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ICANN's Historical Relationship with the U.S. Government

ICANN History Project

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The first track of the ICANN History Project is integral to ICANN’s formation, specifically the relationship between the U.S. Government and ICANN. ICANN grew out of a 1998 commitment from the U.S. Government to transfer the management of the domain name system to a new non-profit corporation based in the U.S. with global participation. 

This track, however, begins long before ICANN was established and continues to the present day. Check out the timeline, interviews, and resources to learn more about the U.S. Government’s role in the establishment and development of ICANN, to explore the evolution of their relationship, and to discover the steps leading up to the IANA Stewardship Transition.

Timeline

Interviews

Ira Magaziner | Vint Cerf | Becky Burr | Fadi Chehadé | Steve Crocker | Peter Dengate-Thrush | Paul Twomey | Lawrence Strickling

Ira Magaziner on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Interview with Ira Magaziner, Senior Policy Advisor and Chief Internet Policy Advisor to President Clinton (1993-1998)

 

Audio Recording: EN   

Vint Cerf on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Interview with Vint Cerf, also known as one of the Fathers of the Internet, ICANN Board Chair (2000-2007)

 

Audio Recording : EN    

Becky Burr on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Interview with Becky Burr, ICANN Board (2016-present), Associate Administrator and Director of International Affairs at the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (1997-2000)

 

Audio Recording: EN     

Fadi Chehadé on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Interview with Fadi Chehadé, ICANN CEO (2012-2016)

 

Audio Recording : EN  

Steve Crocker on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Interview with Steve Crocker, ICANN Board Chair (2011-2017),  Chair of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (2002-2010)

 

Audio Recording: EN 

Peter Dengate-Thrush on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Interview with Peter Dengate-Thrush, ICANN Board Chair (2007-2011)

 

Audio Recording: EN     

Paul Twomey on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Interview with Paul Twomey, ICANN CEO (2003-2009), Chair of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (1999-2002), Australian Government Special Adviser for Information Economy and Technology (1998-2000)

 

Audio Recording: EN 

Lawrence Strickling on ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. Government

Lawrence Strickling, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information (2009-2017)

 

Audio Recording: EN 

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."