ICANN Reaches Landmark Agreement With Country Domains

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ICANN Reaches Landmark Agreement With Country Domains

Jun 27, 2003 1:14 PM PDT
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) concluded its Montreal meeting with a landmark agreement that cements the relationship between ICANN and the worldwide community of country-code top-level domain registries. "Today's agreement represents both a historic achievement for the ICANN process, and a powerful vote of confidence in the newly reformed ICANN 2.0," said Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and CEO.

Finalizing four years of dialogue and negotiation, the creation of the Country-Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) heralds a new era of cooperative and productive relations among ICANN and the country-code domain registries. The structure and rules for ICANN's new ccNSO were endorsed by domain registry organizations and individual managers representing every region and populated continent. "Today's agreement is a testament to how ICANN is seen as a forum the international Top Level Domain administrators can come together and jointly address issues," said Twomey.

A second major initiative, was a two-day workshop on the future of the domain name system's Whois databases, was widely praised as a major advance in the global dialogue on the complex interactions of privacy, law enforcement, technical stability, and intellectual property rights that arise in connection with Whois. Whois data is the personal data collected by registrars from their customers for technical and administrative needs. The burning question with Whois for many concerned groups is how much information should be publicly available. "Although no definitive policy was formed—a lot of healthy dialogue took place paving the way for future policy development," said Twomey. The work program for solving some of the issues discussed will be completed over the next several weeks.

The board approved a resolution that effectively launches organizing of the individual Internet user community (At-Large) for informed participation and representation in ICANN. With this approval, the Interim At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) will begin accepting applications from groups to be designated as "At-Large Structures"—the first step in building a global framework for structured involvement of At-Large in ICANN. The ALAC was appointed by ICANN to inform, involve, and represent At-Large in ICANN issues that can affect them, and to provide ICANN with advice on these issues and activities.

New board members were seated at the conclusion of the meeting and will join seven continuing board members on the New ICANN Board. For biographies go to Nominees to the ICANN Board of Directors

Board Member Status:

Incoming (New) Directors:

Michael Palage

Tricia Drakes

Hagen Hultzsch (Starting after 2003 annual meeting)

Veni Markovski

Thomas Niles

Hualin Qian

Njeri Rionge

Non-voting Liaisons:

Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi

Steven Crocker