ICANN - Notable Events

Notable Events

On March 18, 2002, publicly elected At-Large Representative for North America board member Karl Auerbach sued ICANN in Superior Court in California to gain access to ICANN's accounting records without restriction. Auerbach won.

In September and October 2003, ICANN played a crucial role in the conflict over VeriSign's "wild card" DNS service Site Finder. After an open letter from ICANN issuing an ultimatum to VeriSign, later supported by the IAB, the company voluntarily shut down the service on October 4, 2003. Following this action, VeriSign filed a lawsuit against ICANN on February 27, 2004, claiming that ICANN had overstepped its authority. In this lawsuit, VeriSign sought to reduce ambiguity about ICANN's authority. The antitrust component of VeriSign's claim was dismissed in August 2004. VeriSign's broader challenge that ICANN overstepped its contractual rights is currently outstanding. A proposed settlement already approved by ICANN's board would resolve VeriSign's challenge to ICANN in exchange for the right to increase pricing on .com domains. At the meeting of ICANN in Rome, which took place from March 2 to March 6, 2004, ICANN agreed to ask approval of the US Department of Commerce for the Waiting List Service of VeriSign.

On May 17, 2004, ICANN published a proposed budget for the year 2004-05. It included proposals to increase the openness and professionalism of its operations, and greatly increased its proposed spending from US $8.27 million to $15.83 million. The increase was to be funded by the introduction of new top-level domains, charges to domain registries, and a fee for some domain name registrations, renewals and transfers (initially USD 0.20 for all domains within a country-code top-level domain, and USD 0.25 for all others). The Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR), which represents the Internet registries of 39 countries, rejected the increase, accusing ICANN of a lack of financial prudence and criticizing what it describes as ICANN's "unrealistic political and operational targets". Despite the criticism, the registry agreement for the top-level domains jobs and travel includes a US $2 fee on every domain the licensed companies sell or renew.

After a second round of negotiations in 2004, the TLDs eu, asia, travel, jobs, mobi, and cat were introduced in 2005.

On February 28, 2006, ICANN's board approved a settlement with VeriSign in the lawsuit resulting from SiteFinder that involved allowing VeriSign (the registry) to raise its registration fees by up to 7% a year. This was criticised by some people in the US House of Representatives' Small Business committee.

In February 2007, ICANN began the steps to remove accreditation of one of their registrars, RegisterFly amid charges and lawsuits involving fraud, and criticism of ICANN's handling of the situation. ICANN has been the subject of criticism as a result of its handling of RegisterFly, and the harm caused to thousands of clients due to what has been called ICANN's "laissez faire attitude toward customer allegations of fraud".

On May 23, 2008, ICANN issued Enforcement Notices against 10 Accredited Registrars and announced this through a press release entitled: "Worst Spam Offenders" Notified by ICANN, Compliance system working to correct Whois and other issues. This was largely in response to a report issued by KnujOn called The 10 Worst Registrars in terms of spam advertised junk product sites and compliance failure. The mention of the word spam in the title of the ICANN memo is somewhat misleading since ICANN does not address issues of spam or email abuse. Website content and usage are not within ICANN's mandate. However the KnujOn Report details how various registrars have not complied with their contractual obligations under the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). The main point of the KnujOn research was to demonstrate the relationships between compliance failure, illicit product traffic, and spam. The report demonstrated that out of 900 ICANN accredited Registrars fewer than 20 held 90% of the web domains advertised in spam. These same Registrars were also most frequently cited by KnujOn as failing to resolve complaints made through the Whois Data Problem Reporting System (WDPRS). On June 26, 2008, the ICANN Board started a new process of TLD naming policy to take a "significant step forward on the introduction of new generic top-level domains." This program envisions the availability of many new or already proposed domains, as well a new application and implementation process.

On October 1, 2008, ICANN issued Breach Notices against Joker and Beijing Innovative Linkage Technology Ltd. after further researching reports and complaints issued by KnujOn. These notices gave the Registrars 15 days to fix their Whois investigation efforts.

In 2010, ICANN approved a major review of its policies with respect to accountability, transparency, and public participation by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. This external review was in support of the work of ICANN's Accountability and Transparency Review team.

On February 3, 2011, ICANN announced that it had distributed the last batch of its remaining IPv4 addresses to the world’s five Regional Internet Registries, the organizations that manage IP addresses in different regions. These Registries will begin assigning the final IPv4 addresses within their regions until they run out completely, which could come as soon as early 2012.

On June 20, 2011 the ICANN board voted to end most restrictions on the names of generic top-level domains (gTLD). Companies and organizations will be able to choose essentially arbitrary top level Internet domain names. The use of non-Latin characters (such as Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, etc.) will also be allowed in gTLDs. ICANN will begin accepting applications for new gTLDS on January 12, 2012. The initial price to apply for a new gTLD will be $185,000. The renewal or the annual fee of the domain will further be $25,000. It is anticipated that many corporations will apply for gTLDs based on their brands. ICANN expects that the first batch of new gTLDs will be operational by the end of 2012. ICANN expects the new rules to significantly change the face of the Internet. Peter Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board of directors stated after the vote: "Today's decision will usher in a new Internet age. We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration. Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free." Some would argue that the innovative freedom Peter Thrush talks about starts at $185,000, and thus is not accessible to everyone.