ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization headquartered in the United States. Responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet while also ensuring the Internet's smooth, secure and stable operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community.
Much of its work has concerned the Internet's global Domain Name System, including policy development for internationalization of the DNS, introduction of new generic top-level domains, and the operation of root name servers; the numbering facilities ICANN manages include the Internet Protocol address spaces for IPv4 and v6 in addition to the assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries.
ICANN's primary principles of operation have been described as helping preserve the operational stability of the Internet; promoting competition; achieving broad representation of the global Internet community, and developing policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes. The organization has often included a motto of "One World. One Internet." on annual reports beginning in 2010, on less formal publications, as well as their official website.
ICANN was officially incorporated in the state of California on September 30, 1998, with entrepreneur and philanthropist Esther Dyson as founding chairwoman. Originally headquartered in Marina del Rey in the same building as the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, its offices are now in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles.
History
Before the establishment of ICANN, the IANA function of administering RIRs was performed by Jon Postel, a computer science researcher who had been involved in the creation of ARPANET, first at UCLA and then at USC-ISI. In 1997 Postel testified before Congress that this had come about as a "side task" to this research work. The Information Sciences Institute was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, as was SRI International's Network Information Center, which also performed some assigned name functions.As the Internet grew and expanded globally, the U.S. Department of Commerce initiated a process to establish a new organization to perform the IANA functions. On January 30, 1998, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, issued for comment, "A Proposal to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses." The proposed rule making, or "Green Paper", was published in the Federal Register on February 20, 1998, providing opportunity for public comment. NTIA received more than 650 comments as of March 23, 1998, when the comment period closed.
The Green Paper proposed certain actions designed to privatize the management of Internet names and addresses in a manner that allows for the development of competition and facilitates global participation in Internet management. The Green Paper proposed for discussion a variety of issues relating to DNS management including private sector creation of a new not-for-profit corporation managed by a globally and functionally representative board of directors. ICANN was formed in response to this policy. ICANN managed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority under contract to the United States Department of Commerce and pursuant to an agreement with the IETF.
ICANN is a public-benefit nonprofit corporation "organized under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law for charitable and public purposes." ICANN was established in California due to the presence of Postel, who was a founder of ICANN and was set to be its first Chief Technology Officer prior to his unexpected death. ICANN formerly operated from the same Marina del Rey building where Postel formerly worked, which is home to an office of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. However, ICANN's headquarters is now located in the nearby Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Per its original by-laws, primary responsibility for policy formation in ICANN was to be delegated to three supporting organizations, each of which was to develop and recommend substantive policies and procedures for the management of the addresses within their respective scope. They were also required to be financially independent from ICANN. As expected, the RIRs and IETF agreed to serve as the Address Supporting Organization and Protocol Supporting Organization respectively, and ICANN issued a call for interested parties to propose the structure and composition of the Domain Name Supporting Organization. In March 1999, the ICANN Board, based in part on the DNSO proposals received, decided instead on an alternate construction for the DNSO which delineated specific constituencies bodies within ICANN itself, thus adding primary responsibility for DNS policy development to ICANN's existing duties of oversight and coordination.
On July 26, 2006, the United States government renewed the contract with ICANN for performance of the IANA function for an additional one to five years. The context of ICANN's relationship with the U.S. government was clarified on September 29, 2006, when ICANN signed a new memorandum of understanding with the United States Department of Commerce. This document gave the DOC oversight over some of the ICANN operations.
In July 2008, the DOC reiterated an earlier statement that it has "no plans to transition management of the authoritative root zone file to ICANN". The letter also stresses the separate roles of the IANA and VeriSign.
On September 30, 2009, ICANN signed an agreement with the DOC that confirmed ICANN's commitment to a multistakeholder governance model, but did not remove it from DOC oversight and control. The Affirmation of Commitments, which aimed to create international oversight, ran into criticism.
On March 10, 2016, ICANN and the DOC signed a historic, culminating agreement to finally remove ICANN and IANA from the control and oversight of the DOC. On October 1, 2016, ICANN was freed from U.S. government oversight.
Since its creation, ICANN has been the subject of criticism and controversy. In 2000, professor Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami School of Law argued that ICANN's relationship with the U.S. Department of Commerce is illegal, in violation of either the Constitution or federal statutes. On June 10, 2024, it was announced that Kurt Erik Lindqvist, who has been CEO of the London Internet Exchange since 2019, was to become the new president and CEO of ICANN on December 5, 2024.
