Abstract
In the year 2000, the Government Advisory Committee (“GAC”) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) passed a set of principles that essentially claimed national sovereignty over country code top-level domains (“ccTLD”s) such as .us, .ca, .uk and .au. Shortly thereafter, ICANN redelegated several ccTLDs in accordance with new GAC principles. Despite the outcry accompanying the passage of these principles and ICANN’s self-professed adherence thereto, the entire exercise could easily be criticized as merely symbolic because of the overriding power of ICANN in the operation of the Domain Name System (“DNS”). Indeed, Stuart Lynn, ICANN’s current president, summed up the lack of power that ccTLDs have within the governance structure of the Internet when he opined that “ICANN could, in theory, recommend that a particular ccTLD be redelegated to a cooperating administrator. If the United States government accepted that recommendation, non-cooperating ccTLD administrators would be replaced.”
Recommended Citation
Kim G. von Arx & Gregory R. Hagan,
SOVEREIGN DOMAINS: A Declaration of Independence of ccTLDs from Foreign Control,
9
Rich. J.L. & Tech
4
(2002).
Available at:
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/jolt/vol9/iss1/6