Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Ethics Fight Over Domain Names Intensifies

Pfanner, Eric. "Ethics Fight Over Domain Names Intensifies." The New York Times, March 18, 2012.

From the article: "A boardroom dispute over ethics has broken out at the organization that maintains the Internet address system after its most important supporter, the United States government, reproached the group for governance standards said to fall short of “requirements requested by the global community.”

The Commerce Department said this month that while it was temporarily extending a contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to manage the allocation of computers’ Internet protocol addresses — and the .com and .net names of Web sites associated with them — it warned the organization that it needed to tighten its rules against conflicts of interest or risk losing a central role.

Icann, as the company is known, has filled that role since 1998. The Commerce Department said it had received no suitable bids for the contract, and was temporarily extending Icann’s services for six months.

After the department’s announcement, the soon-to-depart chief of Icann, Rod Beckstrom, went on the offensive, taking an unusual public swipe at his own organization’s 21-member board." Read more

See Also
Rod Beckstrom, "Beckstrom Opening Ceremony Speech ICANN Costa Rica" (March 12, 2012).