
agreements with ICANN would include provisions "designed to ensure
that we continue progress forward with the reform effort."
Victory did not say when the renewal of ICANN's authority would be
completed, nor did she indicate how long it would run.
ICANN President Stuart Lynn said the group is "in discussions with the
Commerce Department right now about the precise shape" the agreements
will take.
He added that ICANN would continue pushing to enact internal reforms.
"We've made good progress, but we haven't completed it. There's still
work to be done," Lynn said.
Formed in 1998, ICANN was commissioned by the U.S. government to
inject competition into the domain name industry, which had been monopolized
by Internet addressing giant Network Solutions Inc. Networks Solutions
owned a government contract to operate the technical backbone of the
DNS, which was originally created by government-funded U.S.
scientists.
ICANN has accredited more than 100 new address retailers and approved
seven new globally available Internet domains that compete with
dot-com, dot-net and dot-org.
Earlier this year, ICANN embarked on an internal reform effort, but
critics still complain that the reform plans don't give a meaningful
voice to ordinary Internet users.
Victory said that the ICANN "experiment" needs more time to succeed, adding that while she is pleased with ICANN's reform efforts thus far, but she is not yet fully satisfied.
University of Miami Law Professor Michael Froomkin said he is not
surprised that the Commerce Department opted to renew the contract.
"They don't want to rebuild ICANN from scratch," he said.
Froomkin, editor ICANNWatch.org, a Web site often critical of ICANN, said it
will be more interesting to see how much pressure the Commerce Department exerts on ICANN to reform itself.
Center for Democracy and Technology Policy Analyst Robert Courtney
agreed. "We've always sort of anticipated that the [memorandum of understanding] would be renewed. We continue to hope for and continue to push for some new provisions
to be included in the MOU," Courtney said. The agreement should clearly outline steps ICANN must take to improve its openness and transparency, Courtney said.
Froomkin said that Victory's resolve will be key to ICANN's future.
"What matters is the will of the NTIA, what they put in the agreement
is less important," he said. "What matters more than anything else is
when NTIA is willing to draw a line in the sand and really mean it."
Later this month, Victory will be part of the U.S. delegation at a
meeting of the International Telecommunications Union in Marrakech,
Morocco. The United States intends to oppose the ITU's efforts to
participate more in Internet regulation, Victory said.
