At this point of time, the domain space management in the
Cyberspace is largely with ICANN. ICANN is a not for profit organization under
a contract from the Department of Commerce, US Government to manage the domain
name system.
ICANN manages more than 30 million domain names 60 % of
which fall under the .com TLD. It administers the registrations of approved
TLDs through a set of accredited registrars and manages the root server system
consisting of 13 root servers which resolve the domain names as entered in a
client's browser to the appropriate IP address. Additionally the Country code
registries are being managed by different country administrations under a lose
administrative and technical control of the ICANN.
ICANN has also created an experimental platform for
"Multilingual
Domain Names" in non English characters where the non English domain names
are mapped to a converted ASCII string of characters before being presented
for resolution to the domain name server.
Of late, ICANN has been under pressure from WIPO to address
various IPR issues arising out of the registration of domain names. WIPO
guidelines in this regard are being followed by ICANN through the UDRP
procedure.
ICANN itself has a Management Board and a President
to take care of its working. The Board meets from time to time at different
places and takes policy decisions. In this process it does float its ideas and
invites public comments. ICANN also tried to get public participation into the
policy making decisions through a system of direct elections to its board from
the Internet user community.
Restructuring of ICANN
Recently, after the last meeting of the Board at Bucharest,
ICANN has decided to restructure its management board and in the new
structure, the elected members would be replaced with nominated members from
the At Large Community to an At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) which will
have a non voting representative in the Board.
As a result of these developments, ICANN has for its own
practical difficulties reduced the operation of a democratic public
participation and is trying to impose its authority through the monopoly of
the domain name system as well as its close relation with the US Government.
These issues will be coming up for ratification in the next ICANN meeting at
Shanghai.
In the new structuring proposed, a body of voluntary
organizations acting as an "At Large Organizing Committee" formed
a sub committee to recommend the composition of the At Large Advisory
Committee which is presently in the process of finalizing its recommendations.
Alternate Domain Name Management Authorities (ADNMA)
In this process of creating an advisory body representing
the At Large Community in ICANN administration, the ALOC has received a
request from OpenNIC to join the At Large Organization Committee. This
has raised a debate on the acceptability of such institutions in the domain
name system managed by ICANN.
OpenNIC is a typical organization which is working at
developing an alternate domain name system outside the TLD s suggested and
controlled by ICANN. This effort is referred to as "Inclusive System of Domain
Names" where these organizations create alternate name server systems capable
of resolving the TLDs not in the list of TLD s approved by ICANN. ADNS, and
New.net are some of the organizations who belong to this category. Some of
them register domain names for a price and some are providing free domain name
registrations.
Some of the members of the ALOC are of the view that since
the Inclusive Domain Name supporters are not conforming to the larger control
of ICANN, they should be excluded from the system of domain names.
In recent days, there has been also an effort in the US to
force the ISP s not to provide access to the alternate domain names outside
the ICANN regime. If therefore the US Government and WIPO take the side of
ICANN in this critical hour the ADNMA s can be blocked out of the Internet
system.
This raises an important policy issue such as
"Is this Blocking out of ADNMA s desirable?"
"Will it create a policy of "Apartheid?".
"Will it divide the Internet world into ICANN and Non-ICANN
" domains?
It appears that New.Net is being accessed by around 144
million Internet users. Hence all the ADNMA s put together must be having
access to a very significant part of the Netizen population. As for the
Community, it is immaterial who is managing the root server system as long as
they are managed efficiently and there is no clash of domain names between
different name servers.
Unfortunately, ICANN has been the first to create a
collision of domain names by creating the .biz TLD which was already existing
in the alternate domain name space. This was an avoidable confrontation though
the ADNMA s were in no position to challenge the ICANN's intrusion into a TLD
already being used by a part of the community.
The alternate system has created TLDs including .xxx
and .porn which sooner or later ICANN would also like to introduce. These may
lead to collisions of domain names if ICANN tries to bulldoze its authority.
There can also be clashes in the Domain Name dispute area
for a whole class of domain names such as the .com2 family of the alternate
system and the dot COM system of ICANN.
At the same time, if ICANN's attempts to avoid such
collisions by forcing ISP s not to give access to non ICANN domains, it would
be an act which would be as repressive as the being practiced in Myanmar or
China.
If however these alternate domain name authorities go
unregulated, will they start creating collisions? by choosing TLDs already
used by ICANN? Will they create more Domain Name disputes arising out of
similarity of names? or will they cheat the public and undermine the
confidence of the public on the Internet system? are also issues to be
considered.
naavi.org therefore strongly feels that the alternate
domain name authorities should quickly be brought under a regulatory mechanism
and the best way to do it is to accommodate them in the ICANN structure.
Ideally a separate board membership should be reserved for a representative of
the alternate domain name authorities who should conform to certain technical
standards and business ethics as required.
The request for being a part of the At Large Organizing
Committee is a much smaller request than what naavi.org proposes and hence
there should not be any hesitation on this request. But it remains to be seen
if ICANN and the present members of ALOC would look at the ADNMA s as
their business rivals and ICANN would like to keep the monopoly on the domain
name system to itself.
If ICANN tries to remain a monopoly, sooner or later it may
have to face charges similar to Microsoft on stifling technology developments
through an unfair restriction on the competitors. If so, it would be
interesting to find the US Government (Department of Commerce) on the same
side as Microsoft in the anti-trust suit.
