What is ICANN?
ICANN is the new non-profit corporation that is assuming
responsibility from the U.S. Government for coordinating
certain Internet technical functions, including the
management of Internet domain name system. More information
about ICANN can be found at
http://www.icann.org.
What is ICANN's role?
ICANN's mission is to protect and preserve the stability,
integrity and utility – on behalf of the global
Internet community – of the DNS and the authoritative
root ICANN was established to manage. ICANN has no role
to play with alternate roots so long as these and other
analogous efforts do not create instabilities in the
DNS or otherwise impair the stability of the authoritative
root. But ICANN does have a role to play in educating
and informing about threats to the Internet's reliability
and stability.
ICANN is a consensus development body for the global
Internet community, and its focus is the development
of consensus policies relating to the single authoritative
root and the DNS. These policies include those that
allow the orderly introduction of new TLDs.
There are those–including operators of commercialized
alternate roots–who pursue unilateral actions
outside the ICANN consensus-development process. Many
hope to circumvent these processes by claiming to establish
some prior right to a top-level domain name. ICANN,
however, recognizes no such prior claim. ICANN will
continue to reflect the public policy consensus of the
global Internet community over the private claims of
the few who try to bypass this consensus.
|
