Opening up ICANN

Brian Watt Dec 1, 2006

TEXT OF STORY

SCOTT JAGOW: Internet domain names are big business. The company Verisign makes $6 dollars a year off every name ending in dot-com. There are 59 million of them. Yesterday Verisign signed another five-year deal with the government’s Internet watchdog group. That group begins a week-long meeting in Brazil. Brian Watt has more.


BRIAN WATT: The group is called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN.

Its agenda this week will include renewing the contracts on other popular domains like dot-org, dot-info, and dot-biz. ICANN’s critics say the bidding process for those contracts should be more open.

University of Miami law professor Michael Froomkin:

MICHAEL FROOMKIN: “ICANN and Transparency are kind of like oil and water. They just haven’t mixed yet. It’s a real shame, too”

Froomkin says another issue on the agenda is customer privacy:

FROOMKIN:“Right now if you want to register a domain name, it is next to impossible to keep your contact information private. Which means people have been stalked. They get marketed to. They get junk mail. And that’s a big concern for many people.”

ICANN will also discuss how to use characters from languages like Chinese and Arabic in Web addresses.

I’m Brian Watt for Marketplace.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.