The ICANN Controversy

ICANN is an acronym that stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and one of their primary objectives is to determine what countries and corporate entities are licensed certain domain names. The non-profit (American-based) organization is also somewhat responsible for shaping internet standards and practices. According to Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, ICANN is:

a public-private partnership that has representation from the technical community, the business community, governments, and representatives from the users of the Internet. It is tasked to help manage the coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers-in particular, Internet domain names, IP address numbers, protocol parameters, and port numbers-which are essential for the Internet to function. It also helps coordinate the stable operation of the Internet's root server system (Mark Frauenfelder as qtd. in Technology Review).

In other words, ICANN has in the past and continues to be the first place the global community looks in regards to internet policy and etiquette. While ICANN’s effectiveness has been satisfactory in the past, there is substantial concern as of late that the influence of American and Westerfn European countries and companies reflects an unfair advantage for the more economically powerful nations. This concern mirrors past cultural and political debates on orientalism and colonization.

In regards to the global community’s concern that ICANN reflects too much the interests of the Western World, Twomey asserts “Undoubtedly, part of the reaction of some of the developing countries is an anti-American sentiment and a broader desire to wrest the levers of international economic power from the North. The irony is that ICANN has been established to internationalize and privatize the functions that were previously being performed by the U.S. government in the original founding of the Internet” (Mark Frauenfelder as qtd. in Technology Review) Regardless of who founded the internet, the objectives of ICANN could not be more apparent. However, the concern of the international community is worth acknowledging and not entirely unfounded.

The reality that ICANN is still run by the U.S. Department of Commerce reflects not only the sluggishness of internet reform, but the American paradigm of ‘cowboy colonialism’ (most famous by the Bush and first Roosevelt Administrations). The solution proposed by several academics is less than ideal for quelling concerns of Western e-domination. Several American and British corporations are at the top of the list of successors if ICANN is stripped of internet regulation privileges at the end of September 2006. According to Gene J. Koprowski in eweek.com, “there are serious business, technological and political consequences that may emerge if the U.N. takes command of the Internet.” In addition, although there are several arguments for the ‘decolonization’ of the internet, Koprowski notes that “experts say that ICANN has actually empowered small ISPs to start up, on a shoestring budget, in small villages in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the current system has served those nations well.” Only time will tell if the world’s best internet interests are served by ICANN.