Internet caretaker ICANN to escape US control
Internet caretaker ICANN to escape US control
AFP By Glenn Chapman
14 hours ago
San Francisco (AFP) - The head of the private agency
entrusted with running the Internet has said that the group is on course to
break free of US oversight late next year.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) chief Fadi Chehade expressed his confidence in the move during a press
briefing at the opening of the nonprofit organization's meeting this week in
Los Angeles.
"ICANN is in a very solid, confident place
today," Chehade said of its readiness for a 'post US-government role' in
charge of the Internet addressing system.
The timeline for the shift is months rather than years,
according to Chehade.
While cautioning that there was no strict deadline, he
said that substantial progress has been made toward ICANN being answerable to a
diverse, global group of "stakeholders" and not the just the US government,
as has long been the case.
The US government in March of this year announced that it
is open to not renewing a contract with ICANN that expires in about 11 months,
provided a new oversight system is in place that represents the spectrum of
interests and can be counted on to keep the Internet addressing structure
reliable.
ICANN plans to hand a proposal fitting the bill to the US
Department of Commerce next year.
"If the US government is satisfied, they would not
renew the contract," Chehade said.
"There are many people in the community who would
like to see we not renew the contract past 2015."
If US officials are unhappy with the proposal, the
contract could be renewed for a short period to allow time for it to be
revised.
- Grabs for control -
As the US steps back from overseeing ICANN, states and
corporations are grabbing for the reins.
ICANN has gone from being behind the scenes tending to
the task of managing website addresses to being center stage in a play for
power on the Internet.
"Governments want to exert control over the sweeping
transnational power of the Internet that is effecting their policies, politics,
social fabric and/or their economic conditions," Chehade told AFP just
days before the group gathered in Los Angeles to tackle an array of hot issues.
"The other groups are large corporations concerned
about security issues," he continued while discussing forces striving for
influence over the organization.
"Therefore, they are stepping in with force to
figure out how to reduce potential harm to customers and to their
businesses."
Governance of the Internet will be a high-profile topic
at the ICANN 51 meeting that will continue through October 16 in Los Angeles.
US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker addressed the
gathering on Monday, affirming support for ICANN being accountable to the
"global multistakeholder community" and not to any single
organization.
“Let me be clear about this," Pritzker said.
"The United States will not allow the global
Internet to be co-opted by any person, entity or nation seeking to substitute
their parochial world view for the collective wisdom of this community."
The ICANN 51 agenda includes tackling whether identities
of those running websites should be public or whether privacy should be
safeguarded and operators true names revealed only with proper court orders.
Another hot topic is the historic roll-out of a vast
array of new domain names that has seen controversy over website address
endings such as .wine or .gay.
"There is quite a bit of thematic focus on the
top-level domain space," Chehade said, referring to online neighborhoods
making debuts.
"ICANN is not in the content policing business; this
is not what we do," he added when asked about potential for some domain
operators to allow inappropriate material.
"We just want to make sure the company that gets the
domain can deliver on what they say and do it with reliability."
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