Notable events
On March 18, 2002, publicly elected At-Large Representative for North America board member Karl Auerbach sued ICANN in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California, to gain access to ICANN's accounting records without restriction. Judge Dzintra Janavs ruled in Auerbach's favor on July 29, 2002.During September and October 2003, ICANN played a crucial role in the conflict over VeriSign's "wild card" DNS service Site Finder. After an open letter from ICANN issuing an ultimatum to VeriSign, later endorsed by the Internet Architecture Board, the company voluntarily ended the service on October 4, 2003. After this action, VeriSign filed a lawsuit against ICANN on February 27, 2004, claiming that ICANN had exceeded its authority. By this lawsuit, VeriSign sought to reduce ambiguity about ICANN's authority. The antitrust component of VeriSign's claim was dismissed during August 2004. VeriSign's challenge that ICANN overstepped its contractual rights is currently outstanding. A proposed settlement already approved by ICANN's board would resolve VeriSign's challenge to ICANN in exchange for the right to increase pricing on.com domains. At the meeting of ICANN in Rome, which took place from March 2 to 6, 2004, ICANN agreed to ask approval of the U.S. Department of Commerce for the Waiting List Service of VeriSign.
On May 17, 2004, ICANN published a proposed budget for the year 2004–05. It included proposals to increase the openness and professionalism of its operations, and increased its proposed spending from US$8.27 million to $15.83 million. The increase was to be funded by the introduction of new top-level domains, charges to domain registries, and a fee for some domain name registrations, renewals and transfers. The Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries, which represents the RIRs of 39 countries, rejected the increase, accusing ICANN of a lack of financial prudence and criticizing what it describes as ICANN's "unrealistic political and operational targets". Despite the criticism, the registry agreement for the top-level domains and includes a US$2 fee on every domain the licensed companies sell or renew.
After a second round of negotiations during 2004, the TLDs,,,,, and were introduced during 2005.
Image:Cerf's Up-marquee-20071031.jpg|thumb|ICANN meeting, Los Angeles USA, 2007. The sign refers to Vint Cerf, then chairman of the board of directors, who is working on the so-called Interplanetary Internet.
On February 28, 2006, ICANN's board approved a settlement with VeriSign in the lawsuit resulting from SiteFinder that involved allowing VeriSign to raise its registration fees by up to 7% a year. This was criticised by a few members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Small Business Committee.
During February 2007, ICANN began procedures to end accreditation of one of their registrars, RegisterFly amid charges and lawsuits involving fraud, and criticism of ICANN's management of the situation. ICANN has been the subject of criticism as a result of its handling of RegisterFly, and the harm caused to thousands of clients as a result of what has been termed ICANN's "laissez faire attitude toward customer allegations of fraud".
On May 23, 2008, ICANN issued enforcement notices against ten accredited registrars and announced this through a press release entitled "'Worst Spam Offenders' Notified by ICANN, Compliance system working to correct Whois and other issues." This was largely in response to a report issued by KnujOn, called "The 10 Worst Registrars" in terms of spam advertised junk product sites and compliance failure. The mention of the word "spam" in the title of the ICANN memo is somewhat misleading since ICANN does not address issues of spam or email abuse. Website content and usage are not within ICANN's mandate. However, the KnujOn report details how various registrars have not complied with their contractual obligations under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. The main point of the KnujOn research was to demonstrate the relationships between compliance failure, illicit product traffic, and spam. The report demonstrated that out of 900 ICANN accredited registrars, fewer than 20 held 90% of the web domains advertised in spam. These same registrars were also most frequently cited by KnujOn as failing to resolve complaints made through the Whois Data Problem Reporting System.
On June 26, 2008, the ICANN Board started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains." This program envisioned the availability of many new or already proposed domains, as well a new application and implementation process.
On October 1, 2008, ICANN issued breach notices against Joker and Beijing Innovative Linkage Technology Ltd. after further researching reports and complaints issued by KnujOn. These notices gave the registrars 15 days to fix their Whois investigation efforts.
In 2010, ICANN approved a major review of its policies with respect to accountability, transparency, and public participation by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. This external review was an assistance of the work of ICANN's Accountability and Transparency Review team.
On February 3, 2011, ICANN announced that it had distributed the last batch of its remaining IPv4 addresses to the world's five RIRs ; these registries began assigning the final IPv4 addresses within their regions until they completely ran out.
On June 20, 2011, the ICANN board voted to end most restrictions on the names of generic top-level domains. Companies and organizations became able to choose essentially arbitrary top-level Internet domain names. The use of non-Latin characters is also allowed in gTLDs. ICANN began accepting applications for new gTLDS on January 12, 2012. The initial price to apply for a new gTLD was set at $185,000 and the annual renewal fee is $25,000.
During December 2011, the Federal Trade Commission stated ICANN had long failed to provide safeguards that protect consumers from online swindlers.
Following the 2013 NSA spying scandal, ICANN endorsed the Montevideo Statement, although no direct connection between these could be proven.
On October 1, 2016, ICANN ended its contract with the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration and entered the private sector.
The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation has had an impact on ICANN's operations, which had to be fixed via some last minute changes.