The ccTLD operators never did actually have the guts to break away from ICANN.
An old post of mine from Kuro5hin.Org, dated “Sun Jun 3rd, 2001 at 09:26:56 PM EST”.
The operators of the country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) have finally fired the first shot in their ongoing feud with the American Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
The ccTLD operators have been in conflict with ICANN since the U.S. Department of Commerce first created it, but the rhetoric started heating up last fall, when the possiblity of breaking away completely was first publicly raised (see the Register’s coverage for this, as well as more background on the conflict). Peter de Blanc, from the Virgin Islands, called this the “nuclear” option at the time.
Well, the war’s heated up, though they stopped just short of nuclear yesterday, when the ccTLD operators voted to withdraw from ICANN’s Domain Name Support Organization (DNSO). While the full nuclear option would be to withdraw completely from ICANN and form a new indpendant root, they have pulled out of ICANN’s processes while still participating in its operation and maintaining their TLDs as components on the ICANN/U.S. Government root.
The coverage of this goes from tech press to mainstream (and we can expect it to spread):
and, of course:
Those of us who use or work with the independant DNS roots (as I work with The OpenNIC) naturally support this move by the ccTLD operators. In fact, many of us think that they need to go further and fully seperate themselves from ICANN as a completely seperate root operator themselves. By participating in ICANN, all of whose actions must be approved by the U.S. Departmnent of Commerce, they are placing themselves under the U.S. legally and functionally; not a wise move for the operators of domain names reserved for use by other countries.
So, come on folks! Take it all the way and get the U.S. Government out of the second most important protocol on the Net!
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