ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a California nonprofit organization formed on September 30,1998, that coordinates the Internet's global domain name system, under authority granted to it by the United States government. But the US government failed to exercise any real oversight of ICANN from the beginning, and ICANN was not accountable to anyone but its own insular board of directors. Now that the US role in
internet governance is soon coming to an end, what will happen to ICANN? ICANN was
never responsive to anyone other than its own insiders and special interests, ICANN failed to listen to objections over .xxx and the mindless expansion of generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) --
read the report to the US Congress discussed at the link below which you can read
here (pdf) --
expVC | expvc.com | domain name news: CRS Report To Congress On Internet Governance: "....
ICANN's actions in regard to the .xxx top-level domain and gTLD expansion led governments to argue for increased governmental influence on ICANN in light of ICANN's failure to be responsive to the concerns that were raised in regard to both initiatives...."
ICANN was
warned. But when you have the US government giving you
cover and immunity, it is very easy to be
unaccountable, and
unresponsive.
