Fergie's Tech Blog

ICANN Faces Questions Over Accountability, Control

Grant Gross writes on ComputerWorld:

ICANN needs to take steps to ensure it cannot be taken over by governments and other outside entities, and it needs to create more ways to be held accountable to Internet users, constituents of the nonprofit organization said today.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization overseeing the Web's top-level domain naming system, heard several concerns during a meeting focused on improving confidence in ICANN. But concerns about outside takeover of the organization and critiques of ICANN's transparency came up several times during the Washington meeting.

An oversight agreement between the U.S. government and ICANN expires in a year, and ICANN officials say they don't plan to sign a new agreement. But in recent years, representatives of several other countries have called for an international organization to oversee the 10-year-old ICANN.

posted by Fergie @ 10/01/2008 11:47:00 AM