ICANN - History

History

Before the establishment of ICANN, the Government of the United States controlled the domain name system of the Internet.

The original mandate for ICANN came from the United States government, spanning the presidential administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. On January 30, 1998, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, issued for comment, "A Proposal to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses." The proposed rule making, or "Green Paper", was published in the Federal Register on February 20, 1998, providing opportunity for public comment. NTIA received more than 650 comments as of March 23, 1998, when the comment period closed.

The Green Paper proposed certain actions designed to privatize the management of Internet names and addresses in a manner that allows for the development of robust competition and facilitates global participation in Internet management. The Green Paper proposed for discussion a variety of issues relating to DNS management including private sector creation of a new not-for-profit corporation (the "new corporation") managed by a globally and functionally representative Board of Directors. ICANN was formed in response to this policy. The IANA function currently exists under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

ICANN was incorporated in California on September 30, 1998, with leading entrepreneurs and philanthropist Esther Dyson as founding chairwoman. It is qualified to do business in the District of Columbia. ICANN was established 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, which is home to an office of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California.

Per its original Bylaws, primary responsibility for policy formation in ICANN was to be delegated to three supporting organizations (Address Supporting Organization, Domain Name Supporting Organization, and Protocol Supporting Organization), each of which was to develop and recommend substantive policies and procedures for the management of the identifiers within their respective scope. As expected, the Regional Internet Registries and the IETF agreed to serve as the Address Supporting Organization and Protocol Supporting Organization respectively, and ICANN issued a call for interested parties to propose the structure and composition of the Domain Name Supporting Organization. On 4 March 1999, the ICANN Board, based in part on the DNSO proposals received, decided instead on an alternate construction for DNSO which delineated specific constituencies.

On July 26, 2006, the United States government renewed the contract with ICANN for performance of the IANA function for an additional one to five years. The context of ICANN's relationship with the U.S. government was clarified on September 29, 2006 when ICANN signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Department of Commerce (DOC). This document does give the DoC a final, unilateral oversight over some of the ICANN operations.

In July 2008, the U.S. Department of Commerce reiterated an earlier statement that it has "no plans to transition management of the authoritative root zone file to ICANN". The letter also stresses the separate roles of the IANA and VeriSign.