Agreement Ends Sole U.S. Control of Web-Naming Group ICANN

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 30, 2009 - 10:13am.

Washington - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit group that controls the Internet's domain name system (DNS), will have significantly less oversight from the U.S. government under a new agreement signed Wednesday with the Department of Commerce.

The deal puts the management of 11-year-old ICANN into the hands of a worldwide panel of government and private-sector representatives, with the goal of protecting the interests of international Internet users.

The U.S. will remain on ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee.

"This framework puts the public interest front and center, and it establishes processes for stakeholders around the world to review ICANN's performance," said NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling.

ICANN was formed in 1998 to oversee the DNS, which allows users to send email and reach websites using simple domain names (such as http://commerce.gov) rather than the numeric network server addresses (such as http://170.110.225.163).

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