Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
ICANN holds periodic public meetings rotated between continents for the expressed purpose of encouraging global participation in its processes. Critics argue that the locations of these meetings are often in countries with lower Internet usage and far away from locations that the majority of the Internet-using public can afford to reach, thus making public input or participation from traditional Internet users less likely. ICANN has a worldwide remit and a key part of its mission is to build Internet use where it is weak.
ICANN was set up in California due to the presence of Jon Postel, who was a founder of ICANN and was set to be its first CTO prior to his unexpected death. ICANN remains in the same building where he worked at his home to an office of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California.
The ICANN Board made a resolutions, preliminary reports and minutes of the meetings are published for the public to view on the ICANN website. But there were some criticisms from ICANN constituencies like the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) and the At – Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) that there is not enough public disclosure and that too many discussions take place out of sight of the public.
One task that ICANN was asked to do was to address the issue of domain name ownership resolution for generic top - level domains (gTLDs). ICANN’s also attempt at such a policy was drafted in close cooperation with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). As a result it became known as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
This policy attempts to provide a mechanism for rapid, cheap and reasonable resolution of domain name conflicts, avoiding the traditional court system for disputes by allowing cases to be brought to one of a set of bodies that arbitrate domain name disputes. ICANN policy state that a domain registrant MUST agree to be bound by the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) - they cannot get a domain name without agreeing to this.
The Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) decision patterns has led some to conclude that compulsory domain name arbitration is less likely to give a fair hearing to domain name owners asserting defenses under the First Amendment and other laws, compared to the federal courts of appeal in particular.
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