ICANN Established
ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, United States, ICANN is a non-profit corporation that was established on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
In 1991 the United States government transferred responsibility for the non-military portion of ARPANET to the National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal government agency. The NSF lifted restrictions on commercial use of the network. Later, President Clinton directed the Secretary of Commerce to "privatize, increase competition in, and promote international participation in the Domain Name System" as part of his administration's 1997 A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce. At the beginning of October 1998 the NTIA declared that the new entity would be called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN would function on the basis of agreements with the NTIA, with oversight by the US Congress. It's tasks include responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier designation, generic (gTLD) and country code Top Level DNS management, and root server system management functions. More generally, ICANN is responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. Up to now, a good deal of its work has concerned the launching of new generic top-level domains. The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA role. ICANN's other chief function involves helping preserve the operational stability of the Internet; to encourage competition; to achieve broad representation of global Internet community; and to formulate policies appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.
The expectation was that the new entity would ensure competition in the delivery of domain registration services, usher in new gTLDs and work in an "open, transparent and bottom-up" manner. ICANN was later on established as a corporation under US law. Its interim board of directors was appointed, rather than elected, given the emphasis on continuity and stability. The structure of the organization was meant to be broadly representative, embracing governments, the DNS industry (registrars and registry operators), trademark and other business interests, network administrators and internet users. ICANN initially focused on maximizing competion, moving to recognize new registrars and launch a global Shared Registry Service. In April 1999 it announced the selection of 34 competitors for NSI in registration of domain names.
ICANN did not establish WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) as the exclusive source of domain name dispute resolution services. However, in 1999 the WIPO report proposed a uniform dispute resolution policy (UDRP) for all registrars in the .com, .net and .org TLDs. That recommendation was adopted, with WIPO itself and the US National Arbitration Forum (NAF) being sanctioned as the first dispute-resolution service providers under the UDRP. In 2000 eResolution and CPR were approved as UDRP arbitrators; eResolution later withdrew and was replaced in 2002 by the Hong Kong-based Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre. In conjunction with formation of the UDRP an Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) came into effect in the US in 1999 and had a considerable effect in reducing speculation in gTLD domain names.
No organization is without it's critics, however. Some critics and friends of ICANN have proposed that it would be best to institute a new body. Some propose an international authority that would make new rules or even lay the groundworks for an extensive Lex Informatica or Lex Cyberspace, a uniform legal regime covering all cyberspace activity. Others seek a UN-style body to allow for global government of consumer, intellectual property, access and other questions about how the High Speed Internet is being used. Examples are Ralph Nader's January 2001 call for a World Consumer Protection Organization (WCPO), on the framework of the World Intellectual Property Organization but "more democratically run" and the suggestion by the American Bar Association, in its major cyberspace law project report, for a global commission to lay out international rules regarding consumer protection, privacy, taxation, banking, gambling and other online activities.
On September 29, 2006, ICANN signed a new accord with the United States Department of Commerce (DOC) that is a move towards the full management of the Internet's system of centrally coordinated identifiers through the multi-stakeholder model of consultation that ICANN represents. Paul Twomey has been the President/CEO of ICANN since March 27, 2003. As of November 3, 2007, Peter Dengate Thrush replaced Vint Cerf as Chairman of the ICANN Board of Directors.