ICANN Struggles With Web Growth
The U.S.-based agency that oversees Internet names worldwide was criticized Sunday for not approving new addresses fast enough as demand grows among Web surfers from California to China.
The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which was selected by the U.S. government in 1998 to regulate the system of domain names, took up the subject at its quarterly meeting in Stockholm as it faces growth in unsanctioned suffixes such as “.wine” and “.god.”
Until recently, ICANN officials had considered the alternatives no more than a nuisance since only a small percentage of Internet users can reach sites using these names because they require changes in computer network settings.
But skeptical delegates to the four-day meeting, which ends today, lined up behind the microphone in a standing-room-only public comment session on a report by ICANN’s president supporting accredited domain names as the only policy.
“We have to recognize that there is diversity,” said board member Karl Auerbach, who is often critical of the Marina del Rey-based agency. “There need not be a single name space that everybody is forced to adhere to.”
No policy decisions were expected during the meeting, and ICANN President M. Stuart Lynn stressed the paper was only to initiate discussion about the alternative names, which are run on master directories independent of the 13 sanctioned by ICANN and the U.S. government.
But Lynn’s view was clear as he underlined concerns that alternative names would collide with those approved by the body and create confusion in an ever-changing mass medium.
“People could find when they try to select a Web site they don’t know where they’ll end up,” Lynn said earlier in an interview. “Our concern is stability, so we’re not going to do things to jeopardize that.”
ICANN has little enforcement power, but many critics said it could slow down alternative naming systems by moving faster in approving its own.
Last November, the agency approved seven new suffixes, the first since the 1980s. The new suffixes are “.name” for individuals, “.pro” for professionals, “.aero” for aviation, “.coop” for business cooperatives, “.museum” for museums, “.biz” for businesses and “.info” for any individual, group or company.
The agency has said it wants to work out the kinks from the introduction of the seven before approving more.
“Everybody’s been waiting for years and years,” said Nigel Roberts, chief executive of the company that operates the “.gg” top-level domain for the British Channel Islands. “ICANN needs to take the brakes off a little and let market forces decide.”
ICANN also faced an internal challenge as a group of operators of country-specific Internet domain names voted to withdraw from an ICANN policy-setting group that they claim favors traditional suffixes such as “.com” and “.net” and “.org” at their expense.
The decision, which was subject to ratification, called for the establishment of a separate supporting organization that would provide more decision-making power.
