[AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN be independent

[McTim]

HI,

Is the "Affirmation" published yet?

I can't find it online.
-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route
indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel


On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:26 PM, annerachel <annerachel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Regulating the internet
> ICANN be independent
>
> Sep 24th 2009
> From *The Economist* print edition
> America is poised to loosen its control over cyberspace
>
> FORTY years ago this month American academics sent the first message over
> the ARPANET, a military network that was the precursor of today’s internet.
> A legacy of those efforts is that the American government continues to
> control the internet’s underlying technology—notably the system of
> allocating addresses. This is about to change, albeit slightly.
>
> For the past decade America has delegated some of its authority over the
> internet to a non-profit organisation called the Internet Corporation for
> Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—an arrangement other countries have
> complained about, both because they have little say in it and because
> ICANN’s management has occasionally proved erratic. ICANN’s latest mandate
> is due to expire on September 30th. The day before, a new accord is planned
> to come into effect, whereby America will pass some of its authority over
> ICANN to the “internet community” of businesses, individual users and other
> governments.
>
>  Previous agreements had maintained close American oversight over ICANN
> and imposed detailed reforms, but the latest document, called an
> “affirmation of commitments”, is only four pages long. It gives ICANN the
> autonomy to manage its own affairs. Whereas prior agreements had to be
> renewed every few years, the new one has no fixed term.
>
> The agreement sets up oversight panels that include representatives of
> foreign governments to conduct regular reviews of ICANN’s work in four
> areas: competition among generic domains (such as .com and .net), the
> handling of data on registrants, the security of the network and
> transparency, accountability and the public interest—the only panel on which
> America will retain a permanent seat. But there are no penalties if ICANN
> fails to heed its new overseers short of a termination of the accord.
>
> The changes at ICANN come at a time when the number of addresses is set to
> expand dramatically. Next year ICANN plans to allow the creation of many
> more domains. There are currently 21 generic ones in addition to the 280
> country suffixes (such as .uk for Britain). ICANN also intends to authorise
> domain names in other scripts, which will allow entire web addresses to be
> written in languages such as Chinese and Arabic.
>
> All this is controversial. Firms that have already spent a fortune to
> protect their brands online fear that the expansion will create a huge legal
> quagmire. Some American politicians are backing calls from trademark holders
> to call it off. Yet the firms that register new addresses support new
> domains. There are nearly 200m internet addresses in use (see chart), which
> are thought to generate more than $2.5 billion a year in renewal fees. New
> domains will add to that.
>
> The new set-up at ICANN will not placate countries such as China, Russia
> and Iran that want America to relinquish control entirely. However ICANN
> runs itself, it cannot alter the basic piping of the internet without
> America’s approval under another agreement that lasts until 2011. Even then,
> that is unlikely to change.
>
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>
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