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ICANN Moves Forward on New Net Domains, Governance

Following a week of meetings and public forums in Yokohama, Japan, ICANN's powerful board of directors unanimously adopted a timeline for creating the first new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) since the advent of .com, .org and .net.

"They are going to do it," Center for Democracy and Technology attorney Alan Davidson said following the denouement of the week-long ICANN meeting Sunday.

Following years of debate over the addition of new domains, ICANN is finally "moving forward" with creating new gTLDs, added Davidson, who was in Yokohama all last week.

Under the finalized schedule, companies and organizations interested in operating the new Internet domains will have until mid-October to submit proposals for their creation to the ICANN board. Rather than naming the new domains itself, ICANN is calling on would-be Internet registries to come up with, and defend, their own proposed names for the new gTLDs.

Following a public comment period, ICANN will approve an as-yet undetermined number of those proposals, clearing the way for the chosen domains to be added to the legacy or "A" root server that is at the heart of the Internet's domain name system (DNS).

Under Sunday's schedule, which holds fairly true to a timeline proposed by the ICANN staff earlier this year, the ICANN board will announce its final selections before the end of December.

While ICANN refrained from establishing a hard and fast number of new domains that will be introduced, nearly every board member gave their own opinion as to how many should be added to the root, Davidson said. Suggestions from board members ranged from three to 10 new domains, leading observers to speculate that the final number will fall somewhere in that range, Davidson said.

For ICANN, the California not-for-profit company that has evolved into the de facto governance body for the Internet's addressing system, few issues have been as contentious as the addition of new gTLDs to the legacy root. Key disputes have centered on what new domains should be named, and how many should be added.

Suggestions of names for potential new domains have run the gamut from the relatively tame (.union, .banc) to the more contentious (.xxx, .sucks).

For the privilege of applying to become an operator of one of the new domains, organizations will have to plunk down a non-refundable fee of $50,000, the ICANN board decided Sunday. The money will cover the costs of the evaluation process, according to ICANN.

But that figure has already raised the hackles of non-commercial Internet stakeholders, Davidson said. ICANN has long struggled with criticisms that it favors the business community over individual Internet users.

ICANN also approved Sunday a set of criteria by which new gTLD proposals will be judged. Much like the finalized timeline, those criteria closely resemble the set of standards proposed by the ICANN staff earlier this year. They are available on the ICANN Web site, at www.icann.org.

In another major development Sunday, ICANN finalized the process for electing five "at-large" members to serve on the body's board of directors.

Intended to serve as the voice of the Internet public on the ICANN board, the at-large directors are scheduled to be elected by ICANN's growing at-large membership base at the beginning of October.

Responding to concerns raised by a cadre of civil liberties and public groups, the ICANN board agreed to lower the standards for individuals wishing to nominate themselves to run in the upcoming elections.

Under the final rules adopted Sunday, as many as seven candidates will be permitted to run for each of the five available board seats, which will be assigned one each to ICANN's five geographic regions (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Africa).

An internal ICANN committee will nominate at least one candidate for each of those seats and self-nominated candidates will be given an opportunity to fill out the ballots in each region. Self-nominees only have to obtain the support of 2 percent of the at-large members in their respective regions, rather than the 10 percent originally proposed by the ICANN staff.

The at-large membership is open to virtually anyone with a valid e-mail address and has been growing substantially as public interest groups and media organizations the world over have sought to publicize the elections.

The worldwide at-large membership shot up from about 20,000 people in June to about 45,000 as of last count, Davidson said. ICANN contends it is now receiving more than 1,000 new registrations daily, Davidson added.

The full text of the Sunday's ICANN board resolutions is available online, at www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-16jul00.htm.

Reported by Newsbytes, www.newsbytes.com.

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