Since 1985, non-state actors under Jon Postel’s leadership have experimented creating virtual national spaces on the Internet through so-called “country code top level domain names” (ccTLDs). There are 251 ccTLDs on the Internet. In 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – the newly established coordination body for Internet addresses including ccTLDs – stressed out the principle of private sector leadership instead of public sector administration of Internet identifiers. ICANN’s coordination of ccTLDs required state actors to comply with the principle of private sector leadership in a top-down manner.As of 2009, the question of how to govern ccTLDs is still disputed at the national level between state actors and non-state actors, with state actors starting to reassert their power over ccTLDs, ignoring the principle of private sector leadership recommended by ICANN. This study presents five different national ccTLDs dispute cases, to investigate why national ccTLDs disputes have increased after the establishment of ICANN and how are state actors trying to regain control over ccTLDs.To download and read this article by Y. J. Park in the International Journal of Communications Law and Policy, see:
ijclp.net/files/ijclp_web-doc_10-13-2009.pdf
Tag Archives: country code Top Level Domains
ICANN: Webinars: Synchronised IDN ccTLDs
ICANN posted on 22 March 2010 a Proposed Implementation Plan for Synchronized IDN ccTLDs.Synchronized IDN ccTLDs are described by situations in the Fast Track Process where:
- IDN ccTLDs are requested in more than one official language or script in a country/territory,
- the requests for corresponding multiple strings are considered equivalent,
- delegation would solve a significant problem for Internet users, and
- users accessing domains under any of the equivalent IDN ccTLDs expect that such domains will resolve to the same address or value.
There are several comments in the still open Public Comment forum for the proposed plan icann.org/en/public-comment/public-comment-201004-en.htm#synch. In addition, several independent observations and requests for clarification have been made by the technical community. In order to address these, ICANN has published a set of Questions & Answers (Q&A) and is conducting two webinars. The webinars will include a presentation of the Proposed Implementation Plan and allow for questions by interested participants.The webinars will be conducted on Thursday 15 April, 2010 at 01:00 UTC and at 14:00 UTC. The two webinars will contain the same content but are set to facilitate participation across time zones. Registration and more information about webinar participation can be found at the ICANN e-learning site.Participants should read the Q&A and the Implementation Plan for Synchronized IDN ccTLDs prior to the webinar.The webinars will be recorded and the recordings will be published in the public comment forum for the Proposed Implementation Plan. The public comment period was originally scheduled to end on 13 April, and is now extended through 17 April at 00:00 UTC.This ICANN announcement was sourced from:
icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-08apr10-en.htm