What Does ICANN Have to Do With the Domain Names I Buy?

ICANN is a private, non-profit technical coordination body for the Internet's name and numbering systems.

On September 29, 2006, ICANN signed a new agreement with the United States Department of Commerce (DOC) that is a step forward toward 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.

Participation in ICANN is open to all who have an interest in global Internet policy as it relates to ICANN's mission of technical coordination. ICANN provides many online forums which are accessible through ICANN's website, and the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees have active mailing lists for participants. Additionally, ICANN holds public meetings throughout the year.

ICANN holds periodic public meetings rotated between continents for the purpose of encouraging global participation in its processes. Critics argue that the locations of these meetings are often in countries with lower Internet usage and far away from locations that the majority of the Internet-using public can afford to reach. This makes public input or participation from traditional Internet users less likely.

Supporters reply that ICANN has a worldwide presence, and a key part of its mission is to build Internet use where it is weak.

ICANN established market competition for generic domain name (gTLD) registrations resulting in a lowering of domain name costs by 80% and saving consumers and businesses over US$1 billion annually in domain registration fees.

There are currently three Supporting Organizations. The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) deals with policy making on generic top-level domains (gTLDs). The Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) deals with policy making on country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs). The Address Supporting Organization (ASO) deals with policy making on IP addresses.

Working in coordination with the appropriate technical communities and stakeholders, ICANN adopted guidelines for the deployment of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), opening the way for registration of domains in hundreds of the world's languages.

In 2005-6, four new additional sponsored TLDs (.cat, .jobs, .mobi, and .travel) were successfully launched. ICANN's GSNO is currently developing policy recommendations for introduction of additional gTLDs.

ICANN implemented a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which has been used to resolve more than 5000 disputes over the rights to domain names. The UDRP is designed to be efficient and cost effective. With the deployment of IPv6, the new IP address numbering protocol, global network interoperability continues to be a primary mission for ICANN.

In response to community concerns over privacy and accessibility, ICANN is hosting several workshops regarding Whois, the public database of domain name registrations.

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