Icann

The board of directors of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, will have nine new members when it meets this week in Los Angeles. Three of ICANN's supporting organizations each selected three directors to join the board of the nonprofit group, which is set to take over administration of the domain name system from the Commerce Department.

The head of the group that sets standards for the Internet's addressing system, who has been trying to restructure the group's board in a way that critics complain would favor companies over computer users, announced plans to step down next year. M. Stuart Lynn, president and chief executive of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, said he would step down in March 2003 for personal reasons.

The group that oversees the Internet's domain-name system was slapped with a lawsuit by one of its directors, who says he has been denied access to the organization's corporate records. Karl Auerbach, a director of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, filed suit to gain access to travel records, payroll figures and other day-to-day details of the organization that oversees the system that guides e-mail and Web browsers.

Yielding to pressure from Rep. Thomas J. Bliley (R-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Commerce, the Clinton administration called on the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers to drop its plans for charging domain name registrars a user fee of up to $1 per registration. ICANN, the Los Angeles-based nonprofit group formed to manage the domain name system, had proposed the user fee to finance its operations. But Bliley and others viewed it as an unauthorized Internet tax.

The group that oversees the Internet's domain-name system said individual users should have a voice in the organization but declined to open itself up to global elections. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, said the 500 million people who use the Internet should be given a formal role in helping oversee the system that guides e-mail and Web browsers around cyberspace.

The nonprofit group that oversees the Internet addressing system won an endorsement from congressional investigators. The General Accounting Office said in a report to Congress that the U.S. Commerce Department had the legal authority to hand off some key administrative functions to the Los Angeles-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The 2-year-old group, known as ICANN, may also collect user fees to cover its cost, the GAO said.

Meanwhile, two other groups of companies led by Idealab-backed DotTV applied for the suffixes .nom and .pro. Neither proposal fared well in reviews conducted by ICANN staff members and a group of outside advisors. The reviewers said the DotNom Consortium's application was technically weak, and that the business plan submitted by the DotPro Consortium wasn't specific enough. After striking a high-profile deal to register Internet addresses that end in .

The Markle Foundation is expected to announce a $200,000 grant today to help the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers fund a general election that would give individual users of the global computer network a say in how the Internet is used. The New York-based Markle Foundation recently announced plans to give away $100 million during the next three to five years to ensure that the public is served by the Internet and other emerging technologies.

By the end of this year, addresses on the Web might be allowed to use new suffixes such as .shop, .tel and .news in addition to existing suffixes such as .com and .org. But how many more suffixes or how they will be used remains to be worked out. The resolution was passed unanimously Sunday by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers's 19-member board at a conference in Japan. Some praised it as a boon to companies that register and sell the Internet labels.

Two new Internet domain names -- ".post" and ".travel" -- could appear online as early as next year as the Internet's key oversight board announced preliminary approval. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, in advancing the applications for postal services and the travel industry, said it was still considering eight other proposals including ".asia," ".jobs" and ".xxx." Also in the works is ".eu" for the European Union.